Three people are credited with the story: Christopher Adcock, Christopher Blue and Marnie Page. None of them ever made another film again, either so happy with this experience that they didn’t wish to sully it or so depressed by it they never came back. Or they were aliens and this is their story, then they went back to their homeworlds many lightyears away to make further movies that some strange life being is writing about as part of a box set of holocrons of movies that failed many life circuits — what you humans call years — ago.
The jury is, as they say, out.
Robyn (Sydney Penny from The Bold and the Beautiful and All My Children), Tavy (who was in the BBC series Holby City) and a furry beast named Kirbi are aliens that have left the planet Taros to visit Earth, where they befriend a boy named Dirt (Ricky Paull Goldin, who had the trunk full of class rings in the remake of The Blob).
Dirt decides to introduce the aliens to his grandfather (Keenan Wynn in his last role), who allows Kirbi to drink gasoline and join him as they shoot Coors cans. Then grandpa brings the alien to meet a Senator, and, well…things don’t go so well.
Talia Shire shows up in this, probably to get another name another than Wynn’s to sell this to foreign audiences.
So yeah. This is the kind of movie parents rented in the 80’s and put their kids in front of it, not knowing that it has an alien that looks like how women’s private parts did before shaving and waxing came into fashion. I mean, it’s supposed to be cute and it’s The Thing-level terrifying.
*The last one was the Bronson movie Assassination.
You know how we root for the self-made filmmaker at B&S About Movies, with backyard guys like Andy Milligan and Don Dohler. (Without their 16-to-35mm drive-in romps, there’d be no SOV ’80s*, so I always lump them into that brick and mortar store era, especially when the first time most seen Dohler’s work — or Milligan’s for that matter — was on home video.) So while stuffy Leonard Maltin-styled critics catalog their filmpedia scoffs at Dohler’s “gripping sci-fi terror from beyond,” we, the staff of B&S About Movies appreciate Dohler’s debut film for what it is: a fun retro-romp from the ’50s “Golden Age of Horror.”
Considering Dohler began as an underground magazine publisher in the early ’60s at the age of 15 with the Mad Magazine-inspired WILD and the mid-60s filmmaking magazine Cinemagic (that was bought out by Starlog in 1979), his transitioning into producing his own films was a logical, natural progression.
Upon first watching the opening scene of two people in car in a remote, rural area being attacked by an alien creature, it’s obvious George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a sign post in Dohler’s creation. However, with only $3,500 to spend, Dohler couldn’t afford to shoot in graveyards and create zombie hoards: so he gave us a tale inspired by ’50s sci-fi films, such as The Thing from Another World.
If you’ve seen — or read our previous reviews for Dohler’s third and fourth films (the zombie-slasher hybrid Fiend from 1980 was his second) — Nightbeast and The Galaxy Invader, you know that an insect-esque monster is on the loose in “Perry Hill” (natch). The mayhem is triggered when a (character expositional) spaceship containing specimens for an intergalactic zoo crashes on Earth and lets loose its galactic menagerie: an Inferbyce (the aforementioned insect alien), a Zagatile (a giant furry beast with funky legs) and a Lemmoid (a ghostly like lizard that sucks energy from other creatures).
Baltimore’s’ favorite alien is back in the 2001 sequel.
And I ask you: Did Speilberg watch this? I wonder, because we have a local sheriff besieged by the backwood (in lieu of sandy Amity Island) town mayor to find what’s causing the killings (not a shark) and to “keep a lid on it” because it’ll jeopardize the nearby construction of a multimillion-dollar amusement park that’ll boost the local economy.
The reference to Romero’s zombie classic — and our calling out a minor influence of Jack H. Harris’s Equinox — isn’t a critical misnomer (especially when you watch the ending and recall Duane Jones’s sad fate in Romero’s tale). While this Dohler debut received a widespread theatrical released in the post-Alien/Star Wars/Close Encounters of the Third Kind marketplace in May 1978, The Alien Factor was completed in 1972 — and had a slight, regional drive-in release around the Baltimore area in 1976.
For a film shot for under $4,000 bucks with local talent, a limited crew, backyard without-permit locales, and admittedly pretty decent process shots and practical in-camera effect, this — as with any Dohler flick — is worth the watch. You can watch The Alien Factor on You Tube and enjoy it as part of the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion Box Set.
And did you know there’s a rock ‘n’ roll connection to this Dohler bit o’ nostalgia? Yep! Be sure to check out Sam’s take as he reviewed the film for the 24th “At the Gig” day of the 2020 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge.
* Click through to our SOV tag to populate our ever-growing list of shot-on-video movies.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
A bunch of salamander men from the planet Kulimon in the Moffit Galaxy plan on taking over Earth by unleashing a lethal plague on mankind (maybe not what you want to watch right now). It’s up to Starman from the Emerald Planet to save the human race.
I always wondered why these movies didn’t make any sense when I was a kid.
