Not sure if these aren't as amusing, or I'm just not in a funny mood. Anyway...
THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE, 1967 color
Groovy soundtrack starts us off. A group of 7 meteorites land in a V formation on Earth, apparently from the Moon. When scientists strike a meteor, something takes control of the scientific group. All except for one, Temple, who has a silver plate in his head from an accident. They quickly build a compound and keep everyone out while they scientists work. Temple rushes around trying to find out what is going on. The scientists next seem to create a plague that kills a whole lot of townsfolks and makes everyone stay away. Temple keeps trying to get into the compound but gets turned away time and again. Then he spots a launch tube rising out of the lake and missile shoots off, apparently toward the Moon. And nobody noticed this? Once he finally gets in, he finds quite the facility, reminds me of a Bond villain’s underground base. Okay, umm…going to skip ahead to the plot. Basically, pure energy aliens need physical bodies to repair their spaceship so they can go home, but instead of asking for help, they decide it’s best to take over and enslave humans. The plague appears to be a temporary thing, making humans appear dead until they can get them sent to the Moon, revive them, and have slave labor. But in the end everyone realizes that it’s better to be peaceful and that Humans will gladly help aliens rebuild their spaceship. Uh huh. Riiiight. Of course, it would be kinda hard to dissect a pure energy being to see what makes them tick.
Favorite lines:
Well, there really weren’t any. It’s not that the script was tight or anything, just that it was all so…ordinary or uneventfully British.
WARNING FROM SPACE, 1956, color
What the…? Okay, imagine an alien that looks like a man-sized fabric star (just a regular 5-point star) with a giant eye in the center. No, bigger than that. Not quite it, but it’s even funnier than that. They decide to contact humans, starting in Japan. Meanwhile, in Japan, there are flying saucers being spotted all over the sky. And people are screaming “Monster!” when seeing the star-shaped-aliens. Staliens? Shaliens? I think if I would have seen one of these I would be compelled to laugh and ask what the hell they were up to. Number One then decides to transmutate itself into tap-dancing showgirl Hikari to integrate with the humans. She goes around doing random things and then finally tells us what is going on: Aliens observed a planetoid, Planet R, heading to destroy Earth and they are trying to decide who to tell that would be able to take action to destroy Planet R. At first, nobody takes it seriously, leaving Japan hanging out by itself to stop this menace. Then the observatories all confirm it is coming. Mass hysteria! Everyone evacuates to shelters. The world decides to launch atom bombs at Planet R, but it doesn’t work! As R gets closer, the Earth bakes, environmental devastation, destruction. Finally the aliens help out and decide to destroy Planet R. About time too. Number One transmogrifies back into a Sralien. Hooray! The planet is a wasteland but we are still alive. Until starvation sets in.
Favorite lines:
Alien: “Number One seems best suited for penetration.” Not without dinner first!
Scientist: “Well, there’s nothing we can do, the saucers have disappeared, so who knows why they were here. Ahahahahaha.”
Scientists 2 & 3: “Ahahahahaha.”
Women: “Ahahahahaha.” No, it’s really not that funny at all.
Scientist 1: “She took one look at that complicated formula and understood it.”
Scientist 2: “You mean that girl (Hikari)?”
Scientist 1: “Yes. I’m convinced she is not human.” Because women cannot understand complicated formulas?