Mars Needs Women

1967 sci-fi nonsense

Rating: 4/20

Plot: See title.

I took notes while watching this movie, but I can't read any of them:

"a short otter to cheetah"
"Martian flashlights--gnarly"
"mok lather then scientific centuries"
"hop nature/pot hypnotic states"
"That's a long chance!" "Time is short--we have to take long chances."

Ok, so I can read that last one. I'm just not sure why I wrote it down. I must have liked it. This is a film from my main man Larry Buchanan, maker of this and this and this and that. The latter is a Manos Award winner, and one of those is called Attack of the the Eye Creatures according to the title screen. This one's rated a 4/20 which makes it the best movie of his that I've ever seen. Nondescript Martians [By the way--Isn't 1967 a little late to have "Martian" movies? I'm not an expert on the history of astronomy or anything, but this is well after we knew that Mars didn't have anything living on it, right?] body snatch some women for their snatches, and nondescript heroes have to stop them. The acting conists of reading lines although Yvonne Craig is in there. So is troubled Disney actor Tommy Kirk who called this "undoubtedly one of the stupidest motion pictures ever made," apparently before he was involved with Buchanan's It's Alive. The most inspired performance is from "Bubbles" Cash who plays a stripper and one of the Martians' abductees. Blue-tinted stock footage stretches this into a feature length, as do a whole lot of scenes where people just kind of stand around and wait. My favorite bit is when the Martians have a conversation about neckties, a "male vanity" with "no practice purpose" that Martians gave up a long time ago. This movie isn't as obviously inept as Buchanan's other movies, but with silly Martian costumes, special effects that barely pass as special effects, and bad actors reading bad writing, it's worth the time for fans of crappy movies. And the extended screen time that "Bubbles" Cash gets definitely helps.

Curse of the Swamp Monster

1966 Larry Buchanan movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: A crazy scientist conducts experiments on the indigenous people who live down the swamp (by the way, I think this takes place in Texas, but these natives are a pretty primitive people), attempting to make himself a pet Swamp Thing. Hey! That's kind of like the guy in Human Centipede actually! Some folks come looking for oil and interfere with his plans.

Forget the Human Centipede Halloween costume idea. I'll just go as this Larry Buchanan monster that he apparently uses in multiple films. This is the same creature that was in my Manos Award Winner It's Alive! from a couple years ago. Well, it's similar anyway. Thing is, I'm pretty sure I could put together the costume easily enough, too.

Larry Buchanan is fast becoming one of my favorite directors, and this one was no disappointment. The scientist, played by Jeff Alexander (crazy scientist in Buchanan's Zontar, too), is really great. I really didn't know what a head could look like his, and he reminded me of a cross between James Taylor and John Malkovich but more jovial than either. He's got himself a greenhouse with alligators (or crocodiles, whatever lives in the swamps of Texas) swimming in what appears to be milk. He also gets really scientific things to say, ramblings about "gill transplants," "acute congestion," how his "dear Mrs. Wesley" will be a "perfect subject for the new derivatives" and be an "instantaneous transformation." He also wears his sunglasses inside which might make him the coolest mad scientist ever. Speaking of inside, all the interior shots contain the shadow of a ceiling fan. I'm not sure if that's a Buchanan stylistic touch or an accident, but I liked it. Who puts a light over a ceiling fan? The sound effects are especially bad. There are times when the scientist and Richie are talking when it seems like Richie is a couple rooms over. There's also this incessant jungle drumming that maybe explains why the scientist is so batty to begin with. Richie's death scene is one of the best I've seen in a while, by the way. And Richie, you were just warned five minutes early to stay away from the quicksand, weren't you? Loved his weakly yelled "Help me" while he sank though. Richie's also the character who abducts one of the natives (one wearing jeans and tennis shoes during a really lengthy dance sequence) and gets the line of the movie, one delivered breathlessly: "I've been watching you dance. Be good, baby. There's nobody here but us chickens." Although, Alexander's delivery of "My beautiful indestructible fishman" is also nice. Indestructible, by the way? These things actually seem to die pretty easily. I also got a kick out of this bit of dialogue:

Doctor Bald Head: How can you locate oil without equipment? Seismographs?
Oil Guy: [Sigh] It isn't easy.

This movie's got some of the most awkward pacing you'll ever see with lots of extended shots of random snakes, guys staring at lizards, guys smiling at lizards. It's also got some bitchin' fight scenes. I could have sworn during an early fight that one of the characters had this expression on his face that asked "Hey, shouldn't we choreograph something like this?" About eight minutes later, there's a weird motel room fight scene that repeats sound effects and features a guy with his pants tucked into his boots. That's right, folks. If you're looking for an action-packed Larry Buchanan movie to enjoy this weekend, Curse of the Swamp Monster is worth checking out.

