EDITOR’S NOTE: The Cosmic Man was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 26, 1963 at 3:00 p.m. It also aired on August 7, 1965.

USAF Col. Matthews (Paul Langton) and Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett), an astrophysist at the nearby Pacific Institute of Technology (PIT), are called as a UAP flies over Oak Ridge, CA at 180,000 miles an hour and coming to rest in Stone Canyon, floating off the ground. That night, a creature from inside the ship goes to the lab of Sorenson and Dr. Richie (Walter Maslow) to solve some problems that have puzzled them for months. They see whatever it is as friendly, but Matthews sees it as an enemy.

Kathy Grant (Angela Greene) is a widow whose fighter pilot husband died in the Korean War. She runs a lodge near the canyon while caring for her wheelchair-bound terminally ill son Ken (Scotty Morrow). A stranger (John Carradine) arrives and she thinks he’s a scientist. He’s the alien, of course, and begins to learn how play chess from the young boy.

Known as the Cosmic Man, the alien appears to the scientist and military. He tells them that as mankind is about to go into space, they must learn to stop being prejudiced or they will never be able to live with other races. He says that he will leave in the morning, so the military guys start shooting him. He walks away like it’s no big deal. The humans in this movie are the worst, trying to kill the Cosmic Man even when he heals Ken and helps him walk again.

At the end, the UAP flies away and Sorenson says, “He’ll be back.” I hope not. We treated him like a jerk. I also hope Sorenson realizes that Kathy is an attractive woman in her late thirties, in the full bloom of sexual power, and stops spending all night in the lab and more in the lodge. Both she and Ken need a daddy, after all.

Director Herbert S. Greene only made one other movie, Outlaw Queen, which has Andrea King from The Beast with Five Fingers as a Greek immigrant who starts her own casino in the Wild West. If you think to yourself, “Who could write a movie like that?” the answer is Edward D. Wood Jr.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Magic Serpent was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 28, 1970 at 11:30 p.m.

The Oumi Kingdom is in shambles after General Daijo Yuki (Bin Amatsu) and his ninja Orochimaru (Ryūtarō Ōtomo) kill Lord Ogata (Shinichiro Hayashi) and his wife. Soldiers loyal to Ogata have succeeded in helping his son Ikazuchi-Maru to escape but Orochimaru transforms into a serpent and tries to kill him. Luckily, a giant eagle flies in and saves Ikazuchi-Maru.

Trained by Dojin Hiki (Nobuo Kaneko), Ikazuchi-Maru grows to become a ninja who specializes in toad magic. One evening, Hiki is attacked by Orochimaru and it’s revealed that the old man once taught the evil ninja and was also the eagle that saved our hero, who arrives too late — along with Tsunade (Tomoko Ogawa) — to save him. Now out for revenge, he goes after the ninja while Tsunade follows, given a spider pin by the spider woman who saved her.

Ikazuchi-Maru renames himself Jiraiya and becomes friends with Saki (Yumi Suzumura) and her little brother Shirota (Takao Iwamura), saving them from Daijo Yuki’s men. But oh, the twists and turns, as it turns out that while she loves our hero, Tsunade is also the daughter of Orochimaru! And there’s still a battle between the ninjas in their toad and serpent forms to follow.

Man, I absolutely loved this movie. It combines the martial arts movie with kaiju and has so many strange things about it. People hopefully loved it too, but I bet so many people who watched the American-International TV versions just thought it was dumb. Not me!

AIP also redubbed the monsters, so the Orochi-Maru Dragon sounds like Godzilla and Gaira from War of the Gargantuas, the Ikazuchi-Maru/Jiraiya Toad roars like Rodan, the giant eagle is Mothra and Sunate’s giant spider now sounds like a metallic monster and also has the voice of Kiyla from Ultraman. They also removed the opening and closing songs and replaced them with basic instrumentals. The toad also was used on the Toei series Kamen no ninja Aka-Kage.

You could almost see a lot of Star Wars in this movie. An evil magic fighter orphans a young boy who is destined to have great power who is saved by an old man and raised in the ways of the very same magic. He becomes friends with the daughter of that enemy — Leia is, after all, Darth Vader’s daughter — and he finally becomes strong enough in magic that he can fight back and the evil magic fighter becomes briefly good before his heroic sacrifice. Sure, we can all get behind that Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey, but sometimes, things get a little ripped off.

Speaking of that Hero’s Journey, this is based on a Japanese folktale, The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya, and was directed by Tetsuya Yamanouchi (Akakage, The Ninja Hunt) and written by Masaru Igami (Prince of Space, the main writer of Kamen Rider, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot) and Mokuami Kawatake.