That’s because they were all part of a much larger story that we had no idea about. We’re coming into the middle of a movie serial called Kōtetsu no Kyojin (Giant of Steel). To be more exact, we’re watching episodes 3 and 4, which were called The Mysterious Spacemen’s Demonic Castleand Earth on the Verge of Destruction.
That’s because Walter Manley Enterprises and Medallion Films bought these movies from Japan and then did pretty much whatever they wanted with them. While the original films are 48 and 39 minutes long, they jammed them together, took out 9 minutes and used library music and dubbed dialogue.
While the American version refers to the bad guys as salamanders, those that love Japanese crytozology will recognize them as kappas, the dreaded frog-like beasts that haunt rivers and lakes. They also have a doctor who can hypnotize people, a witch and their leader, who is able to change the rotation of the planet.
Starman predates both Ultraman and the sendai ranger shows, but he’s very similar. He tends yo leap off things and do tons of backflips. A lesser hero would get dizzy and puke from the acrobatics that he does, but that’s why he’s such a winner, I guess.
Walter Manley Enterprises also brought the Jayne Mansfield-starring The Loves of Hercules, Invasion of the Neptune Men, Curse of the Blood Ghouls, Giants of Rome, Cavalier in Devil’s Castle and Revenge of the Black Eagle to America, amongst other films.
They also made three more Starman movies. It all begins in Atomic Rulers of the World, which is Super Giant and Super Giant Continues; Attack from Space which is The Artificial Satellite and the Destruction of Humanityand The Spaceship and the Clash of the Artificial Satellite; and finally Evil Brain from Outer Space, which took the full color films The Space Mutant Appears, The Devil’s Incarnation and Kingdom of the Poison Moth and made them black and white. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
Director Teruo Ishii, known as “The King of Cult,” made tons of movies. He directed 10 of the 18 A Man from Abashiri Prison films, all eight of the Joys of Torture series, Horrors of Malformed Men, Sonny Chiba’s The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, some Pinky violence films, a few biker movies, two Yoshiharu Tsuge manga adaptions (Master of the Gensenkan Inn and Wind-Up Type) and so many more. In all, he made 83 films and numerous shows for TV.
Ishii left the series after the sixth movie, as he learned that a child had imitated Super Giant, dressing up like the hero and jumping out of a window to the street below. This is why Japanese superhero shows began airing a disclaimer before every show, warning kids to not imitate the things they saw on screen.
I would hope that no one copied any of the Yakuza and erotic torture that he’d be in charge of in his later films.
Seriously, I love this movie. It’s kind of goofy looking compared to the CGI superheroics that we have today, but it has a charm that none of them do.
You can watch this on YouTube and download it for free on the Internet Archive.
“Point taken. But this was shot in Spain with native actors, so I doubt there’s any connection to an American sitcom.”
“Well, in Season 8: Episode 21: “The Muffin Tops” Newman does a parody of Harvey Keitel’s The Cleaner from Pulp Fiction, as he helps Elaine get rid of the errant muffin tops from the bakery she opened.
“Review the damn movie, R.D.”
When the home video boom hit in the ’80, West Hollywood-based Chicago Teleproductions decided to get out of the TV business and into the film business as Cine Tel Films, which still exists to this day.
One of their first acquisitions was this Spain-produced sci-fi adventure that owes it’s life more to Superman ’78 (with dashes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a soupçon E.T.) than Star Wars, as was the case with most of the ’80’s star junk that was coming out of Italy and Spain, such as the Richard “Jaws” Keil and Barbara Bach-starring The Humanoid and Luigi Cozzi’s Star Crash. And as with those two precursors, Star Knight (aka El caballero del dragón, aka The Knight of the Dragon), thanks to Cine Tel Films, ended up at my local duplex in 1986, back in the days when you’d get a new Euro-space oddity once a week.
Of course, not all of those Star Wars droppings starred Harvey Keitel (Saturn 3) and Klaus Kinksi (Creature). And before there was an Eric Roberts, there was a Fernando Rey, who, across his 150-plus credits, went from international acclaim through his ’60s works with surrealist director Luis Buñuel (Simon of the Desert) and domestic stardom with William Friedkin’s The French Connection — to this.
And what is it? Well, it’s a Lois Lane loves Superman romance with a love-struck Lex Luthor.
Keitel is Klever, the kingdom’s top knight who aspires for full knighthood; Kinski is Boetius, the faithful alchemist who aspires for the secrets to turn lead into gold; and Rey is the king’s nefarious court priest, who believes Alba is possessed by the Devil (and probably wants to “Mark of the Devil” it out of her).
Of course, Kinski’s off his usual nut, drawing incantation-scawled pentagrams on the floor and “praying for an angel to come” to bestow him the secrets to turn lead into gold. And his prayer is answered — in the form of an an “adult”-starring film vehicle for Spanish musician and ex-teen idol Miguel Bosé (a huge star throughout Italy, Spain, Southern Europe and Latin America) as “The Star Knight,” aka, the speechless IX.
