It's been a little while now, maybe a few months, since I saw this obscure title thanks to Netflix. I've been searching out goofball old movies like this for some years, and even I had not heard of this one, that's how obscure it is.
I had seen a few films previously by the director, W. Lee Wilder, the much less talented brother of Billy Wilder. These included Phantom From Space and The Snow Creature, both of which I thought had a lovable, shaggy-mutt quality of boisterous genre thrills on a rock bottom budget. But still, those films, as ridiculous and low-rent as they were, made some kind of sense.
This film makes hardly any sense AT ALL.
Too many weirdnesses in the story and strange plot holes to even begin listing them. But the overall effect is like Ed Wood at his most hallucinatory.
The movie feels like a sweat-drenched fever dream glimpsed obliquely through an oppressive cloak of madness draped over and blocking out the everyday world you and I inhabit.
When a filmmaker, or any kind of artist, can achieve an effect like that on his audience, well, this is an artist that one cannot just dismiss wholesale. As ludicrous as this film is, it will make you sit up and take notice, even if it is only to groan "What am I LOOKING AT????"
If you are an Ed Wood fan, and you appreciate his type of skewed reverie, this is a must-view. Even for those casually interested based on this review and the others listed here, I would encourage you to check it out. May not be a life-changing experience, but it is a loopy, way-out way to spend 80 minutes of your life.
I had seen a few films previously by the director, W. Lee Wilder, the much less talented brother of Billy Wilder. These included Phantom From Space and The Snow Creature, both of which I thought had a lovable, shaggy-mutt quality of boisterous genre thrills on a rock bottom budget. But still, those films, as ridiculous and low-rent as they were, made some kind of sense.
This film makes hardly any sense AT ALL.
Too many weirdnesses in the story and strange plot holes to even begin listing them. But the overall effect is like Ed Wood at his most hallucinatory.
The movie feels like a sweat-drenched fever dream glimpsed obliquely through an oppressive cloak of madness draped over and blocking out the everyday world you and I inhabit.
When a filmmaker, or any kind of artist, can achieve an effect like that on his audience, well, this is an artist that one cannot just dismiss wholesale. As ludicrous as this film is, it will make you sit up and take notice, even if it is only to groan "What am I LOOKING AT????"
If you are an Ed Wood fan, and you appreciate his type of skewed reverie, this is a must-view. Even for those casually interested based on this review and the others listed here, I would encourage you to check it out. May not be a life-changing experience, but it is a loopy, way-out way to spend 80 minutes of your life.