RELEASE DATE: 1965
RATED: Unrated
REVIEWED BY: The DarkSider
Dear lord, where to begin...ok. The film begins with the credits rolling over a Muppet-like creature's silhouette. This gives way to a bunch of stock footage which makes up the pulp of the entire film. In all honesty, it seems that the stuff shot for the actual movie was the stock footage after a while. We join an alien race who are journeying to earth on a mission. A fellow by the name of Nadir informs the Princess on board they found intelligent life on a planet called earth. I'm assuming they weren't reading the makers of this movie on their radar.
Nadir, who looked like the bastard child of Nosferatu and Martin Short complete with a horribly obvious bald cap, is aghast to find out the earthlings are shooting up a missile. The braniac fails to realize that this is a rocket blasting off in stock footage. By the way, some may recognize Nadir as Lou Cutell who has been in several odd roles throughout the years.
Meanwhile on the third rock from the sun, a General Bowers is driving with a few buddies to a NASA press conference. His buddies are Dr. Steele, his assistant Karen and a mysteriously quiet fellow named Col. Frank Saunders. Steele is played by the legendary James Karen in a huge "who would have known" acting role. Don't know who James Karen is, he played Frank in Return Of The Living Dead. A role I would say was deserving of an Oscar.
Anyhow, at the press conference Saunders entertains questions on his trip to Mars. Guess the space race in this movie was getting a little over ambitious seeing we hadn�t reached the moon yet by it�s filming. He goes on and then...he simply stops...in a freeze frame. I imagine several people who have viewed this film thought maybe there was something wrong with their copy at this point. Not to fear, its just a really bad choice by the director�s chair, one of many to come.
The jist is, Saunders is a cyborg created by Dr. Steele. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to fly to keep other astronaut safe. What a sweet guy. Moving on through acres of stock NASA footage, Saunders blasts off only to get shot down by Nadir. However, Saunders ejects but is badly damaged. According to Dr. Steele, who covers the film�s ass, this causes his memory to go blank and turn into a mindless monster. Saunders then kills a few folks off in his spare time.
Nadir finds out that Saunders if very much alive and wants to destroy him. Why, well it would interfere with their planet�s secret mission on earth. Ooooooh, tease us baldy with the obvious plot exposition, tease us indeed. The ship lands and they send out a few of their alien henchmen with guns. The guns I would say best resemble a megaphone with a large version of a Sorry! game piece attached to it.
Meanwhile, Steele finds evidence that Frankenstein is in the San Juan area. He and Karen pack their bags and fly down fun a little search in the sun. They get on a Fagio (Grand Theft Auto fans will know what I�m referring to) and start to tour the island. This gives way to one of the most idiotic and carelessly shot montage of scenes in movie history. Basically, the two drive through the streets of the island. The key is watch the people on the side of the street. They all kind of have a �HEY LOOK, THERES A CAMERA ON A TRUCK FILMING THOSE TWO PEOPLE ON A MOPED� look on their face. Absolutely f*cking priceless if you ask me.
I guess I should stop here and discuss the film�s score which can best be described as Seals and Croft only minus 98% of the intensity. This was after all kind of a rock n roll film. I�d probably prefer listening to 40 hours straight of show tunes over five minutes of this movie�s score, and yes...thats bad.
Meanwhile, Frankenstein bumps into of a few of the alien hitmen and beat the snot out of one of them. The battered up solider gets hauled back to the spaceship (which looked un-lovingly crafted) to get a non-heroes welcome. The princess commands that failure is not an option and for the solider to be taken to a person named Mull. From the "muhahaha" look she gives Nadir, I guess we can assume that is not a good thing. Mull is actually the rather large Muppet like character from the beginning, hence the Space Monster. I'll have much negative commentary on that later.
Moving on, oh so slowly, Nadir and the Princess make an announcement to the staff. Apparently they are the last of a dying planet, which was killed off by nuclear weapons. Oh Christ, guess they couldn't have come up with anything better could they? Perhaps say they lived next to Krypton or something? Anyhow, their mission is to get earth women to repopulate their existence. Why, well earth girls are easy...get it...earth girls...easy...movie from the 80s...oh f*cking forget it.
With the guarantee of poontang, the men rally on the spaceship and collect their first specimen. That would be some bimbo from the beach. Go ahead and take her I say, one less we have to deal with on earth. The princess gives her the old thumbs up and orders more just like her.
Meanwhile, Steele and Karen find Frankenstein hiding inside a cave. They successfully give him a check up and Steele tells Karen to contact Bowers. Karen however quickly becomes an alien captive. Not to worry though, Bowers gets word (in the most plot convenient way) about odd happenings in the San Juan area. Cue up the biggest assault of military stock footage since Plan 9 in the 50s.
The aliens continue to collect women. They get a hold of a whole bunch when they invade a rather lame pool party. They announce their presence by blasting a guy who looks like hes wearing a wool sweater with his shirt off.
When they get back to the spaceship, Nadir orders they go through a purification process with another "muhahaha" look to the princess. What exactly is this complicated procedure? The girls, who oddly didn't seem to struggle much (maybe it was the LSD or something), get put on a conveyer belt with a blanket on them. Is there more to it, don't know, apparently the film writers had no idea either.
Steele and Frankenstein stumble upon the spaceship way too easily and Steele orders Frankenstein to stay put while he gets help. Steele finds an overturned moped and figures Karen is in the ship. He gets word to Bowers who starts up an assault through whatever stock footage and firecrackers the film makers could find. Frankenstein meanwhile gets taken captive on the spaceship. He wakes up to set Karen and the rest of the girls free.
However before all this, the film's title finally makes about 2% sense. Indeed Frankenstein did meet the Space Monster in the last two minutes of the film. Perhaps the only highlight I could find in the non-epic battle is the cameraman capturing halogen bulbs on the spaceship. Such an advanced race of people indeed...(snicker)...
Well, way too long story short Frankenstein takes out the Space Monster, Nadir, and The Princess causing their destruction. Everyone else finds peace in their life knowing that their time is done with this movie.
This film is pure cheese personified. Perhaps if this film won an award it should be "most creative use of stock footage". Fans of Ed Wood esq. stuff will dig this just for the pure idiocy. Personally, I have no clue how any of the plot elements were supposed to jive together. Oh well, at least it has James Karen on a moped. Who else can claim to have that in a film?
Not a lot to cover here due to the body eliminating firepower of Nadirs men's weapons...
1.) Nadir, Princess Marcuzan & Company - A group out to search out beautiful women in the San Juan area but end up blown up. Could have been worse. They could have landed in East Germany and not have found any suitable women.
2.) Frankenstein - A popular good looking person who gets turned into a hideous human being who wanders the earth with a bad attitude. See also Farrah Faucet, Whitney Houston, etc.
