#it was just supposed to be a silly sci-fi show from the 60's

[gay-mooshrooms]

"Companion, do you love the man?" "I...do not understand." "Is he important to you, more than anything? Is he as though he were a part of you?" "He is part of me. The man must continue."..."You regard the man only as a toy. You amuse yourself with him." "You are wrong. The man is the centre of all things. I care for him." "But you can't really love him. You haven't the slightest knowledge of love, the total union of two people. You are the Companion. He is the man. You are two different things. You can't join. You can't love. You may keep him here forever, but you will always be separate, apart from him."

----

Welp, im gonna go curl into a ball and sob

[mst3kproject]

The Ship of Monsters

Check me out, I’m being topical!  I had another review almost finished for today, but when I saw the news I knew I had to set that aside and find a movie about life on Venus.  This one is a ridiculous Mexican film starring Lorena Velazquez from Samson vs the Vampire Women (looking only slightly less like Cher) and one of those amazing cardboard robots you only get in the very worst of late 50’s and early 60’s sci-fi.

An atomic war on the planet Venus has killed off all the males, so an expedition is sent out in search of replacements, consisting of a native Venusian named Gamma, her Uranian navigator Beta, and their robot Tor.  After promising the Empress that they will bring back only the most manly of men, they wander the solar system a while collecting creatures with penises before an engine problem forces them to land on Earth.  The first human they meet there is Laureano Gomez, a singing cowboy with a well-earned reputation for telling tall tales.  One might assume one could predict the rest of the movie from there… but then Beta turns on Gamma and reveals that her true mission all along was to conquer a planet to feed the vampires of Uranus!

I gotta say… I did not see that coming.

The Ship of Monsters is supposed to be a comedy.  It’s seldom funny when it’s trying to be, although it mercifully avoids being the kind of desperately unfunny a lot of bad comedies are… possibly this is because it’s in Spanish, and by the time I’ve realized something is stupid there’s another subtitle to distract me. The jokes, such as they are, are pretty standard.  Tor the robot was created by an alien race, who were aware of Earth but never bothered exploring it because they thought the inhabitants weren’t very intelligent.  Laureano is in the habit of telling ridiculous stories to his drinking buddies, so of course when he claims the Earth is being invaded by space monsters they don’t believe him.  That sort of thing.  The movie is much funnier when it’s just showing us absurd situations, but to nobody’s surprise, The Ship of Monsters is at its funniest when it’s trying to be serious.

This hilarity comes in many forms, covering just about all the possible bases for a dirt-cheap 1960 sci-fi film.  We have spaceship sets made of cardboard, covered with buttons that don’t actually press and levers conveniently placed so people can bump into them during fight scenes.  We have Tor, with his tin can body that’s always a little dinged up but never in the same places, giving us clues as to what order the scenes might have been shot in.  He also has wiggly spring antennae and makes a little whirring noise every time he moves. We have space babes in silver bathing suits and glittery high heels.  Vampire-Beta, sporting plastic fangs that look like they came from the bottom of a cereal box, could be the female counterpart to the guy from Dracula vs Frankenstein, and the puppet used to represent her in flight is nearly as bad as the one from The Devil Bat.

The ‘monsters’ of the title are a bulging-brained Martian prince, a scaly cyclops, a spidery creature with venomous fangs, and the mobile skeleton of what appears to be a *damn worwelf (he tells us that his race has Evolved Beyond Flesh... apparently not Beyond Bones, though).  The costumes are all terrible, particularly the warwulf puppet, whose backbone extends into his mouth and who has to be carried around with his feet dangling in any shot that’s not a close-up.  It’s nice, though, that a little imagination went into them, and somebody gave a bit of thought to the idea that a monstrous appearance is relative.  The Martian tells Beta that he admires her ambition and might even marry her if she weren’t so ugly by his planet’s standards.

At the end, naturally, this alien invasion is defeated by Laureano, his twelve-year-old brother, and a cardboard robot, while Gamma just stands around and screams.  With a movie like this I expect nothing less.  The denouement contains my favourite intentional joke in the whole thing, in which Gamma stays on Earth with her True Love, and Tor the robot takes his, the Jukebox, back to Venus with him!  Tom Servo would have given a speech to congratulate the happy couple, and I can just see him breaking down into happy tears before he got five lines in.

