Phil Tucker invented a rotary engine known as the CT Surge Turbine that he successfully patented and unsuccessfully tried to sell to the automobile industry as a more efficient alternative to the internal combustion engine. And years after directing movies like this and The Cape Canaveral Monsters, he did actually contribute to some movies as an editor, including Orca and King Kong.

Yet we’re all going to remember him for this movie and to be honest, whenever life gets me down, I remember that at some point, people got together and decided to make a movie about the end of the world and threw a monkey suit with a TV set for a head in it and I think about the startling ridiculousness of that and you know, it’s all better.

That monster is known as Ro-Man Extension XJ-2. He’s played by George Barrows, who made his own gorilla suit to get roles in movies. He’s already used his Calcinator death ray to kill everyone on Earth except for the eight people we meet in this movie.

I mean, that’s pretty through. There were 2.6 billion people alive in 1953, so to wipe out that many people, much less be able to find the eight you missed is pretty good work, if I can commend the outright annihilation of a planet.

Sure, this movie outright rips off the ending of Invaders from Mars and recycles footage from One Million B.C., Lost Continent, Rocketship X-M and Captive Women, but it’s in 3D, shot all over Bronson Canyon and was made in four days for $16,000. That is also worth celebrating.

It also has a score by Elmer Bernstein, who was currently being held back from major movies because of his liberal views. He also did a score for Cat Women of the Moon that year, but soon would be one of the biggest names in movie music.

Look, this is a movie that has a Billion Bubble Machine with an antenna being used for Ro-Man to communicate with the Great Guidance, the supreme leader of his face, who finally gets fed up and blasts not only that gorilla robot but the child hero before he causes dinosaurs to come back and then uses psychotronic vibrations to smash Earth out of the universe. If you can’t find something to love there, you are beyond hope.

You can watch the Mystery Science Theater and original version of this movie on Tubi.

In the 1960’s, Don Dohler created an underground comic book called WILD that had contributors like Jay Lynch, Art Spiegelman, Skip Williamson and even R. Crumb. He went on to create the zine Cinemagic, which was written to help filmmakers learn how to make movies, that ran for 11 issues until Starlogbought it. He also published several books on moviemaking and directed the films The Alien Factor, Nightbeast, Blood Massacre and Fiend. After a decade plus of a self-imposed break, he returned to moviemaking along with actor/police officer Don Ripple. Together, they made Alien Rampage, Harvesters, Stakes, Vampire Sisters, Crawler and Dead Hunt.

The Galaxy Invader was made before that break. Get ready.

In Baltimore, Don Dohler’s hometown, a meteor crashes down to Earth. A young couple goes to see what happened and that’s when they meet the Galaxy Invader, a green rubber-suited monster that’s a mix between Bigfoot and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Of course, they get killed.

Locals soon gather to hunt the creature and try to make money from it. Most of the movie is about the Montague family, including father Joe, who is often drunk, abusive and carrying around guns. George Stover shows up, showing that there’s at least one connection between Dohler and Baltimore’s favorite son, or at least weirdest, John Waters.

If you’re looking for rednecks running through the woods hunting one another and a giant green alien, well, good news. This movie was made for you. You may remember some of the beginning, too. That’s because the effects were used without permission for the movie Pod People.

Also known as Planet of the Dead and Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply, this is really the East German/Polish film Milcząca Gwiazda / Der Schweigende Stern, which would mean The Silent Star in English. It’s based on Stanislaw Lew’s 1951 novel The Astronauts. The author — who also was the man behind Solaris — was critical of the final film, saying, “It practically delivered speeches about the struggle for peace. Trashy screenplay was painted; tar was bubbling, which would not scare even a child.”

So how did it make it to America? Out old friends at Crown International Pictures, who In 1962 released a cut-down and American-friendly dub of the movie — along with two other cuts under the aforementioned Planet of the Dead and Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply titles. Domestic audiences wouldn’t see the original, uncut version of the film until it was re-released by the DEFA Film Library of the University of Massachusetts Amherst as The Silent Star.

Scientists discover that the Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused by an alien craft and not a meteor, which sends them to Venus, where they discover that the inhabitants of that planet want to irradiate the Earth and take it over. More precisely, they would have, had they not nuked themselves into oblivion.

If you watched this and thought, “Have I seen this movie somewhere else?” that would be because it’s the movie within a movie in Galaxina. If you listened to it and felt the same way, that’s because it liberally borrows — steals — music from Destination Moon, This Island Earth and The Wolf Man.

