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Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962)
Topic Started: Sep 14 2012, 07:58 PM (576 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Murderously bad science-fiction "comedy" written by Jonathan Haze (Seymour in the original Little Shop of Horrors) and directed by Bruno VeSota (the fat guy in Attack of the Giant Leeches).

A small platoon of soldiers led by a pair of knuckleheads channeling Slip and Sach are sent to investigate the famous cave in Bronson Canyon; they discover a pair of giant, earth-invading women (well, 6'2" or so giants) and their slaves, vegetable men grown in pots. One of the men gets knocked down by one of the plant-guys and says, "That's the first time a salad ever tossed ME." Only thing in the film I chuckled at. Eventually, with the help of a band of renegade Indians and their secret spaceman box-top premium cosmic rings, our heroes win.

I saw this movie (well, part of it, anyway) in the 1970s and wondered if it could possibly be as bad as I thought. Yup, it's worse. Very low budget, tight with the money and the laughs and the special effects, too. Bob Ball and Frankie Ray are the soldiers, Haze and VeSota make cameos, the Army base is called "Fort Nicholson" as an insider AIP joke, and the whole mess was released in a double-feature with the not-nearly-as-bad-but-I'm-not-sayin'-it's-good-neither Brain that Wouldn't Die. Yikes, had I gone and seen THAT in 1962 I'd STILL be lookin' for a refund.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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CliffClaven
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"Brain That Wouldn't Die" made a pretty good MST3000 episode.

"Star Creatures" can be explained by my "fake movie" theory: It's designed to be shown at drive-ins where it's understood the audience is not going to be paying close attention. It can pass for a movie if you watch for five minutes; characters are always talking about stuff they never actually show onscreen; and here and there a few shots to imply something WAS shown and to provide clips for the trailer.

Fake movies were also gist for late-night TV, back in pre-informercial days. You'd stick around, thinking a movie was going to happen between commercials. At the end you either blamed the station for cutting out the good stuff (which never existed) or figured you dozed through it.

Prize examples:
-- "War Gods of the Deep": Some nice flooding effects at the end and frequent cutaways to swimming gremlins who have nothing to do with anything, but mainly a nice young couple trudging around some underground tunnels chasing or avoiding Vincent Price.
-- "Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow": No ghost, no dragstrip, and not even a hollow. Constant talk of cars and grudge races, but after one scene of somebody getting a ticket and another of kids showing off some stationary hot rods you don't see any vehicular action. Then they decorate an old house for a party, a guy in a monster suit walks in and has his mask removed and good night everybody.
-- Any scifi film where a massive alien invasion (a stock footage clip if you're lucky) boils down to a couple advance men with hypnotic powers, walking around a sitcom suburb making locals act funny.
-- Westerns where they never break any furniture in the saloon.
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Laughing Gravy
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Well, why couldn't they have just made fake shoes, then, or a fake bundt cake or something, and saved me all this trouble!?!?
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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CliffClaven
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Laughing Gravy
Sep 15 2012, 06:51 AM
Well, why couldn't they have just made fake shoes, then, or a fake bundt cake or something, and saved me all this trouble!?!?
To love B movies is to love all that is cheap in them, and a true fake movie elevates that cheapness to zen levels of purity. It's like a rock band that turns up the volume for half an hour of random guitar riffs, while the lead singer mouths vocals. Or pundits who fill air by arguing about an obvious fact both admit. Or a standup comic who keeps milking his/her trademark complaint.

And I'm not talking about the snoozefest "noirs" or horrors made by ambitious wannabes with just enough surface polish to be boring instead of surreal. Fake movies are cranked out by pros pulling a con. They could give you some vestige of a movie with a plot and reasonably clever stock footage, but they go out of their way to sell you a blank screen. It's up there with W.C. Fields exhibiting the World's Tallest Midget and World's Shortest Giant to a paying crowd.

The true fake movie is actually quite rare. "Star Creatures" is especially so, since a comedy without laughs stinks up the place a lot faster that an thriller without thrills (with the latter, you can psych yourself into thinking it's suspense). But if you were catching glimpses through a steamed window at the drive-in, or between Furniture USA ads at 2 a.m., you'd see a couple of burlesque babes, two guys acting like a comedy team, a few scifi props and maybe a shot of a Rocky Jones rocket launch. The next day you'd remember seeing a comedy with a bit of sex in it. Much like seeing a pile of road apples and remembering it as seeing a horse.

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Laughing Gravy
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Hmmmm.... You have given me much to ponder.

This thing actually reminded me of the Lippert "comedies" with Sid Melton. They're SORT of comedies and KIND of movies, the way that, oh, Peter Tork was sort of a rock & roll star. Kind of.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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mort bakaprevski
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Gawwwwd Cliff, that's one of the strangest theories I've ever encountered.

I LOVE IT!
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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Laughing Gravy
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I met Mr. Haze, and chatted with him (I remember being excited to ask him about one of my favorites, Rock All Night, a movie he didn't remember at all until I told him about it), and had I known about THIS thing, I sure would've asked him. It seems as though it was aiming to be another Bucket of Blood or Little Shop... And I can absolutely picture Dick Miller and Haze playing the two soldiers. Why didn't they? Maybe the two guys who ended up doing Slip & Sach put up the money? In any case, I see the "fake movie" stuff with, oh, Cash Flagg's pictures - Rat Fink a Boo Boo is no more a movie than my lampshade is - but there seems to be an attempt here to actually MAKE something. I'm not sure what.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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This discussion is fun, but I have to say that to me the worst fake movies are the ones that try to prop up a complete lack of plot, action, or acting with social significance, Of course the people who make those pictures don't know they are making trash; they think they're doing good. Such flicks were common in the Sixties. One example is a vanished film called Pressure Point.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Frank Hale
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Hmmm. The true fake movie…

How about Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet? One definitely needed to be on a higher plane of Zen awareness to appreciate that one! (Or completely stoned!)

And a little Zen purity would help me to follow this thread!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Very funny, Frank! And I agree. The worst movies are the ones that aspire too high.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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