(The wirwalf skeleton is not present at the climactic fight, by the way… no explanation is offered, and I strongly suspect that they broke the puppet trying.  I rather enjoy this omission, because it lets me imagine him getting lost or maybe buried by an enterprising dog, and finally finding his way back to the landing site only to learn that they’ve left without him.)

I called Laureano a cowboy but he only has one cow.  Her name is Lolobrijida and she is the very first time I have ever seen a movie spur a hero into action by killing his cow.  She gets a proper Teenagers from Outer Space death, with her skeleton left behind propped up by metal struts like a dinosaur in a museum!

I also called him a singing cowboy, which he is – there are several songs, including one in which he tries to explain to Gamma and Beta what ‘love’ means.  The songs have pleasant but forgettable Mexican pop melodies, and none of the lyrics make a whole lot of sense.  Being translated over-literally from Spanish probably didn’t do them any favours (my own Spanish tops out at yo no tengo dinero), but I still can’t imagine that the What Is Love song clarified anything.

Laureano himself comes across as kind of a fool, but he’s not actually a full-on idiot, which is quite important.  If he were the kind of one-dimensional ‘comedic nitwit’ embodied in characters like Dropo, or the janitor from Reptilicus, he’d be insufferable.  Laureano is no genius, but he’s got personality traits besides being stupid – he cares deeply for his little brother Chuy and for his animals, and he doesn’t treat Gamma and Beta’s appearance as two women for the price of one.  Very quickly he decides that Gamma is the one he loves, and he sticks to that, doing his best to let Beta down gently even when she offers to make him a king.  He’s also smart enough to trick Beta into dancing with him so he can steal the device she uses to control the rocket and Tor, and to listen to Gamma when she tells him about the various monsters’ weaknesses.

Gamma and Beta, on the other hand, don’t have a lot to them besides the basic fact that Gamma is the Nice One and Beta is Evil. Gamma starts out in the story with a strong sense of duty, and it’s a bit disappointing to see her abandon that because of Tru Luv.  I would have liked the ending better if she’d taken Laureano home with her so that the two of them could be the Adam and Eve of the new Venusian race.  Meanwhile, Beta shows no sign of any loyalty except to herself and her own ambition.  Her original mission, to secure Earth as a blood supply for the Uranians, falls by the wayside as she decides she’s going to conquer and rule the planet herself.

So The Ship of Monsters isn’t exactly a feminist manifesto, but neither is it complete misogynistic garbage like Project Moon Base.  The whole premise, after all, rests on a planet of women being able to develop space travel all on their own!  This is a fairly surprising plot point, because in many ‘planet of women’ movies like Fire Maidens of Outer Space or Cat Women of the Moon, the ladies need the virile Earth Men to come to them.

There’s also a little bit of actual science peeking out of the cracks.  The moment for launch of the rocket from Venus is determined by when ‘the elliptical orbits coincide’.  Launch timing is, indeed, a delicate art depending very much on what’s orbiting where. There’s also the moment when, trying to land on Earth, Gamma and Beta worry that the friction, combined with our oxygen-rich atmosphere, will set their ship on fire.  This stuff is pretty impressive coming from a time when the moon landing was still nearly a decade away.  There are even a couple of scenes in zero gravity that honestly aren’t totally terrible.  I mean, I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen much, much worse.

There’s also one weirdly prescient moment when Laureano, telling one of his silly stories in the pub, describes being surrounded by dinosaurs – only to get a laugh a moment later when he mentions that they had beautiful plumage.  I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a joke in that Laureano is exaggerating an actual encounter with an angry bird into something more fearsome (I think we’re to assume that the whole story is totally made up), or whether it’s just supposed to be funny that Laureano thinks dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales.  Either way, it’s the equivalent of the moon Fornax in Menace from Outer Space being so reminiscent of Io.  There’s no way the writers could have known that, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The Ship of Monsters is very cheap and very dumb, but it’s good fun for those of us who like crummy old alien invasion movies, and I recommend it to anybody in that demographic.  As for actual life on Venus… I feel like a lot of the people getting excited are too young to remember when Bill Clinton told the world that we had totally found life on Mars.  Humans have been discovering life on other planets for about two hundred years and every single one of those ‘discoveries’ has turned out to be either a mistake or an outright lie.  We have plenty enough to panic about this year without a Venusian invasion.

