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Cortechba Overrated

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

davidcarniglia Kind of a mixed bag. I'd trade most of the stuff before Peter Graves' flashback for more googly-eyed alien scenes. Nothing wrong with psuedo-futuristic doodads manned by laser-equipped aliens in caves with giant bugs creeping around. Thankfully, the aliens-from-a-dying-world-colonizing-Earth premise saves Killers From Space from ending up D.O.A. There's almost no character development. There's way too much scurrying here and there. Graves' dialogue with the alien leader is almost a relief; this scene should've occurred much sooner. One thread that does work well is the patronizing, even menacing glares that Graves gets from everyone in the hospital (except the doctor). It's as though they not only don't believe his experiences with the aliens, they're hostile. That scene mimics the way the aliens treat him, particularly when they're 'operating' on him. Both the 'good' and the 'bad' guys mess with his head. Maybe the message here involves our fear overcoming our decency when we're afraid--ironically becoming more like our enemies.Probably the scariest thing in Killers From Space isn't sci-fi at all: the footage from the nuclear bomb test. Not so much the blast itself, but the soldiers who must've been exposed to some radiation, even in their trenches, not to mention the naive civilian onlookers. The seriousness of the Cold War theme deserved a more consistent portrayal of the era's fears and dangers. I'm not expecting superb special effects in a low-budget movie, but the acting and script never made it out of the cave.Not one of the better 50s sci-fi movies, but not terrible either.

soulexpress Before he landed his lucrative gig on TV's "Mission: Impossible," Peter Graves spent years acting in low-budget, black-and-white sci-fi dreck. KILLERS FROM SPACE is a good example: cheesy script, an all-white cast, bargain-basement acting, static camera work, gobs of stock footage, riotous-looking aliens, and Atomic Age paranoia that now seems quaint.The plot: Dr. Douglas P. Martin (Graves) is in Soledad Flats, Nevada, monitoring A-bomb tests by air. When a test goes wrong, his survey plane crashes in the desert. The plane is wrecked and the pilot incinerated, but Martin is nowhere to be found. He turns up at the Army base, intact but for two things: a fresh surgical scar on his chest and a lack of memory regarding what happened to him. It turns out, there are space aliens occupying a cavern beneath the Earth's upper crust. The sun on their planet is dying, which necessitates relocating all one billion of their race to a new planet: ours. To ensure minimal interference from us humans, the aliens have bred an army of gigantic reptiles and insects they will unleash on the Earth's surface. After they've explained all this to Martin, the aliens erase his memory and cut him loose (instead of doing the smart thing and killing him).Item: Dr. Martin's survey plane is called "Tar Baby 2." Did that racist phrase mean something different in the '50s?Item: the wall map in Dr. Martin's office has the Santa Fe Railroad logo in its bottom left corner. Is it the same map that Ed Wood used in "Plan 9 From Outer Space?"Item: Dr. Martin's memory returns only after he is involved in a car accident. The film never explains why. Item: the aliens have big, bulging eyes and Groucho Marx-like eyebrows. And their suits reminded me of The Phantom.Item: Dr. Martin was killed in the plane crash and is only alive now because the aliens operated on his heart (hence the scar). It's never explained how his body stayed intact in a crash that reduced his pilot to ashes.Item: when the alien scientist hands Dr. Martin a set of calculations (on what looks like a sheet of tinfoil), they are written in Earth numbers.To his credit, Peter Graves remained stoic throughout this turgid 71-minute exercise. Still, it's amazing he ever had a respectable acting career when he starred in so much crap.

dougdoepke What can you say about a sci-fi where the biggest effects are eyeballs made of pingpong balls. Even my 6-year old neighbor laughed. Too bad generally good acting is wasted on a muddle resembling the excellent This Island Earth (1955) on a bad day. A virile young Peter Graves gives it his all despite the many provocations. Take that escape in a tunnel where he's menaced by every piece of stock footage on the big critter process screen. And what would these 50's cheapos do without a Bronson Canyon that I've almost got memorized. Well, casting does manage to get Barbara Bestar, a Liz Taylor lookalike, as eye-candy for us guys. But that's really small potatoes since she doesn't get much screen time. At least, not much time compared with the atomic blast footage going off every few minutes. I'm glad the great Frank Gerstle at least picked up a payday and gets a bigger part than usual. Check out his broad shoulders and muscular torso that look like a man at least twice his height. (It's Gerstle who presents Edmond O'Brien with the vial of luminous poison that's killing him in the classic DOA {1950}). That he and the rest of the cast bear up so ably is testimonial to some kind of Hollywood professionalism. Then too, President Eisenhower should get a cast credit since he looks down from the wall through half the run-time. Anyway, in the Ed Wood So-Bad-It's-Good Sweepstakes, this nag never gets out of the starting gate.

mark.waltz Bug-eyed aliens who can read minds and know every language in the universe threaten to destroy earthlings through making us bug food and utilize none other than Peter Graves to achieve their goal. Determined to stop this, he takes on this mission impossible and the military who justifiably don't believe him. It all surrounds nuclear power of course and is explained by an alien who resembles Criswell from "Plan 9 From Outer Space". With silly special effects (Graves explores a cave filled with giant spiders, lizards and cock roaches) and way too serious acting and dialog, this makes me believe that the fight against atomic power was fighting a loosing battle with film makers like this on their side.