Of course, as is the case with all ancient astronauts of the Erich von Daniken variety, the Ezekielian space ship is a “dragon from the sky” that lives in the lake and whisked away Princess Alba, along with an assortment of goats and chickens, because, well XI’s on a long, lone mission to catalog the galaxy’s flora and fauna. And the citizen’s refuse to pay their taxes until the “dragon” is slain. And Keitel’s “straight out of Brooklyn” knight is dispatched to kill the dragon, restore order, and collect those taxes.
But since XI has been without female companionship for some time, he finds an unspoken love with Alba. So Keitel and Rey plot to “kill the devil” so Keitel can win back Alba’s heart. Kinski, meanwhile, is the good guy this time (?), who protects XI and assures love conquers all.
Unlike the utterly inept (but loved) Escape from Galaxy 3, the other Ezekielian ancient astronaut romp on this Mill Creek set, Star Knight has excellent production values in its sets and costuming (especially XI’s Kryptonian spaceship interiors and space suit) and the acting from the mostly Spanish they’re-somebody-over-there-and-nobody-to-us-here-to-us-yanks cast is above par.
You have two choices to watch Star Knight on You Tube HERE and HERE. Of course, you can also own it as part of the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion Box Set. And yes . . . this is so awesome, that Sam stepped in with a second take because, well, you just can’t talk about a Klaus Kinski film, once. Especially with Harvey Keitel as a co-star.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
From the Editor’s Desk: Severin Films strikes again as they pull another lost and forgotten Mill Creeker out of obscurity. On On April 25th, 2023, Severin releases the Worldwide Blu-ray premiere of Juan Piquer Simón’s Extra Terrestrial Visitors. The 4K restoration includes the U.S. debut of a long-form documentary on Simón’s career. You can learn more about the release at Severin.
As an added bonus: Also released on the same day is a 4K restoration Blu-ray of Antonio Margheriti’s Alien rip, Alien from the Abyss. You can learn more about the release at Severin.
Granted, there are not as many E.T, the Extra-Terrestrial rips as there are Alien and Star Wars rips (here) . . . but I still think (Sam?) we can squeeze an “E.T. Rip-Offs Week” or, at the very least, an “E.T Top Ten Rips” list, you know, like our two “Alien Rip-Offs” list (here and here). Speaking of which . . . is that a monkey’s face on the cover? Is this ripping off Roland Emmerich’s Making Contact, which itself is an E.T. rip, that had a possessed toy monkey in its frames (if I am remembering my movies correctly)?
Warning. It ain’t no friggin’ money. What is it?
Let’s pop in that Mill Creek disc and find out!
If you’ve hung out at B&S About Movies for any period of time, you know that Juan Piquer Simón, aka J.P Simon (but he’s Jack Grey, here; he hated the end product), is a pretty big deal around here, courtesy of his two huge, Drive-In and duplex “hits,” later to become VHS-rental horror de rigueur: Pieces (1982) and Slugs (1988). Our love runs so deep that Bill Van Ryn and Sam Panico paired up Slugs with Squirm for a “Drive-In Asylum Double Feature Night.” (Yes, we know Simón did an Alien rip — well, The Abyss rip, that itself is an Alien rip, aka The Rift (1990) — that took a while; we finally did it!)
But sandwiched between his Carpenter-slasher ’80s rip and his big bug movie, he made . . . well, it looks like Los nuevos extraterrestres, aka The New Aliens, started out as an Alien rip-off about an asteroid and a freak lightning storm depositing a dozen alien eggs in the woods, you know, like a Luigi Cozzi movie (Contamination). Then some guy by the name of Steven Spielberg went and made a movie about a kid and his lost alien friend. And you know how film producers are. You’re passé, Ridley Scott. Hello, Mr. Spielberg.
When art departments give up. . . .
At first, this looks like a Godfrey Ho cut-and-paste job of three unfinished films:
First, we have a trio of bumbling wild life poachers scaling trees for rare eggs in the woods, so it seems we’re getting another Don Dohler alien-in-the-woods cheapfest, ala Galaxy Invader or Night Beast.
But wait . . . we have a Z-grade, new wave band recording in the studio and it’s not working out . . . time to hop into the RV and head out to a remote cabin to cut new tunes . . . and become alien hors d’oeuvre, ala Carpenter with a Dohler-alien pinch-slashing for Jason Vorhees.
But wait . . . then there’s Tommy: an annoying Spanish kid (in a bad dub, natch; this was a French-Spain co-production with thespians from both countries mixing it up) in a Spielbergian-Americanized, product-placement bedroom nightmare (Boston Red Sox and Bruins pennants) with a zoo menagerie in his room (a rabbit, gerbil, hamster, kitten), stuck in a remote cabin with his grumpy uncle and domineering aunt. And all the poor kid wants is a friend to play jigsaw puzzles and Simon — again — it’s all about the product placement. (And holy set design déjà vu, Batman: Is that the same bedroom Timmy had in Pieces? Yep.)