[secondscratch17]

weird asks that say a lot

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans? All of them. I drink tea in coffee mugs and teacups. I love drinking wine. I like that I can recycle soda cans

2. chocolate bars or lollipops? chocolate

3. bubblegum or cotton candy? bubblegum if the flavor lasts long

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you? the stereotypical quiet, obedient, smart, goody-two-shoes kid

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups? somehow I like the aesthetic from soda bottles

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear? hONESTLY I can dO ALL OF THE ABOVE in the span of days. Went to work one day wearing beach-y clothes for spirit day. Returned to pick up a friend to go see a metal concert in VERY metal concert attire. I own short, sweet summery floral dresses and gothic dresses, too

7. earbuds or headphones? Earbuds, they allow me to be more mobile

8. movies or tv shows? movies

9. favorite smell in the summer? Fresh cut grass. The smell of the ocean. Churros at the fair

10. game you were best at in p.e.? Soccer, obvs. Somehow would always last until the end of the game in dodgeball tho because I was small and no one could hit me

11. what you have for breakfast on an average day? Cereal

12. name of your favorite playlist? Don’t have one. 

13. lanyard or key ring?  Key ring

14. favorite non-chocolate candy? Smarties!

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment? I remember re-reading Holes over and over just to make my book reports easier since I knew the boo so well. The Kite Runner was phenomenal and unforgettable

16. most comfortable position to sit in? idk?? I really can’t sit still in one position for too long

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes? Currently my hiking/outdoorsy shoes. Also my black Nikes that I play pickup in and wear to the gym

18. ideal weather? Sunny and 65. Maybe one or two clouds. The tiniest of faint breezes to cool me down. 

19. sleeping position? Any I can get into and fall asleep in quickly

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)? Laptop. I can edit easier.

21. obsession from childhood? Probably any cheesy show on Animal Planet. The Most Extreme, Meerkat Manor, Big Cat Diary, etc

22. role model? I have a lot of different ones. Role models for athletics, role models for career and ambition choices, artistic role models...can’t pick just one

23. strange habits? Spelling words with the tips of my fingers

24. favorite crystal? Aquamarine

25. first song you remember hearing? how in the FUCK am I supposed to remember that. I do remember my parents playing The Beatles for me when I was a toddler

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather? Soccer! (futbol) 

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather? Sledding, making hot chocolate, or playing indoor soccer haha

28. five songs to describe you? Who I am Hates Who I’ve Been by Relient K, Proud by the Icarus Account, Land of the Dead by Voltaire, Always Leaving by Mayday Parade, Wavin’ Flag by K’naan

29. best way to bond with you? Listening to my favorite music with me or watching the US Women’s national soccer team with me

30. places that you find sacred? Belfast, Maine. Gold Camp Road. Newport Beach

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names? Tight jeans with holes in them, fishnets, and a crop top

32. top five favorite vines? Vines still exist?

33. most used phrase in your phone? “tbh”

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head? O O O O REILLYYYYYY’S autoparts

35. average time you fall asleep? around 9

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing? I don’t remember

37. suitcase or duffel bag? suitcase

38. lemonade or tea? Is it warm outside? Lemonade. Is it cold outside? tea

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie? PIE!

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school? Zombie hunting or my professor cutting lab a half an hour short to go look at some Cedar waxwings

41. last person you texted? I think it was Robert

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets? Pants pockets

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket? Jean jacket

44. favorite scent for soap? Anything fruity

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero? Fantasy. It depends on how good the sci-fi movie is

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in? as little as possible lmao

47. favorite type of cheese? Parmesan

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be? A raspberry

49. what saying or quote do you live by? A great amount of good is always evened out by a great amount of bad

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have? Honestly Daniel knew how to make me laugh better than anyone. There are a couple of memories with him that I don’t remember entirely but I know that I ended up cry-laughing so hard that my head hurt. There was a time during my orientation camping trip when a bunch of us were playing ultimate Frisbee, and Jesse went to catch the frisbee in the most perfectly lateral horizontal position and the expression of focus just frozen on his face had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t see

51. current stresses? Sam. Jobs that I can apply for starting in May of 2020. Sam. STUDENT LOANS. Bills. Car payments. Wondering how fucked up my car has gotten since I’ve lived here on this ranch. Sam. 

