Killers from Space

source: Killers from Space

Trailer—Killers from Space

Killers from Space

As soon as the first pair of hazy, faded eyes appear to Doug in a vision, it is apparent that the movie doesn't have much production value. This is furthered when Doug is brought to the aliens' underground lair and you see what they actually LOOK like. I gotta applaud Graves on his acting, because I would not have been able to act in the same situation AND withhold my laughter. Perhaps what made me laugh most about the movie was the scene where Doug is running around the 'zoo' that the aliens constructed in their lair. If you look hard enough at all the camera views of him running around between the different animals, it becomes clear that they only had a small section of 'cave' to film with, because he rounds the same corner about 10 times. Definitely good for anyone who enjoys the campyness of 50's horror filmography.

I recently acquired this film on a DVD pack called Science Fiction 50, which contains fifty really bad SF films of the 1950's and 60's. Someone must have acquired the rights at a Hollywood Garage Sale. The interesting thing about this movie is how the whole Alien Abduction Mythology was laid out in 1953, before the first reports of Grays. 1) The aliens blot out the memory of the kidnap victim, leaving him with "Missing time". 2) They perform surgical procedures on him. 3) They are terribly concerned with nuclear tests. 4) They show him their home planet, which of course, is dying. In short, all the things that alien abductees, starting with Betty and Barney Hill, have been reporting since the 1960's. This is all really kind of interesting, but it still isn't a very good film.

This film is soo jaw droppingly cheesy. The film begins with tons of atomic stock footage. Then the plot gets down to business. Peter Graves is a scientist kidnapped by jaw droppingly awful aliens with unbelievable eyes. They show him a bizzare montage of stock footage. Then everyone thinks he's insane when the aliens return him to civilization. I recommend this to any fans of bad movies, they will love it.

This is the definitive low-budget early-1950s sci-fi movie. Not bad enough to go down in the annals of the worst movies ever made, but it comes close. Part of the "problem" from that perspective is that Peter Graves is pretty good in the lead, and the special effects aren't as horrific as the Ed Wood movies. There are also some mainstays of B and C movies of the Fifties in supporting roles, such as my longtime favorite Frank Gerstle. I always wanted to grow up to be like Frank Gerstle but unfortunately never succeeded. Sure, we get to see some wild beasts that are obviously running on a film screen, but that is OK. It's all good fun.

This is not a grand film but it is very much fun. I can't resist the bug eyed aliens. How did the actors see anything in those crazy looking things? LOL. And a giant spider, lizard and other creatures you'll get to see. Doug was in an airplane when things happened and he awoke with the idea of getting information to someone - that someone is aliens! The people that know Doug knows that something is wrong with him. Doug ends up in a hospital with doctors putting him under hypnosis and giving him a drug that will block out imaginary things (sorta a truth serum) and while under he tells them the fascinating story of the alien abduction. When Doug awakens he decides he has to save planet Earth from those evil aliens. Again, not a great film but fun if you like the older Sci-Fi Horror B-films! 6/10

Were some of these low-budget 1950s sci-fi flicks intentionally competing to see who could come up with the most ridiculous looking aliens? When it comes to getting laughs, the bug-eyed beetle-browed killers from space are second only to Corman's conquering turnip. But it's a close second, and they get a good deal more speaking lines and screen time. Modern film makers actually trying to make their monsters amusing have never been able to create aliens as hilarious as this. Other than that, however, there isn't really anything to recommend in this rather mundane effort.

predatory aliens with the worst cases of ex opthalmis in medical history are lurking under the desert in the Southwest, and it's up to Peter Graves to stop them before we all laugh ourselves to death. The effects in this stinker are embarrassingly bad and very, VERY cheap. Lots of stock footage, glaringly obvious blow-ups of various insects, spiders, etc., model airplanes that look like model airplanes, a creaking plot. . .well, we could go on all day, but you probably get the picture by now. While we like Peter Graves, this is almost certainly one of those projects that he would like to forget. The one intriguing item in this otherwise rotten film are the alien physicians (at least we think they're physicians) who successfully perform open heart surgery on Peter by waving incense sticks over him. How did they DO that?