Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster (1965)

... aka: Duel of the Space Monsters
... aka: Frankenstein Meets the Space Men
... aka: Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster
... aka: Marte invade a Puerto Rico (Mars Invades Puerto Rico)
... aka: Operation San Juan

Directed by:
Robert Gaffney

Picking up "modulated hydrogen frequency signals of 21 centimeters," a small group of aliens, led by the sultry and stone-faced Princess Marcuzan (Marilyn Hanold) and bald, Spock-eared Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell), perhaps the gayest camp alien since Bunny Breckinridge in Plan 9 from Outer Space, decide to investigate the planet emitting them. Sensing life on that unfamiliar planet called Earth, they decide to go in for a closer look using their "tele-scanner" and then send out a "spectographic probe," which determines that Earth's atmosphere will sustain them. Now with all the information they need, they plan on landing and enacting a series of "phases" because their own planet has been ruined by atomic war but... gasp! What's that? A missile being fired in their direction? No problem, they just use their lasers to shoot it down. What they don't realize is the missile is actually a rocket. Because all their recent attempts at space travel having been ending with a big kaboom, scientists at NASA must now resort to drastic measures in order to finally get a rocket into the air.

Army vet Colonel Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly) becomes the golden boy of the newly-planned space mission. Scheduled for a "49 million mile trip" all the way to Mars (well, it's actually 140 million, but who's counting), Frank will be the very first astronaut to make the journey all on his own. Mid press conference, Frank strangely become frozen with a goofy smile plastered on his face. He's taken back to a lab where Dr. Adam Steele ("Jim" / James Karen) and his assistant Dr. Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall) peel back his scalp to reveal a "brain" full of wires, knobs and other electric gadgets. Yes, Frank is a robot, an "astro-robot" to be more specific, and he's going to be NASA's way of learning all they can about extended space travel minus losing any more human lives. After being repaired, Frank's ready to go and the next rocket is launched. The aliens quickly shoot that rocket down too but this time Frank manages to eject from the craft and parachute safely back down to Earth. The aliens then decide they need to hurry up, get down there and silence him before he has a chance to tell NASA what's happened.

After the aliens track Frank to Puerto Rico, they send out some laser-gun-armed assassins, who immediately zap a hunter who takes a shot at them and then manage to shoot off half of Frank's face (transforming him into monstrous "Frankenstein" of the title). Frank pummels one of the aliens and takes off again, but the evil princess isn't too happy ("This is a clear case of failure!") with her men and decides to feed the "failure" to Mull, an atomic mutant kept in a cage who roars like a lion. Frank and his half melted face runs into a young couple on the road and strangles the guy to death after he attacks him, ambushes a guy chopping coconuts and then hacks him up with a machete and has other cute little misadventures but when reports come in to Cape Kennedy about what's been happening, Dr. Steele, Karen and General Bowers (David Kerman) all fly down to San Juan to try put a stop to it.

Meanwhile, the aliens decide to skip over Phase 1 (making a detailed survey of Earth) and hop right along to Phase 2, which involves capturing female "breeding stock" to help repopulate their planet. Why? Well, as the theme song keeps reminding us, "That's the way it's got to be." A bikini-clad blonde is first on their list and is dragged back to the spaceship and examined by the Princess, who makes her raise and lower her arms (?) before nodding her approval. They next invade a poolside dance party, where they shoot a guy wiggling his butt on the diving board and then round up all of the good-looking women and take off. Once back at the ship, the ladies are put through a lame-o "purification ceremony," which involves them being placed on a conveyor belt and covered with a sheet. Karen herself ends up being kidnapped and thrown in a cell right next to Mull. Eventually, Adam (who's managed to find Frank hiding in a cave and fixes him), the General and endless military stock footage come to the rescue.

"I'll give you something to mull over!"

Winning a coveted place in such bad movie books as "Son of Golden Turkey Awards" and being featured in such compilations as IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD (1982) and The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made (2004), where it ranked #7 overall, is enough to get one's hopes up pretty high, eh? After all, I think we've all been burned a time or two by supposed SBIG films that fail to really deliver. The good news with this one is that while it's certainly a clear case of failure, it's also quirky, bizarre, often very funny, extremely entertaining and strangely charming. The sets are cheap, the dialogue is silly, the amount of stock footage haphazardly edited in throughout is astonishing and there are several lengthy and utterly pointless montages thrown in here just because they could. One features our scientist heroes riding around Puerto Rico on a moped. Another is a montage of NASA footage set to a hilariously inappropriate rock song that has nothing at all to do with what's being shown. Why? You got it! Cause, "That's the way it's got to be..."

Though the final bout between "Frankenstein" and the Space Monster that the title promises lasts all of 60 seconds (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman had the same problem), I thoroughly enjoyed the makeups and creature designs here. The cast is also very entertaining. The big name here, particularly for horror fans, is James Karen. A late bloomer in Hollywood, Karen was in his early 40s when he made his feature film debut here and his career wouldn't really start taking off until a decade later when he became a busy character actor. After putting in a terrific performance in THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), Karen became a cult figure and appeared in many other genre films over the next few decades. Now in his 90s, Karen is still a busy actor. Hanold, a June 1959 Playboy Playmate who also appeared in the cult classic THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, seems to be having a lot of fun playing her villainess role and Cutell is downright hilarious as Hanold's minion, complete with frequent eye rolls and goofy facial expressions. Bruce Glover even shows up here in an early appearance as another bald alien.