52. favorite font? Anything that looks fancy and sarcastic

53. what is the current state of your hands? Need to be washed. 

54. what did you learn from your first job? The world is cruel and bad things happen without warning

55. favorite fairy tale? Uh....the Pied Piper?

56. favorite tradition? when my family visits for Christmas, eating lots of traditional Chinese food with them

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome? Heartbreak. Staggering rejection from the field I majored in. Probably a lot of body image struggles in there as well

58. four talents you’re proud of having? Writing, futbol, adaptability, flexibility. I think the last two are just traits but I don’t have a lot of talents I can invest in

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be? Let’s make like a baby and head out

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be? No idea

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.? Though we are far apart, our spirits share the same earth and the same sky

62. seven characters you relate to? Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit, Data from The Goonies, Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, Eliza Thornberry from The Wild Thornberries, Raven from Teen Titans, Isaac from Teen Wolf

63. five songs that would play in your club? ANYTHING by Within Temptation. I wouldn’t be a good club owner. The catchy and pump-up songs from Hamilton.

64. favorite website from your childhood? Wasn’t allowed much computer time. I was allowed to visit educational sites and occasionally the Disney site

65. any permanent scars? some self-harm scars. Probably the one on my right leg that I got from CO parks and wildlife. I stepped on a barbed wire fence that had been plastered to the ground, but the metal sprang up when I stepped on it and ripped through my skin

66. favorite flower(s)? Plumerias

67. good luck charms? I’m not sure if I have any. 

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried? earthworm flavor from Bertie Bott’s every flavor beans

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned? uh...Something about not being able to spray silly string on Halloween in Hollywood

70. left or right handed? Right handed

71. least favorite pattern? wtf

72. worst subject? anything math related, I really struggled in GIS.

73. favorite weird flavor combo? I...have no idea

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen? 2. I’m a baby

75. when did you lose your first tooth? I was 6

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)? chips and fries

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill? a succulent

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store? sushi from a grocery store, the quality can surprise you

79. which looks better, your school id photo or your driver’s license photo? Both are terrible

80. earth tones or jewel tones? Jewel tones

81. fireflies or lightning bugs? I hate bugs

82. pc or console? PC

83. writing or drawing? Writing, I’m terrible at drawing

84. podcasts or talk radio? Not into either

84. barbie or polly pocket? I had both

85. fairy tales or mythology? God!!!! Like hearing about both but mythology I guess

86. cookies or cupcakes? Cookies

87. your greatest fear? Being forgotten. I also have a terrible, horrible fear of drowning

88. your greatest wish? In the times I’ve struggled I often find myself wishing for peace. Not only for myself, but for others to easily feel peace with everyone else

89. who would you put before everyone else? Sierra

90. luckiest mistake? Mistake? There’s been lucky accidents but I don’t think any of my mistakes have been lucky

91. boxes or bags? It depends on what I’m packing and where I’m going

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights? Sunlight

93. nicknames? T, Tear, Tear-tear, T-Dog, Miss T..a few of my recent favorites from soccer: Ronaldinha and Thierry Chun

94. favorite season? Fall! Shit, especially in New England

95. favorite app on your phone? I don’t know

96. desktop background? A picture of a simple dock leading out to sea

97. how many phone numbers do you have memorized? My parents’ and brother’s

98. favorite historical era? Victorian era, for sure

[bigdamnblog-blog]

Flippin’ Pages - Fantastic Four #2 (1962)

Through the 1950s, and into the early 60s, alien invasion stories were incredibly common in the sci-fi and horror anthology books that Marvel (and it’s predecessors Timely and Atlas) were putting out. When the superhero resurgence came along, various fantastic alien races appeared as villains. Most of them would fade into obscurity, but the aliens introduced in Fantastic Four #2 would endure, and come to be a pivotal part of the Marvel Universe. They are, of course, the SKRULLS FROM OUTER SPACE!