So, the poachers, who want rare eggs, smash the alien eggs (?) . . . and let slip the Sid and Marty Kroft alien of war. Seriously. Remember the monkey crack? Well, it ain’t no friggin’ monkey: it’s an aardvark-bear hybrid that, the first thing I thought of was Snork from the ’70s American, daytime TV series The Banana Splits. (Where’s Sigmund and the Rest of the Sea Monsters?) And Snork is on the warpath. And is it the mom? Or brother? Or sister? No matter: Sigmund wants its child/sibling back.
Meanwhile, back at the cabin: Tommy found the last egg and hatched a new friend: Trumpy. No, it’s not a political statement by the filmmakers: it’s because of the aliens trunk. And that baby alien grows into a teen alien overnight, as it sucks up a collection of Kellogg’s cereals and Planters Peanuts (and, I think a jar of Jiff). Again, product placement.
Meanwhile, in the back in the woods: Snork, aka Big Trumpy, killed one of the new wavers. And the band is on the run (sorry, Mr. McCartney) to . . . the cabin where Tommy lives. Oh, and did we mention Tommy’s uncle is one of the poachers? And nice Trumpy, who, of course, has mad ESP skills and makes clothes and shoes from the closet put on a floor show, with musical accompaniment courtesy of Milton Bradley’s Simon, suffers from a case mistaken identity — as a murderer — that threatens the newly formed friendship of Tommy and Trumpy. And Trumpy doesn’t want to go. But Tommy leaves Trumpy — who parents/siblings are all dead, thanks to the stupid Earthlings — in the woods: alone.
It’s actually a sad ending. Here’s a kids that loves animals and takes care of pets. And he abandons the best pet ever — in the woods. Wait. It’s not sad. It’s sick. What the frack, Juan? What’s the “statement” made here? When something becomes a pain-in-the-ass, you dump it? Don’t give friends the benefit of the doubt?
As if this Alien-E.T. clone wasn’t enough of a mess: Film Ventures International also stuck this on the VHS shelves as Pod People and cut in footage from Dohler’s Galaxy Invader (never saw that version myself). In some quarters, FVI said, “the hell with it” and marketed it as a sequel: E.T. – The Second Coming.
You can watch Extra Terrestrial Visitors on You Tube or own it as part of the Mill Creek Box Set.
For decades, I’ve either stared at the box cover of this movie or looked at it while going through streaming movies to watch. I mean, it checks so many boxes, as it’s set in a post-apocalyptic future, has bounty hunters in it and stars Mark Hamill and Bill Paxton. Yet I’ve never watched it. And again, that’s why I love doing these Mill Creek months, because it’s allowed me to finally discover so many movies that I’ve previously skipped.
I don’t know if Slipstream is one of the successes of these experiments, but hey, at least I finally watched it.
It certainly has a great pedigree. It has a score by Elmer Bernstein, was directed by Steven Lisberger, who made Tron, and was produced by Gary Kurtz, who did the same role on The Dark Crystal, Return to Oz and oh yeah, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Before Jedi, Lucas and Kurtz had a falling out over the creative direction of the franchise.
That’s probably why this film has so many great actors in it. Beyond Hamill and Paxton, there are minor roles for Robbie Coltrane, Ben Kingsley and F. Murray Abraham.
The film instantly tries to create a mythology of a world where the Harmonic Convergence — oh man, remember that and all the other pre-millennial apocalyptic insanity? — has caused drastic climate change in the form of the Slipstream, a strong series of winds that have encircled the globe. Humanity is mostly destroyed, but those left behind have learned to harness the Slipstream or at the very least respect it.
Bounty hunters Will Tasker (Hammill) and Belitski (Kitty Aldridge) are hunting Byron (Bob Peck, Jurassic Park), a man is seemingly unable to be hurt and who keeps quoting the poetry of John Gillespie Magee, Jr. and Lord Byron, who can also heal blind children (so there’s that).
As for Paxton, he plays Matt Owens, who angers the bounty hunters and then steals Byron, taking him to Hell’s Kitchen. It turns out that Byron is an android that dreams of a place beyond the Slipstream where more of his people reside.
Kurtz hoped that Slipstream would be a major success and start another science fiction franchise, so it’s pretty glossy and filled with all manner of characters who could have been spun off into future stories. But nope, it all ended here. It never received a theatrical release in the U.S. and was hampered by Kurtz’s divorce — man, the guy was having no luck in 1989 — which led to him having to use all of his Star Wars money to finance this.
Maybe people weren’t ready for a movie obsessed with aviation, free will and artificial intelligence, I guess. It’s not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t feel like a franchise starter that failed (see Krull for a good example of that). There’s some kind of good movie in here, but it never really takes off. And after that aviation-based pun, I’m out of here.