Just two years prior to making this, director Gaffney had received an Oscar nomination for producing the documentary short Rooftops of New York (1961)! It played U.S. theaters on a double bill with the British voodoo revenge tale Curse of the Voodoo aka Voodoo Blood Death (1965). In the UK it played under the title Duel of the Space Monsters and was co-billed with The Curse of the Fly (1965). Both of these pairings seem mismatched but sometimes, ya know, that's the way it's got to be.

SBIG

Willies, The (1990)

Directed by:
Brian Peck

Director Peck, perhaps best known to horror fans for playing the punk 'Scuz' (the one killed by the skeleton lady zombie) in THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), directed, wrote and even partially financed this four-part horror - comedy anthology, which is geared toward a younger audience. Peck also brought along James Karen and Clu Gulager (two of the highlights of Return) for roles, so that's good. The framework involves three boys telling gross or scary stories at night while camping out. The oldest of the boys, Michael, is played by Sean Astin. Astin, the son of actress Patty "The Miracle Worker" Duke, was a popular teen actor at the time (he starred in THE GOONIES amongst other things) whose career was on the downslide when he made this. Astin would later get a career boost when he appeared in Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy a decade later. The youngest of the boys is played by Joshua Jon Miller, not the same Josh Miller who's the son of EXORCIST star Jason Miller as I've frequently seen misprinted online. They boys tell "What's Grosser Than Gross?" jokes (ha... talk about some nostalgia right there!), before our tales begin.

In "Tennessee Frickasee" a fat woman (Marilyn Pitzer) goes to a fast food joint, orders a whole bucket of chicken just for herself and discovers she's accidentally been served a deep fried rat. Dana Ashbrook (one of the stars of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, PART II [1988], which Peck also had a small role in) pops in for a second. Then in "Haunted Estate," a grumpy old man (veteran character actor Bill Erwin) has a heart attack on a zombie-themed funhouse ride (which has an announcer imitating Boris Karloff). Both of these last for just a few minutes.

Our next tale, "Bad Apples," is much longer (28 minutes) and better. In the small town of Greeley, nerdy little Danny Hollister (Ian Fried) is being tormented by three bullies at school. They push him around, make fun of him, rip up his drawing, string him up with a fire hose and shoot spit wads at him in class. Custodian Mr. Jenkins (Karen) becomes the boy's ally and tells him "I have a feeling they'll get what's coming to them sooner or later." And he is correct. A skinny monster with sharp claws and big teeth materializes in the vents above a toilet stall in the boy's bathroom and starts killing people. Well, only mean people, such as bitchy schoolteacher Miss Titmarsh (Kathleen Freeman) and the three aforementioned bullies. This is pretty predictable but it's fun and the monster design is pretty cool. Gulager cameos as the school principal (he has just one line of dialogue).

Next up is "Flyboy," which runs over 40 minutes and is actually pretty sick and demented for a kid-targeted movie such as this. Obnoxious, thieving, asthmatic "lard ass" loner Gordy Belcher (Michael Bower) isn't quite right in the head. He's mean, disrespectful, a shoplifter and spends most of his time down in the basement playing with bugs. Gordy's favorite pastime is capturing flies, pulling off their wings and then gluing the dead bugs to various small scale sets he designs. He also uses the dead flies to perform cruel pranks on other people, such as hiding them in a container of raisins in hopes that his parents will eat them and making cookies filled with dead flies and tricking a classmate into eating one. When we meet Gordy's parents it's no wonder he's so "messed up in the head." His mother (Suzanne Goddard) tries to be understanding and supportive but his awful father (Michael Pniewski) loves to point out what a freak his son is compared to other boys his age and calls him things like "sick" and a "fruitcake."

To help lure the flies, Gordy has been sneaking onto a farm owned by Horace Spivey (Ralph Drischell) and stealing some of the old farmer's patented, top secret "Miracle Manure." Said manure creates giant-sized vegetables, so you know when Spivey - who generally has to chase Gordy off with a shotgun - finally offers up a "special" batch to the antisocial delinquent, no good can come of it. There's a nightmare sequence with Gordy finding himself dead in a refrigerator and being covered with maggots while he sleeps, and a pretty nasty ending. The framing footage finally comes circle, connecting the stories.

Strangely, Kirk Cameron, Tracey Gold and Jeremy Miller, all three of the kids from the TV series "Growing Pains," have small roles in this. Miller plays one of the bullies in the first segment and Cameron and Gold both appear as their Pains characters (on a TV set) in the second. Cameron would later become a horrid, sanctimonious born-again evangelical Christian who threatened eternal damnation to all Bloody Pit of Horror readers and pretty much everyone else who doesn't stop by his website to purchase junk from him. Cameron's wife, Chelsea Noble, who came on the Pains series to play Cameron's love interest after he got cute Julie McCullough kicked off because she posed nude for Playboy Magazine, shows up on a TV set playing a news reporter.

It's amazing what you can get away with for a PG-13 rating just as long as you cast a lot of kids in your movie, play goofy music and make light of most of the content. This features zombies (one getting its arm ripped off), a woman having her throat cut by Jack the Ripper, a face pulled off, a young child luring his classmates to their death, a boy getting his arms ripped off and other such things that would have landed this an R-rating if not for "tone." Either way, this is an enjoyable enough little movie (much more fun than the current 3.8 rating on IMDb would indicate) and above average as far as these anthologies go.

Prism was the initial VHS distributor; Platinum and Echo Bridge offer it on DVD.

★★1/2