The Fantastic Four don’t really start to solidify into the characters I love until after #5, when Doctor Doom is introduced. Even then, early issues are strange to go back to, as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are still working out who these characters are, what stories they want to tell with them, and how to tell them. As you’ll see, there are still no costumes, no Fantasticar, no Baxter Building. Everything’s still emerging. It’s that uncertainty about who these characters are that lets the beginning of the book work: we open with the various members of the Fantastic Four up to various mischief. The Thing wrecks an oil rig, The Invisible Girl walks off with a diamond, The Human Torch is melting statues, and Mr Fantastic is turning off power to the whole of New York. What a bunch of dicks.

If you know she’s the Invisible Girl, why the hell would you give her that to play with? You’re an idiot, jewellery store guy.

Everyone seems to know who The Fantastic Four are, both as heroes and as people. They’re celebrities, and they don’t seem to have secret identities. Probably because they do all their adventuring in 60’s casual clothing. Comfort is important I suppose.

Just turn it back on Mr. Workman. You have big switches for just that purpose. Don’t sweat it. Maybe close that window though.

Anyway, of course it’s not the real Fantastic Four doing all this bad stuff, but a bunch of shapeshifting whose evil plan is to turn everyone against the Fantastic Four, as they are the only people who stand a chance of repelling the Skrull Invasion. Not sure why. They don’t even have costumes. Who’s afraid of a superhero who has no costume?

 I reckon creepy long-fingered Reed is more terrifying than any alien design they could come up with.

As it turns out, the real Fantastic Four are on a hunting trip, and immediately after they find out everyone hates them now (and handily recap their origin) they’re captured by the US Army, only to escape straight away and set out to solve the mystery of their doppelgangers.

I’m still waiting for the follow-up story where Johnny sues the army for giving him lung cancer.

So, plot happens, The Fantastic Four defeat the imposters, and set out to defeat the invasion force. How they do that is just… just wonderful. There’s a sense of fun in theses early stories that comes from the juxtaposition of how seriously that characters take everything against how bloody silly everything happening is. In this instance, the Fantastic Four impersonate their own doubles, and report back to the commander of the invasion force that an invasion would be thwarted by the various giant monsters that defend it. What giant monsters, I hear you ask? Well, the giant monsters in the clippings from Strange Tales and Journey Into Mystery that Reed presents as photographic evidence.

Yes.

Reed scares away a technologically superior invading force by showing them clippings from a comic book from the same publisher that creates the comic in which this story is taking place.

Yep. This actually happened

If you think that’s bonkers, wait until you see what happens to the skrull imposters!

I wonder if there was an uptick in vegetarianism amongst readers of this issue?     

This book is silly in all the best ways. Lee and Kirby are working on a new universe, defining it as they go, and as such there’s a fuzzy dream-logic to everything. Yes, these stories are for children, but therein lies the joy. They are divorced from the rules of real life, uncoupled from reality in a way that we lose sight of as we grow older. Reading comic books keeps you young, especially books like this. That’s my anti-ageing secret!

Jack Kirby still hasn’t figured out the right look for The Thing though. He’s a bit… melted.

-BigDamnMatt

“The Thing - Savage, Powerful, and not to be left in direct sunlight.”

[mst3kproject]

111: Moon Zero-Two

 In his review of Serenity, the late Roger Ebert defined ‘space opera’ as being like horse opera, but with space instead of horses.  I can think of no better description of Moon Zero-Two.

Captain Bill Kemp and his co-pilot Kaminsky were once heroes, the first men on Mars, but now that a proper colonization of the solar system is underway, they’re reduced to running a salvage operation.  The opportunity to do something more profitable knocks when Evil Businessman Mr. Hubbard asks them to help him crash an asteroid on the far side of the moon – an asteroid made of almost pure blue sapphire!  Meanwhile, Kemp is also trying to help a woman named Clementine Taplan, who’s supposed to be meeting her brother Wally, but nobody’s seen him since he sent her the invitation four months ago.  And isn’t it interesting that Wally’s lunar mining claim is exactly where Hubbard’s asteroid is going to hit?

