Moontrap (1989)

In the near future, a pair of astronauts discover evidence of alien intelligence aboard a derelict freighter adrift in space.

Hard on his luck Jason Grant bemoans his life as a ‘glorified truck driver,’ complaining to mission control that the food is lousy and there’s no atmosphere. His wise-cracking co-pilot Ray is a little more optimistic, having more years ahead of him to make similar mistakes that his superior regrets. Such is the adventurous life of astronauts in the late 1980’s when the dream of space exploration was reduced to a line item on a business plan.

The big pull for Moontrap is Star Trek actor Walter Koenig who delivers a serviceable (if awkward) performance as the world weary Colonel Grant. After retrieving a mysterious pod from the mystery ship, Grant insists that a full exploratory mission be launched but is discounted as a crank. The pod turns out to be a deadly weapon that cannibalizes nearby technology into a kill crazy robot. Even so, any further action is thought of as unlikely. Grant and his co-pilot go about their dead-end lives of hard drinking and broken homes until they are called back for a mission to the moon where only danger await… and a sexy single lady astronaut from the past.

Yes, Ray and Jason end up finding a hidden alien base on the moon where they find Mera, a lady astronaut from the distant past who sacrificed herself in order to warn future people of the dangers by the Kaalium who built the kill crazy tech. Being the senior officer, Jason calls dibs and luckily Mera has her own space suit so she can go on adventures with the two outer space bachelors.

Moontrap is one weird science fiction film. On top of producing the one and only totally bizarre pairing of Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame), it is pretty violent and includes at least one forced Star Trek joke. Campbell is his usual surly self with wry comments and an excellent comic timing, but starring with Koenig, his one-liners fall somewhat flat and the movie appears even cornier than it really is. As buddy movie material, they lack the chemistry of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, Alan Arkin and James Caan or Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams.

The strangest part for me has to be when Koenig befriends the ancient astronaut miraculously sealed inside the hidden moonbase and says he wishes she could meet his son. Whoah! Dating 101, my friend, don’t go turning a gal you just met into a replacement mom on the first date, even if you are stranded on the lunar surface with no hope of rescue and she barely understands English.

Moontrap is a cult classic and a fun flick that captures the latter days of the sci-fi 80’s boom. The special effects are quite good and while the acting can be a bit stiff at times, it moves along well (though the soundtrack is more dated than the lead actress’ mullet). Developed into a comic book, it fully exploited its cross-market appeal. We may mock Moontrap today, but it wisely targeted its audience and, like a laser beam shone throw dry ice, zapped them between the eyes.

Neutron the Atomic Superman vs. The Death Robots!

After MST3K, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy continued riffing on bad movies. From AMC’s the Film Crew (a brief series that ended due to a cease and desist order from Mystery Science co-creator Jim Mallon) to RiffTrax, a podcast series that uses various source material from blockbusters to cheesie unknowns. The guys haven’t lost their riffing skills, so if you have not seen any of their work, now’s the time to check them out!

The latest RiffTrax episode uses the second lucha film in the Atomic Superman series from 1960…

One of the first Mexican wrestling movies to be titled by an excitable 5 year old boy using a box of magnetic poetry, Neutron the Atomic Superman vs The Death Robots is not to be missed. The sport of Lucha Libre was once so popular in Mexico it spawned the genre of Luchador films, in which popular wrestlers played crime-fighting superheroes. Here’s hoping Hollywood finally rips off this great idea and replaces the cast of Avengers 2 with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Brutus the Barber Beefcake, and of course, for a little sexy eye candy, the Bushwhackers.

Neutron, whose exposure to atomic energy has given him the power of – well, being moderately good at wrestling – takes on the evil Dr. Caronte, who you know is a legit doctor because his Mexican wrestling mask is white. But the real star of the show is Caronte’s little person sidekick, Nick. With his unibrow and voice that sounds like the death rattle of an emphysemic frog demon, Nick fever is sure to sweep the nation like nothing before! (Note: Nick fever and its resultant sores are currently untreatable. RiffTrax cannot be held accountable for Nick fever related insomnia, infections, or gout.)

Join Mike, Bill, and Kevin for one of the few superhero vs. robot movies to feature no actual superheroes OR robots, Neutron the Atomic Superman vs the Death Robots!

Click here to order!
For an astoundingly in-depth review of the film, I recommend this site.

Cult film review: The Crawling Hand (1963)

Directed by Herbert L. Strock, the same man behind I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and How to Make a Monster, The Crawling Hand continues his fascination with teenage angst and horror. The film starts with the standard space shot gone wrong plot device. An astronaut has become infected by something unknown, transformed into a kill-crazy maniac. He tries to contact ground control (housed in a private office) but just comes off as a weirdo. Besides, his oxygen ran out ages ago and the astronaut should be dead.

The space craft crash lands on the beach just as a young couple are going for a dip. Two young innocent kids with their whole lives ahead of them, Paul and Marta, are attempting to overcome some language barriers (Marta is Swedish and asks Paul what it is to be ‘stacked’) and some ballistic material that Marta is wearing as a bikini.

As is often the case, something ruins the moment.

The disembodied arm of the kill-crazy astronaut finds the young man and passes on the infection.. horror ensues.