“Okay, kid. I want you to make me a film under 80-minutes for $18,000 bucks,” cigar chomps the film executive planting his wing-tips on his desk. “And I got this ratty gorilla suit at an auction . . . they lost the gorilla head, so use this alien mask that I think is left over from 20 Million Miles to Earth . . . and use these reels of NASA stock footage . . . oh, and I can’t afford any lights, so shoot all the night time scenes day-for-night. And you’re using John Agar in the lead.”
“Who’s John Agar?” snivels the fresh-out-of-film-school grad.
“A washed up drunk who boinked Shirley Temple. He comes cheap.”
“Well, sir. Thank you for the opportunity—.”
“Believe me, kid. If I could get Larry Buchanan to shoot this, I would. Now, let’s go to work.”
. . . And so starts this go-go swingin’ adventure: A NASA rocket sent into space filled with test animals flies through a radiation cloud and crashes into the wilds of Cielo, Texas, so a mutated-gorilla monster can munch on a bunch of 18-going-on-30 teenagers in a wooded area known as “Satan’s Hollow.” (Speaking of a “Satan’s Hollow,” check this out.)
“Hey, gang,” head cool kid Chris Jordan calls out. “Let’s go have a swingin’ dance party in the woods! You know, our own ‘private blast’ where that mysterious object crashed!”
“Yeah, and we can do some off-screen shimmy-shammin’ so the Klingon-headed-gorilla space monster can chew us up,” squeals Judy.
“Shit. Let’s go to work, Ben,” says Sheriff Clint Crawford (John Agar) to Deputy Ben Whitfield (Bill Thurman). “It looks like we’re stuck in a movie that’s worse than Robot Monster. Hell, even The Giant Gila Monster.”
“Yeah,” whisky bottle swigs John Agar. “At this rate, we’ll be co-starring in Ed Wood pictures. Damn shame I won’t live long enough to star in an ‘80s SOV stinker. Heck, I would have been great as the detective in Blood Cult.”
“Nah, I’ll do just fine, John. I won’t end up in SOV crap like Spine. Respected directors like Louis Malle, Steven Speilberg, and Lawrence Kasdan will cast me, and I’ll work with Steve McQueen,” chest puffs Bill. “Now go stuff that mannequin with explosives so the dumb space gorilla eats it and we can get the hell out of here and have a beer,” bug neck-smacks Bill Thurman. “And besides, John, don’t you remember? You do that interview in 1986. So it’s not that you died, it’s just that you’ll be so washed up, that the director, Christopher Lewis, wouldn’t want you.”
“Hey, wait a sec . . . Lewis? Loretta’s kid. Yeah, didn’t I bang Loretta Young?”
“Yeah, right, Johnny boy,” says Bill with a back pat. “She married Clark Gable. What would she want with a pug like you? Now, let’s go kill us a space gorilla.”
John Agar was on top of the world. He starred alongside John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. He was the toast of tinsel town with his five-year marriage to Shirley Temple. . . . Then the marriage failed and his drinking got worse and he became a stock player for Larry Buchanan at AIP Studios in the low-budget frolics The Mole People and The Brain from Planet Arous.
Me: I always cherish Mr. Agar in my late dad’s John Wayne flicks and I’ll always remember John in the Alien precursor and the UHF double-billed, Journey to the Seventh Planet (alongside The Demon Planet, aka Planet of Vampires).
“I don’t resent being identified with B-science fiction movies at all,” Agar reflected in a 1986 interview chronicled at Monster Shack. “Why should I? Even though they were not considered top of the line, for those people that like sci-fi, I guess they were fun. My whole feeling about working as an actor is, if I give anybody any enjoyment, I’m doing my job, and that’s what counts.”
You did, John Agar. You most certainly did. You are at the center of this writer’s Venn Diagram-Borromean Rings of my “Bad Sci-Fi Battle of Evermore.”
In addition to satisfying my John Agar fix, Night Fright also quenches my Bill Thurman completest-compulsions—and gives me an opportunity to talk about Hollywood fringe-obscurity, Brenda Venus.
Brenda Venus, who stars as Sue, grew up to sprout “white nipples” so Eric Swann (Martin Mull) could boink her on the audio mixing console in FM (1978). Oh, you’ve seen Brenda around. She was in Fred Williamson’s blaxploitation spaghetti western, Joshua (1976) and Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown (1974). She starred with Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction (?!) and she endured the wrath of Ankar Moor in Deathsport (1978). Brenda’s Wikipedia is well worth the visit and it directs you to her very cool, official website.
As for Bill Thurman: It’s like shootin’ fish in a Larry Buchanan-AIP barrel. Bill was in everything calculated inside the UHF Venn Diagram of my youth and went on to become the “go-to actor” when you needed a backwoods sheriff or redneck.
He was Sheriff Brad Crenshaw in Zontar, the Thing from Venus.
