It's got Christopher Lee, it's got huge banks of 1970s computers that make Teletype noises as letters appear on the screen, it's got radioactive isotopes that not only glow in the dark but emit pulsing thrumming noises, it's got volcanoes! evil aliens disguised as nuns! tidal waves! earthquakes! exploding cars! exploding coffee machines! and as a climax the entire planet blows up. How on earth does this film managed to be so incredibly, mind-numbingly DULL? The answer, my friend is because 90% of this movie is made up of establishing shots, most of them involving long tracks, pans, or zooms in combinations, or occasionally all three, that do nothing except give the crew something to do. There are endless shots of our protagonists driving, getting in and out of cars, driving again, walking around looking at stuff, getting in cars and driving... I just sat there watching endless parade of nothingness in stupefaction muttering "Say something, please somebody, just say something... DO something... anything!..."
The dialogue, when it does come, is terrible.
"Maybe their minutes are measured on a different scale than ours." was a typically meaningless line. The script culminates in the destruction of the world by stock footage, justified in this speech from Lee as the head alien:
"The planet Earth has emitted an over-abundance of diseases, they are contaminating the Universe. All the planets light years away from here will suffer unless it is destroyed!"
This is is Neanderthal SF script writing. This is the sort of motivation you find in the sort of 1950's Japanese monster suit movies aimed at 7 year olds. It is, and I collect such things, the most god-awful line from an English language SF movie since Buster Crabbe retired. It beggars belief that this movie was released in the same year as Star Wars and Close Encounters.
Lee, who always struck me as a smart, useful actor with a sure knowledge of his limits, delivers his lines as if he is going to kill his agent for getting him into this pile of drek. I don't blame him.
The dialogue, when it does come, is terrible.
"Maybe their minutes are measured on a different scale than ours." was a typically meaningless line. The script culminates in the destruction of the world by stock footage, justified in this speech from Lee as the head alien:
"The planet Earth has emitted an over-abundance of diseases, they are contaminating the Universe. All the planets light years away from here will suffer unless it is destroyed!"
This is is Neanderthal SF script writing. This is the sort of motivation you find in the sort of 1950's Japanese monster suit movies aimed at 7 year olds. It is, and I collect such things, the most god-awful line from an English language SF movie since Buster Crabbe retired. It beggars belief that this movie was released in the same year as Star Wars and Close Encounters.
Lee, who always struck me as a smart, useful actor with a sure knowledge of his limits, delivers his lines as if he is going to kill his agent for getting him into this pile of drek. I don't blame him.