The title in Japan was Great Mystic Dragon Battle, which is super metal, and it has even better ones over the entire world, like Grand Duel in Magic, Ninja Apocalypse and Monsters of the Apocalypse. If you’ve ever seen the Taiwanese movie Young Flying Hero, that feels like a remake of this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Gamera was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 4, 1968 at 11:20 p.m. 

I’ll come clean. As a kid, I liked Gamera more than Godzilla. Sure, Daiei Film Studios was just following the success of Toho’s kaiju superstar, but I always felt a kinship to a monster who could just withdraw into his shell. Gamera was, after all, a friend to all children. And man, I wanted to be his best pal.

Originally released on November 27, 1965 in Japan, a re-edited version with new footage was released the following year in the U.S. as Gammera the Invincible. It was the only movie in the series to get a theatrical release in this country.

Over the Arctic, a nuke blows up and awakens a prehistoric giant turtle that just so happens to have big tusks. That’s Gamera, but he’s no friend to anyone at this point.  He can also breathe fire, which he does to blow up an American jet real good.

These scientists that he battles are pretty much morons. They’re smart enough to come up with freeze bombs, but they think that if they get him on his back, he’ll die of starvation. So Gamera just pulls all his arms and legs inside his shell and starts spinning around like a UFO.

This movie will also teach you that turtles are not even. They’re just turtles.

Back to those scientists. A whole bunch of Russian, Japanese and American ones invent this thing called Z Plan. You know what it is? They put Gamera in the nose cone of a missile and send him to Mars, all excited about how their scientific ways have triumphed over idealogy.

It’s a crock of turtle shit.

You know what’s really awesome? This movie was originally going to be called Dai Gunju Nezura (The Great Rat Swarm), but all of the real rats that were going to run over the miniature city got fleas.

This is the only Gamera movie where he doesn’t fight another monster and also the singular black and white film in the series. He’s also a good guy in every movie after this.

You can watch this at the Internet Archive and imagine a young Sam losing his mind screaming, jumping all over the TV room, so happy to see a turtle fly.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Killers from Space was first on Chiller Theater on Sunday, December 15, 1963 at 11:10 p.m. It aired six more times on June 5, 1965; November 27, 1965; February 11, 1967; April 12, 1969; May 2, 1970 and July 3, 1971.

W. Lee Wilder and Planet Teleplays were just cranking out science fiction movies in the 50s and we’re all the better for it today.

Dr. Douglas Martin (Peter Graves) is a scientist studying nuclear blasts at Soledad Flats. As he flies over the area, his plane crashes and he wakes up healed yet with a large scar on his chest. He starts acting so weird that the FBI gets called in. Once he’s given truth serum, he lets it be known that he’s being controlled by aliens from Astron Delta under the command of The Tala.

These aliens have some wild plans that involve mutant lizards and bugs that will wipe out the people of Earth. Using a slide rule, Martin figures out that if he can shut down Soledad Flats for ten seconds, he’ll overload the alien base and kill all of them. You know how good U.S. military men are at that and yes, he blows them up real good.

UFO skeptic Dr. Aaron Sakulich thinks that many alien abduction stories contain the same elements, such as medical testing, strange scars, memory being erased, aliens with giant eyes and the feeling of being kind controlled. He feels that the initial articles about UFOs and abductions were influenced by this movie and that they entered the collective unconsciousness. Fiction influencing reality or the subconscious.

As for those big eyes, they’re egg cartons.

In 2002, this movie was redubbed by director Doug Miles and writer Tex Hauser as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The plot of that movie is about alien invaders that have a machine that can turn people gay and Operation Manhole, a government project that will lure gay people to one location and drop a bomb on them. The tagline: “They came from outer space… and they’re fabulous!”

You can watch the original movie on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night Caller from Outer Space was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 20, 1973 at 1:00 a.m. It also aired on May 18, 1974; February 1, 1975 and October 11, 1975.

This is also known as Blood Beast from Outer Space but isn’t the thought that an alien was crank calling in the days before Caller ID frightening?

Dr. Morley (Maurice Denham) and Dr. Jack Costain (John Saxon) have found a small ball that crash landed on our planet from Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. One night in their lab, their secretary Ann Barlow (Patricia Haines) sees a creature that soon kills Morley. Now Constain must find what exactly is on our planet.

This alien has the wildest plan. When girls try out for Bikini Girl magazine, it takes them with the goal of heading back to its planet with new breeding stock.

Directed by John Gilling (The Plague of the Zombies), this has some wild music in it, like Alan Haven’s jazzy cover of “Image” and the American version of the movie has a lounge song called “The Night Caller” by Albert Hague that is sung by Mark Richardson.