And get a load of the ‘80s VHS and ‘90s digital-platform repacks of Night Fright: they really are better than the movie. And don’t be fooled by its alternate titlings and confuse it with 1958’s Night of the Blood Beast, which is also available on the Mill Creek Pure Terror 50 Box Set (and my condolences to whomever reviews that stinker. Wait. What? I’m the “whomever” reviewing it? Crap!).
So, yeah, Night Fright sucks. But it’s also one of my cherished UHF snowy memories. Thanks, Mill Creek!
Editor’s Desk, May 2023: Once again . . . we were simply crossing off another Mill Creeker from another Mill Creek box set, just because we love Mill Creek. And as with another lost, fellow Mill Creeker, UFO: Target Earth, as well as with the equally VHS-forgotten Delirium and Calamity of Snakes, Top Line is receiving its own hard-media restoration, this time from the folks at Cauldron Films coming in August 2023 — intel on that release, to follow.
So, yeah, here’s what we had to say back in November 2020 during our annual Mill Creek box set unpacking extravaganza.
We can blame this Italian hodgepodge waste bucket of influences — shot and theatrically released under the title of Alien Terminator, becoming Top Line for video — on George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for giving us their joint jungle-sci-fi Indiana Jones adventures. Oh, and James Cameron for The Terminator. And once you toss in a dash of John Carpenter’s They Live, a soupçon Ron Howard’s Cocoon, and a pinch of Robert Zemeckis’s Romancing the Stone, you’ll know why we don’t revere the resume of Ted Archer, aka Nello Rossati, with the same vigor we give his fellow Italians Lewis Coates, aka Luigi Cozzi, and Al Bradley, aka Alfonso Brescia, in the digitized pages of B&S About Movies.
Warning: Scene on the VHS sleeve may vary from the actual movie.
I mean, you know how gaga for giallo and poliziotteschi genre films we are in this neck of the Allegheny wilds . . . and we never reviewed La gatta in calore, aka The Cat in Heat (1972; the worst of the Argento imitators), and I figli non si toccano!, aka Don’t Touch the Children (1978; the clunkiest of the Death Wish–Magnum Force clones). So what does that tell you?
It tells you that this isn’t a tribute to the science fiction B-movies of the 1950s — like the Lucas-Spielbergian film it’s thieving: it tells you this is an insult to the science fiction B-movies of the 1950s it is thieving. For it is a celluloid larceny that would give Glen “Larceny” Larson pause.
Just because we can. And the fact that Sergio Martino can’t sue us because Hands of Steelwas, itself, a ripoff.
It tells you that not even the very cool Franco Nero (of the superb giallo The Fifth Chord and equally cool spaghetti western Keoma) and the always reliable George Kennedy (who was obviously on hard times, considering he did this and the possessed cat-on-a-boat romp Uninvitedin the same year) can’t save this jungle-sci-fi adventure. It tells you that not even the plastic cyborgs, the rubbery-gooey extraterrestrials, and awfully-dubbed Nazis can save it. (Okay, we’ll give Rossati-Archer bonus points for the somewhat decent cyborg and the alien make-ups. Ah, but he loses them for dubbing George Kennedy with one of the worst faux-German accents, aka accidents, in cinematic history.)
What balls! The story comes comes back at ya’ a third time in 1989’s Cy-Warrior starring Henry Silva in place of Franco Nero, who was in place of John Saxonback in 1986 with Hands of Steel.
And what is a “top line” and what does a “top line” have to do with the movie? (Damned if I know. My attention span was FUBAR’d by the proceedings and I was too lazy to rewind to find out.) Why ditch the more exploitative Alien Terminator? Best guess: Blame it on the always-changing-their-minds producers: “We want Alien . . . wait, we want The Terminator . . . wait, turn the lead into an Indian Jones-type character. And dupe renters into thinking they’re getting a romantic, Bogey and Becall adventure, so ditch the aliens and cyborgs. Hey, can we have him runaround barefoot like Bruce Willis?
Argh!!!!
Franco Nero plays Angelo: a washed-up writer living in Cartagena, Colombia, whose search for conquistador gold leads him to a mountain cave where he uncovers a 15th century Spanish galleon inside the hull of a UFO. (Okay, it’s not a bad set, actually; but the VHS-to-digital prints of the film that circulate are so muddy, the “majesty,” if any, is lost.) Yes. You heard me right: a galleon inside a UFO, inside a cave, behind fake rock “door,” inside mountain, in the middle of the Colombian jungle.
And you thought Ruggero Deodato’s Raiders of Atlantis was an “epic adventure beyond that rivals Rambo* and Mad Max**.” Think again. And you thought Michele Massimo Tarantini bait-and-switched you with the no-actual-dinosaurs-appear-in-this-movie Massacre in Dinosaur Valley. That’s right. Think again — provided this movie didn’t already compromise your cerebral cortex.