I actually really like this movie.  The visuals are often silly, but it’s quite well-made and the ‘space western’ feel is fun. The actors are decent, the effects aren’t bad, and when you think about it, it’s surprisingly hard science fiction. The only overtly unrealistic things in it are the artificial gravity and the characters’ bad habit of going for spacewalks without a tether.

Moon Zero-Two’s overall aesthetic probably made more sense when the movie was new than it does now.  It is, indeed, rather painfully late-60’s, but nothing about it is just gratuitously weird – everything has a purpose.  The music, for example.  Tom Servo complains about the ‘free-form jazz’ but it’s as effective at suggesting the free-floating emptiness of space as the Jaws theme is at saying ‘shark!’.  Indoor scenes have a more grounded soundtrack and even the low-gravity barfight is not scored the way the parts that take place in vacuum are.

Likewise, the odd outfits and plasticky wigs serve to emphasize the artificiality of the environment.  The ‘natural’ late-60’s-early-70’s look, with loose clothing and long hair, would have been entirely out of place here.  This is a world humans have had to build from the ground up – nothing else is natural here, so why should the people be?  The moon colonists try to jazz up their world a little with their fanciful outfits and theme nights at the bar, but they can’t even make a dent in the relentless desolation of the landscape.  They barely even make one in the self-consciously futuristic white of their cities.  Kemp says ‘we will always be foreigners here’, and the sets and costumes reinforce his point.

In Clementine’s case, what she wears also serves to show how comfortable she is in this environment and in Bill’s company.  When she first arrives on the moon she is covered from head to toe. As she adjusts, she trades her weird headpiece for a wig.  Finally, we see her with her own hair hanging down.

On another level, clothing in this movie is about vulnerability. Bill and Clem come closest to being humans in the natural state (nude), when they are near death from over-heating in the un-insulated moon bug.  Bill’s two topless scenes are supposed to be about his dislike of vulnerability turning into a willingness to show vulnerability around Clem, but they don’t work very well because both of them are such clichés: she catches him coming out of the shower in what’s supposed to be a joke, and then there’s the ‘couple who won’t admit they’re falling in love have to undress because of the heat’. I can see what they were going for, but I wish they’d found a better way to do it.  Both scenes get some very powerful eyerolls.

(ETA: I probably should have said something about how Bill is in love with Clem like twenty minutes after his previous girlfriend died, but I only just dealt with something like that in the EtNW review for It’s Alive and I decided not to bother.)

The idea of vulnerability brings us to the movie’s main theme, which is that while space is a place of limitless potential, full of things like rich nickel veins and sapphire asteroids and other opportunities for science and profit, living there is always going to suck.  In the future of Moon Zero-Two, there is a large population of humans on the moon, but anything above and beyond a very basic lifestyle is rare and expensive. There’s the tiny hut we see that Wally Taplan was living in, Kemp’s complaints about the cost of drinks, and the difficulty of getting anywhere that’s not a tourist center.  Danger is everywhere – as one character observes, ‘nobody dies slowly on the moon.’

These dangers are mostly hidden from casual travelers so as not to frighten them (witness the monument, around a corner where only residents will see it), but vacuum, heat, cold, and radiation are ever-present.  It’s much like modern air travel, which is perfectly safe as long as everything works and everybody does their jobs, but all it takes is one mistake, one faulty component, and everything goes down in flames. This makes Moon Zero-Two stand out from other sci-fi movies that rely on alien monsters to scare the audience, forgetting that space itself is really far more frightening than any number of extraterrestrial teeth.

This isn’t a horror movie, though – Moon Zero-Two bills itself as ‘the first moon western’.  I’m not sure if it’s actually the first, but it’s definitely a moon western!  I mean, we’ve got miners, tycoons, shootouts, and untold riches in a wild new frontier with dangers around every corner!  As a bonus, setting it on the moon avoids the troubling questions of who has a right to this land, and doesn’t allow the writers to use ‘angry natives’ as one of their generic dangers.  Western clichés pop up repeatedly, but unlike the cliché nudity, these are actually entertaining as each one comes with a sci-fi twist. There’s a saloon, but the barfight takes place in microgravity!  Bill and Clem may overheat and die in the desert, but that’s because their moon bug has broken down rather than because their horse stepped in a gopher hole! These fun little uses of the tropes are a running gag in themselves.