Zontar, the Thing from Venus

1966 remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Dr. Taylor befriends what he believes is a friendly alien from Venus and helps him figure out a way to come to earth to solve all of our problems and make us as technologically advanced and wonderful as his planet. But Zontar turns out to be a mean "thing" and actually has other plans, plans involving mind control and mayhem! Arrgh! Zontar!

So somebody at Azealea Pictures decided that it would be a good idea to remake a Roger Corman B-science fiction flick (It Conquered the World) with a worse director. See that poster there with the menacing "thing" that looks like it could be straight from the sketchbook of a possibly schizophrenic child? That's actually a fairly accurate visual. The "thing" doesn't look much better than that. I swear, by the way, that I've seen that exact screaming woman in the exact same pose on a poster for another movie. This is just as bad (just as good if your glass is half full) as Larry Buchanan's other movies (see Attack of the the Eye Creatures [sic] or It's Alive [the proud Manos Award winner for my blog two years ago]) which means it's fun enough to watch at least seven times and has this mystical quality that almost makes it worth basing a religion on. This is stuffed with some juicy dialogue, philosophically insightful stuff about good and evil. There's a lengthy quote at the end about how man needs to find the answers within as opposed to without and about how "war, misery, and strife have always been with us and we shall always strive to overcome them." I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was plagiarized from The Diary of Anne Frank. Oh, and the reason the thing is called Zontar? That explanation is priceless. There's also some really unfortunate attempts at comedy, mostly courtesy of a pair of soldiers. One of them says "I saw a funny-lookin' boid" about six times (because it's funny?) and once, my response (an "Ehhh" like I'd been punched hypogastrically) was the exact same as one of the characters. Zontar, as I mentioned, looks ridiculous, like a greasy owlish swamp thing with pterodactyl wings. When Larry Buchanan makes that thing fly though? That, ladies and gentlemen, is movie magic. Well, assuming seeing funny-lookin' boids is magical. My favorite scene: panic in the streets; a woman stops a policeman to ask a question about manually operating an iron lung. What the hell? The fact that she yells "Stop!" while standing face to face with the policeman adds another level of greatness.

I have to go. I have more Larry Buchanan movies to watch. God bless America!

The Eye Creatures

1965 Larry Buchanan sci-fi remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Titular eye creatures (see below) invade earth and interrupt necking teens. One of the teens, a thirty-year-old one named Stan, hits one of them with his car because he's driving without his headlights on. He and his girlfriend try desperately to get the police to believe their story, but he's arrested for hitting a drifter instead. They return to the scene of the accident to look for evidence of aliens. Or maybe just to make out again.

Larry Buchanan, director of the Manos Award winning It's Alive, sure knew how to make bad movies. The silliest thing about this Z-movie is the whole night/day continuity error thing. The story takes place during a single night; however, half the scenes are being filmed in obvious daylight. It almost seems like every other scene switches from day to night or back again, and if I didn't know better, I'd think they did it on purpose to be funny. Or maybe the silliest thing about this is the acting. Lots of Torgo contenders here. The guy who plays "Jim" is really great, especially that moment when he spots a wildly spinning UFB (unidentified flying hubcap) and spitting out, "This one was green!" with far too much excitement. The old man who, although he only gets one line (essentially "Get off my lawn, kids!"), gets to say it over a thousand times. The pair of Peeping Tom surveillance dudes were also impressive. I can't find any of these thespians names because the cast list doesn't show that the characters even have names. But I know that guy's name was Jim! The scene where Stan hits one of the aliens with his car should be used as a "how not to" in an editing course in film school. The girl screams, Stan looks over at her, there's a screech, the girl says, "Oh no!" or something, and then there's a thud, all with this comical choppiness. The alien monsters themselves, eye creatures apparently, were obviously dudes in hastily-assembled costumes. Here's what they look like:


Not quite as embarrassing as the monster in It's Alive, of course, but still pretty dopey. Watching one of their severed rubber arms prowl around was about as embarrassing though.

Here's my favorite tidbit about this movie though:

Apparently, this was shown on television and the producers wanted to jazz up the title a bit by adding "attack" in the title. I guess it makes it seem more menacing. Problem is, as you can see above, they didn't bother proofreading their work and ended up with Attack of the the Eye Creatures as the title. That is awesome. And so is Larry Buchanan who, as I examine more of his work, might have a body of work that is more inept than even the great Ed Wood.