You can watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this movie on Tubi or the original on YouTube:

In The Golden Turkey Awards, the Medveds claim that Arch Hall Jr.’s performance as Tommy is “one of the low points in the history of American cinema” and that he has “a face only a mother could love.” He was sixteen when he made this movie, so that feels like a lot of punching down.

Well, maybe they were mad that their dad never put them in a movie.

Well, Arch Hall Sr. thought his son was going to be a star — even if that son said that he couldn’t sing — and made an Elvis movie starring his boy.

Roxy Miller (Marilyn Manning) drives out and accidentally hits Eegah (Richard Kiel) with her car. When she tells her boyfriend Tom Nelson (Arch Hall Jr.) and her father Robert (Arch Hall Sr.), her dad runs out into the desert to try and get a picture. He disappears, she finds him and he’s learned how to speak to the creature and has learned how it has stayed alive all this time. Of course, Eegah wants to marry his daughter, so he says alright, hoping that they can escape.

When they do, Eegah runs after them and dies at a pool party, but not before Ray Dennis Steckler gets thrown into the water. He would go on to make the next Arch Hall Jr. movie, Wild Guitar.

This was shot in the same Bronson Canyon area that Robot Monster was filmed at. In fact, Ro-Man’s base is the same cave that Eegah makes his home.

My favorite thing in this movie was that the sound recorder screwed up his job, so when Robert yells, “Watch out for snakes!” his lips never move.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

American International Television renamed nearly all of the Gamera movies for television. This is really Gamera vs. Viras.

This time, Gamera is defending our planet from aliens. He starts off by destroying one of their ships, but not before an entire planet declares that he is their enemy.

The aliens come back to Earth and learn Gamera’s one weakness: he loves children. They kidnap some kids and force him to do their bidding, but before long, he’s broken loose and is battling all of the aliens at once, who have combined their form into the menace known as Viras.

Daiei was in financial trouble, so this movie suffers from a smaller budget than previous films. But this is where the idea of Gamera protecting kids from aliens and monsters began. Yet it’s also the first of the series to use flashbacks from past films to pad the running time. This will get much, much worse as Gamera would battle on.

There was also an agreement with AIP that an American kid had to be in the movie. They couldn’t find any kids that could speak Japanese, so the studio cast Carl Craig, whose father was an army soldier stationed in Japan, despite Carl having no acting experience.

Don’t have the box set? YOu can watch this on Tubi or download it on the Internet Archive.

Hollingsworth Morse went from the casting department at Paramount Pictures to serving under director George Stevens in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He saw plenty of Europe and helped capture footage of the Battle of Normandy and other significant events of World War II. When he came back to the U.S., he directed plenty of TV, starting with Sky King and ending with The Fall Guy. Along the way, he also made fifty episodes of The Lone Ranger, seventeen of The Dukes of Hazzard, forty six of McHale’s Navy, seventeen of H. R. Pufnstuf and the movie, the “Mystery Island” parts of Skatebirds and Daughters of Satan.

Unlike so many shows of early television, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger was filmed instead of being aired live. That’s why the series has survived and could be edited into movies such as Beyond the Moon, Duel in Space, Forbidden Moon, Gypsy Moon, The Magnetic Moon, Manhunt in Space, Menace from Outer Space, Renegade Satellite and Robot of Regalio.

This is the last time that Rocky (Richard Crane) would be up against his enemy Queen Cleolanta (Patsy Parsons). She stands in the path of him evacuating the planet of Ophecius before a moon destroys everything. She even tries to stay before her assistant makes her leave. Then, she watches as her home is destroyed before apologizing to Rocky and his crew, which includes Venna Ray (Sally Mansfield), Winky (Scotty Beckett), Prof. Newton (Maurice Cass), Bobby (Robert Lyden) and their leader Secretary Drake (Charles Meredith).

After this chapter ended, Cass died of a heart attack and Professor Newton was replaced by Professor Mayberry (Reginald Sheffield). Winky was also changed, as Beckett was arrested after a gunfight with the police and Juliandra, Suzerain of Herculon (Ann Robinson) was picked as the new villainess for the last set of stories.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on YouTube.

For an entire article on the space films of Alfonso Brescia, visit this link.

Space is all about computers, at least in Italy in 1977. It’s also very close to when Star Wars was a big deal, so if there could be some cheaply made versions of an already big movie, Italy knew how to do exactly that.

A spaceship’s computer — The Wiz — seemingly saves everyone on-board from a space storm as they are only seeing refractions of the past. Meanwhile, Captain Mike Hamilton (John Richardson, Black Sunday) is being dealt with for slapping around an officer. He’s given the penalty of flying his ship — the MK-31 — to repair a satellite. When he gets there, he sees that they have no idea how to properly fix things and have moved past human sex and now lie on beds and watch light shows instead of messily putting the banana in the ham salad.