Yep. Massacre Ninja is another Godfrey “Oh, no” Ho rip off joint — comes complete with typo.
So how did Angie-boy end up here? Cue the bitchy ex-wife-who’s-also-my-publisher-boss trope (Octopussy-era bond girl Mary Stavin, who didn’t fare any better in the inept radio-slasher Open House). Then cue the Aztec dagger Angie discovers that he can sell and save his ass. And cue the bodies that start dropping like flies because Angie found the dagger. (Or was it the cave: don’t care.) And George Kennedy as the troped (blink-and-miss), cackling Nazi antiques dealer after him because of the dagger. And the KGB that are after the Nazis, who are after Angie, because they want the dagger. And the aliens . . . who send in a cyborg (Rodrigo Obregon of a bunch of Andy Sidaris movies?!) adorned with curly hair, an unbuttoned David Hasselhoff red shirt, and a hunk of plastic stuck on his face that comes complete with a whirring eyeball).
Oh, and speaking of James Bond: Nero hooks up with his own Kate Capshaw in Deborah Barrymore, aka Deborah Moore, aka Roger Moore’s daughter (who actually made it into the Oscar-winning Chaplin . . . but also did Warriors of the Apocalypse for Manila-flick purveyor Bobby A. Suarez of They Call Her . . . Cleopatra Wong fame). Oh, and how deep is the rip-offness of it all: Nero looses his shoes John McClane-style in the jungle as he runs from the bad guys so, you know, you think that you’re watching a Die Hard clone because the Romancing the Stone cover gag didn’t work.
Oh, how did Franco Nero get into this mess?
Never mind. This friggin’ mess is one of those analog gems that makes us bow before the VHS-to-digital altars of Mill Creek Entertainment. So take off your shoes, strap on a popcorn bag, and watch this one on You Tube. Ah, the caveat: The print is pretty washed out and I have a feeling the Mill Creek version may not be much better. But that’s how it goes in the wilds of the lawless, analog public domains. For not every movie deserves a 4K Blu restoration . . . but it deserves to be packed amid 50 other lost water-bobbers to enjoy.
Doh!
Flash forward to August 2023 . . . as Cauldron Films restores and reissues Top Line as part of their new three-Blu-ray reissues bundle with the fellow Italian ditties Off Balance and The Last Match.
This new version of Top Line — a 2k restoration from the orginal negative — is limited to 1500 copies. Extras include interviews with actor Franco Nero and filmmaker Eugenio Ercolani, a featurette on the alien theories of the film by parapolitics researcher Robert Skvarla, an audio commentary by film historian Eric Zaldivar, as well as audio interviews from cast members Deborah Moore and Robert Redcross, and insights on Italian cult films with Italian acting warehorses Brett Halsey and Richard Harrison (Three Men on Fire). There’s also a booklet, a double-sided poster, and a high quality slipcase with artwork by Ghanaian artist Farika — yes, the one behind those crazy-ass overseas VHS tapes we love — courtesy of Deadly Prey Gallery. If you’re not familiar with the art form: this post from Not So Innocents Abroad will get you started.
Yep! We reviewed all three films from the Calderon reissue to get you up to speed.
Spaghetti Western Alert: Franco Nero reteamed with director Nello Rossati in the 1986 “comeback” Western, the critical and commercial bomb Django Strikes Again. We reviewed that, and about two-dozen others (including Nero’s 1966 turn in Django), during our “Spaghetti Westerns Week” that ran from Sunday, August 16, to Saturday, August 22.
Movie Theme Drink Alert: Hey, Sam! I can mix drinks based on movies, too! I give you the Top Line Terminator:
1 ounce coconut rum
1 ounce vodka
1/2 ounce blue curacao
1/2 cup pineapple juice
The blue curacao, when mixed with the other liquids, will turn green — like an alien. Enjoy!
Such a bargain for those who can’t drop the coin on the Cauldron reissue.
Before his best known, first studio-backed film, The Gate, and its sequel, The Gate 2: The Trespassers . . . long before he passed up the chance to direct A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master . . . before I, Madman . . . long before he started churning out the mockbuster hoards of Ice Spiders, Mega Snake, and Destruction: Los Angeles for the SyFy Channel . . . before he got into the Hallmark Christmas movie business alongside our equally beloved Fred Ray Olen and David DeCoteau, Hungarian-born Tibor Takács shot this failed Canadian TV series pilot programmer in 1978. Courtesy of the Star Wars-infused sci-fi market, it was shook loose from the analog dustbins onto home video shelves in 1982. Criminally allowed to fall into the public domain, this well-written and produced production (on a budget, natch) turned up as a track selection (aka The Tomorrow Man) on numerous bargain-basement DVD compilations.