Teen heart throb Rod Lauren plays the young med student Paul Lawrence whose sole aim is to convince his hot Swedish girlfriend to stay in America. He has a quiet life in a boarding house managed by an alcoholic spinster. Everything seems fine until he becomes obsessed with the evil severed astronaut arm that urges him to kill.

The most amazingly absurd moment arrives when Paul hideously murders the manager of the local diner, lights from the jukebox dancing across his face as The Rivington’s perform The Bird’s The Word. Tarantino wishes he was that cool.

Earlier in the film, the victim happily chortled the signature line from this movie, ‘Eat, drink and be merry… for tomorrow we die.’ I love that guy.

Peter Breck and Alan Hale

Head of the low-budget space program Steve Curan, played by Peter Breck of the Big Valley and MST3K classics The Killer Shrews and The Beatnicks and his cohort Dr. Weitzberg try to investigate the crash site without giving up too much to the law. As the local sheriff is played by Gilligan’s Island star Alan Hale, that doesn’t go very well. But they always seem just two steps behind the murderous teen and the bodies start to pile up.

The more alien radiation that Paul absorbs, the more aggressive and crazed he becomes. Part of him realizes this and keeps Marta away from harm, but the other part wants her badly (and not in a good way). I was reminded of the early Hulk comics where Banner’s id was manifested in the Hulk’s behavior. Attracted to Betty Ross, the General’s daughter, Banner could never approach her. But the monster’s first stop was her home… brrr.

The Crawling Hand is a great retro horror film with the budget of a home movie and a killer sound track. I enjoy the blend of the outsider teen and the monster that combines in a tragic dramatic tale with plenty of intensity.

Of course I am most familiar with this movie because it was one of the first MST3K films shown on the Comedy Channel wayyyyy back in the day (1991). It’s very slow moving and Joel and the Bots were still finding their way from local cable access to full cable quality, but it’s a good one.

The Crawling Hand is available on DVD by Rhino, with or without the MST3K treatment.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Crawling Hand

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

Like many filmmakers, director Ray Dennis Steckler has some weird issues and again like many directors, he made a movie about them. Unlike said other directors, Steckler’s flick has become infamous and is regarded by many as the worst movie ever made. Given that this goes against many other god awful movies, that’s quite a feat. However, Steckler’s film is also a bizarre experience that incorporates dream-like imagery along with the everyday that future directors (such as David Lynch and Ken Russell) would later more fully develop. But there is that badge of ‘worst movie ever’ to consider before anyone can redeem this work’s reputation and declare it a misunderstood masterpiece.

Oh, and there is also the added problem of the title: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (the first monster musical).

Following the adventures of two society drop outs (Jerry and Harold) who seem to have less interest in contributing to society than bettering their own hygiene, the plot is actually very simple. As a more modern film, the two central characters would seem positively sinister. They live in a scantily attired shack and seem to drift from scene to scene in a half-awake state with no real interest aside from the nearby carnival and its nudie girl show.

Maybe the whole ‘zombie’ idea is more of a statement on the aimless youth culture of the time? In one scene Jerry even explains that he has no interest in getting a job for fear that it will lead inevitably to depression. Could Steckler be trying to make some statement on the consumer/worker society that he found himself alienated by? He did, after all, direct and act the lead part in the movie.

There is also the depiction of women in the movie as strange almost supernatural creatures (and always sexually unobtainable beings often glimpsed from afar). You only have to look at one of the many musical numbers to see what I mean. Jerry’s killing seems almost entirely focused on destroying women, possibly as a kind of xenophobic attack on what he cannot understand. Is this also some kind of statement from Steckler?

Could this movie not be a horribly made monstrosity and actually a confused statement from a gifted director?

But I’m getting carried away.

Lucky pretty girl Angela is being courted by Jerry and seems to find his persona charming while her mother is more concerned. Nevertheless, a large portion of the film is taken up with the trio of youth cavorting at the carnival… until they encounter Carmelita and her troubled cabaret act.

A hopeless drunk, Carmelita is on the outs with her boss after nearly ruining what was already a suspect dance routine in a dingy nightclub. Bewitched by Carmelita’s beauty, Jerry is tricked into the lair of the evil fortune teller Estrella who (with the assistance of her deformed assistant Ortega), hypnotizes Jerry into becoming a kill-crazy zombie. Jerry embarks on a number of killings broken up by strange musical numbers that he has witnessed at the carnival. To be honest, the musical numbers are weird enough on their own without being turned into nightmarish visions complete with a face-painted Jerry as an acrobatic knife-wielding killer in a hoodie.

For whatever reason, Estrella has been keeping an army of zombies in a storage room (apparently dressed in pajamas) who eventually escape and break up an incredibly offensive musical jungle number before killing people who actually paid money to see that kind of thing. The entire affair ends badly with Jerry fleeing in despair to die on the beach as the waves crash over his corpse. It sounds more romantic that it actually is.

A totally insane experience with equal sparks of brilliance and stupidity, this is a movie that really has to be seen to be believed. I first learned of its existence many many moons ago in a compendium film that explored the B-Movie horror genre and had trouble believing that it was real then. Only later did I see someone actually pointing out that the movie shares visions with more celebrated absurd art flicks. Is it genuine? I’m really not prepared to say. Is The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (the first monster musical) making some bold statement about the modern world and its shambling gate toward oblivion as the true horror? Or is this just a cheap poorly made oddity from the 60’s?

All I can say in confidence is that it is a zombie musical… and somehow that’s enough.