He investigates an unstable planet where two flying saucers — disintegrators — are protecting it from being explored. Narrowly avoiding a crash, Hamilton lands on the desert planet and learns that everyone is under the command of a computer. Only one of the people on this sphere survive, coming on board the M-31 while the computer possesses one of the crew who goes on a killing spree. The alien stops them at the cost of his own life and as everyone celebrates, only our hero realizes that the alien machine has now taken over The Wiz.

The cast includes Yanti Somer as Meela. She’s in all of Brescia’s space movies — Star Odyssey, War of the Robots, Battle of the Stars and this movie — as well as Man of the East. There’s also Katia Christine (Spirits of the Dead) as Greta, Maliso Longo (who was also in all of the space movies made by the director) as Halla, Massimo Bonetti as Vassilov, Giuseppe Fortis as Marseille and Italian western actor Vassili Karis as Peter Segura.

Director Alfonso Brescia has all sorts of movies on his list of films, including Naked Girl Killed in the Park, the wonderful Iron Warrior and the demented The Beast In Space. He wrote the story with Aldo Crudo (who made two possession movies in a row, Return of the Exorcist and Beyond the Door) and Maxim Lo Jacano.

In no way is this Star Wars. It’s closer to Planet of the Vampires with a little 2001. That said, I kind of adore it for being that.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

Vittorio Sala made the Eurospy film Spy in Your Eye as well as Beach Casanova,  Bang You’re Dead and Diamonds Are a Man’s Best Friend. He made this along with the traditional large army of writers, which included Ennio De Concini, Fulvio Fo, Augusto Frassinetti, Giorgio Mordini, Vittorio Nino Novarese and an actual Oscar winner in Ennio de Concini, who won the “Best Original Screenplay” for Divorce Italian Style.

Rod Taylor is Pirro, who has been captured by a tribe of Amazon women along with Glauco (Ed Fury) who is the Colossus of the title. Yes, the hero of The Time Machine in a peplum.

The Amazons are played by Dorian Gray, Gianna Maria Canale, Giorgia Moll and Daniela Rocca. Taylor claims to have rewritten the script and compared this being rereleased on home video to someone founding out he was in porn.

Don’t have the box set? You can download this movie from the Internet Archive.

Edward G. Robinson Jr. was originally in this movie but was fired by the producers after his arrest for writing a bad check for $138 to the Laguna Beach Garage.

Director and writer Curt Siodmak had already written The Ape, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and I Walked With a Zombie before making this his first directed effort. He had ten days to make it.

Deep in the Latin American jungles — a bad place to be if you stay too long — plantation manager Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) has murdered his boss and stolen away his wife Dina Van Gelder (Barbara Payton). Bad news for them: Al-Long (Gisela Werbisek), a witch, has seen the crime and cursed Chaves to transform every night into a gorilla. A cop by the name on Taro (Lon Chaney Jr.) puts the murder of the rich man and all the gorilla killings together. The natives believe Sukura, a demon, is the killer. And as for Dina, Barney seems way too into going out alone amongst the wildlife at night when he should be in bed with her. By the end, Lon Chaney shoots a weregorilla and Burr sees his own reflection before he dies, which feels like the reverse roles for what we should be watching.

Speaking of bad checks, Payton got arrested for that, plus had a reputation as a drinking party scene girl before she even started acting. Even after rehab, her parents would indulge in heavy drinking with her. Two years after this movie, Payton was paid $1,000 for her autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed. It had unflattering photographs of her and she discussed how she was homeless and had been beaten while a call girl. She’d die in 1967 at the age of 39 of heart and liver failure. Her parents died of alcoholism a few years later.

Woody Strode is in this as a cop. He’d have an affair with Payton, which would have caused a big uproar in 1951.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

James Best, before he taught Tarantino and chased the Dukes. Gerald McRaney, before he was a Simon and was with Delta Burke. An ESP experiment gone wrong and well, a lot of talking. That said, it’s very 1972 and looks every bit as dated as you’d imagine, so I saw that as a very relaxing place to spend time in.

Director Joy N. Houck Jr. also made Night of Bloody Horror and Creature from Black Lake. He wrote this with Thomas Hal Phillips, who plays the General, and Christian Garrison.

I think this was a government experiment so that anyone who wanted to know about MK Ultra in 1972 would watch this movie and be bored into thinking that it’s not worth caring about. It’s like The Alpha Incident but somehow more boring, so imagine. Please just imagine. Actually, just do that. Maybe you don’t need to watch it.

Hey — Cannon released it on home video in Germany.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch it on Tubi.