Primarily known as a talent manager, studio producer and engineer, this CBC telefilm-pilot was Takács’s first professional feature film project, after his self-produced feature film debut, Metal Messiah (1978), a long-form rock opera/video which starred two bands from his stable: Kickback and the Cardboard Brains. (We’ve wanted to review Metal Messiah since forever, but have been unable to locate a copy. And yes, we’ve had I, Madman (1989; with Jenny Wright!) on our shortlist of must-reviews since our 2017 review of The Gate. We’ll get to it, one day . . . what the hell . . . courtesy of our annual October 2020 “Slasher Month,” Sam reviewed it, finally!
As you read this review, please take into consideration my crazed fandom for Patrick McGoohan’s surreal psychological drama The Prisoner, concerned with the imprisonment of an intelligence agent, of which this Orwellian-influenced tale reminds — only with the resourceful, low-budget production designs of PBS-TV’s 1980 production of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel A Lathe of Heaven. (Again, take into consideration of my fandom of that PBS adaptation igniting my sense of nostalgia for Takács’s dystopian tale.) And speaking of PBS-TV, one will also have a sense of Tom Baker-era Dr. Who déjà vu in the production designs (especially in the prison’s Cylon/Cybermen-styled sentries) and its cast of Shakespearian-skilled thespians.
Since Takács knows we are, at the very least, familiar with the dystopian tales of Aldous Huxley with Brave New World and more importantly, George Orwell’s 1984, 984: Prisoner of the Future dispenses with long-winded set ups in establishing how The Movement came into power and gets right into it: how affluent businessman Tom Weston became “984” by way of his entries in a ratty diary from the walls of his prison cell, which triggers a series of flashbacks to the mind games played by Warden Dr. Fontaine (the steely-excellent Don Francks (his work dates back to ’60s TV’s The Man From Uncle), his interrogator.
Don’t let the fact that this Canadian TV tale fell into, it seems, public domain territory due to a lack of legal due diligence on the part of the CBC, deter you from watching. This is a quality work by Tibor Takács that rises above the usual public domain or still legal, yet forgotten, odds ‘n’ sods from the VHS-era finding a new, digital home on these DVD box sets that brings the ol’ ’80s video store shelves to the abode.
You can watch 984: Prisoner of the Future on You Tube or own it as part of the “Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion Box Set.” You Tube also offers the trailer. Be sure to join us as we examine Tibor’s career and films with our “Drive-In Friday” featurette.
Our thanks to the digital librarians of Wikipedia for referencing this review as part of the “List of Dystopian Films” page.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Paul Andolina, whose writes the site Wrestling with Film, is in charge today. Beyond loving wrestling, he also knows a ton about Russian and lucha films (and he even speaks pretty good Spanish, so we hear!).
War of the Robots — originally titled La Guerra dei Robot — is an Italian science fiction film released in 1978 most likely to cash in on the franchises of both Star Trek and Star Wars. I’d like to imagine this film came about when Alfonso Brecia and Aldo Crudo were as high as cucuzzi (Italian squash) are long which just so happens to be extremely.
I could not ask for a more crazy colored sci-fi romp than what this film offers. Female scientist Lois and male professor Carr are on the cusp of something extraordinary; they soon will be able to create any creature they want and make the first immortal man! However, their plans are cut short when a mysterious group of gold-clad humanoids attack and abduct them. It’s up to Lois’ lover Captain Boyd and crew to rescue them from their captors.
War of the Robots has a lot of twists and turns during its hour and thirty-nine minute runtime. There also is a cut of the film that is four minutes longer but the cut included on the Chilling Classics set is the shorter one.
When the crew finally gets to Lois and Dr. Carr it turns out nothing is what it seems at all. Louis is now an empress and Carr is mad with power over the gold-clad humanoids who turn out to be androids.The inhabitants of the planet Louis and Carr are taken to also happen to be wrinkly old monster folks. The latter half of the movie turns into a whole scale war. Battle is waged in caves, palaces, command decks and even in starship space battles.
This movie has a bit of everything; it’s got phasers, it’s got laser swords, it’s got mutants who live on irradiated asteroids but most importantly it has West Buchanan! West Buchanan is an American actor who starred in his fair share of Italian genre films. It just so happens that West Buchanan looks like he could be Harley Race’s twin brother. Harley Race is a wrestler who has worked for NWA, WWE, and WCW. I was really surprised how similar they look. Now the reason I bring that up is that I’m a collector and avid watcher of films that star professional wrestlers. That’s not the sole reason I enjoy this film so much it’s not the greatest film by any means but those who like campy science fiction films should find plenty to enjoy. I think most folks will especially like the scenes where androids are sliced in half by laser swords.
I must also point out the amazing score is by Marcello Giombini who also scored some of the Emmanuelle films, Sabata and even Antropophagus. If you have the chance to watch this I do recommend it. Apparently it is part of a series of science fiction films by director Alfonso Brecia, The films that precede it are War of the Planets, Battle of the Stars and it is followed by Star Odyssey. I hope I stumble across the other films as I truly did enjoy this film.
You can watch this one of the many uploads of War of the Robots on You Tube.
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