Moon Zero-Two is also another movie where it’s a load of fun to look at what the writers and production designers thought the future would be like versus what actually happened.  The film-makers probably thought they were being very forward-thinking, with their personal computers and satellite communications.  Of course now we scoff at the briefcase-sized computers with their single-colour displays and giant keypads, but at the time it must have seemed quite futuristic!  It makes me wonder what people fifty years from now (if there are any left) will think of the interactive hologram technology we depict in movies like Avatar and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

For all these things to like about it, Moon Zero-Two is a long way from perfect.  Everybody on the moon seems to be white and there are far more men than women, although the women we see are portrayed as competent and intelligent (except for Hubbard’s collection of bimbos, barely able to sound out the words on their Community Chest cards… though when we consider Harry, I suppose we’re meant to assume that Hubbard just likes surrounding himself with stupid people).  We relate to Bill as he seems like just a guy trying to make a living, but he’s a bit too much of a bitter grouch to really be likeable.  I would have liked to see some more personality for Clem and Kaminsky, too.

The biggest thing that just feels like it’s missing from Moon Zero-Two is any idea of what’s going on down on Earth.  This is not, of course, essential to the story – it’s notable that we never see Earth, only what’s happening on the Moon and in space – but considering when the movie was made I was curious what it would predict for the outcome of the Cold War.  In the opening, we see an America and a Russian astronaut who are rivals until they are both swept up in the (extremely capitalist) race to colonize the solar system.   In the movie proper, the Russians vanish.  Somebody sneeringly asks where Kaminsky is from, but it’s not clear whether this is a cold war thing or just garden-variety xenophobia.  What happened?  Have the Russians left the moon as the British-American colonization project got going?  Do they have their own bases elsewhere on the surface?  We never find out, and it makes me wonder why the opening sequence brought it up.

Speaking of the opening sequence, I do love the theme song.  It’s so cheerful and catchy, and it makes exploring the solar system sound like a really good time!

Outside of the Russian movies, which had been badly-translated and mercilessly cut down, I think Moon Zero-Two might be the best film ever featured on MST3K.  It is very easy to make fun of, being so obviously a product of its time, but it doesn’t have any of the egregious errors of acting, pacing, or cheapness that ruined so many other good ideas in such movies.  For the most part it uses its clichés in an entertaining way and we don’t really hate any of the characters except the smug, cackling Hubbard, whom we’re supposed to hate.  Its visuals, audio, and story never bore us, and the story has only one major coincidence in Clem and Hubbard both going to Bill for help – but what we’re told about Bill’s past and present doesn’t make this seem too unlikely.  As I already mentioned, it doesn’t need a whole bunch of technobabble to get the story going, and still manages to be pretty good fun.

Perhaps the highest praise I can give to Moon Zero-Two is this: it’s probably the only MST3K episode where the riffing actually annoys me, because I’m trying to pay attention to the movie.

[mst3kproject]

Terror Beneath the Sea

Fresh from the studio that brought us Invasion of the Neptune Men, and starring Space Chief himself, Sonny Chiba, it's Terror Beneath the Sea! It's in widescreen.

Reporter Ken Abe and photographer Jenny Gleason are guests at the test of a new type of guided missile when they glimpse a mysterious swimming creature with a human silhouette.  Upon investigating, they find a cave inhabited by guys in stupid silver fish-man suits!  From here they're brought to the underwater base of the evil Professor Moore, who created the fish-men so that he can... honestly, I have no fucking idea what he's trying to do.  He starts the process to change Ken and Jenny into fish-people, too, but then the base is hit by a missile and he loses control of his creatures.  Can our heroes fight their way through the hordes of angry fish-men and escape before their transformation is complete?

One of the first things I notice about Terror Beneath the Sea is that I'm ninety-five percent sure that Ken and Jenny are supposed to be a couple, but the movie never depicts any physical affection between them that couldn't also happen between platonic friends. Probably this is partially because in Japan PDA's are considered inappropriate, even moreso than in Western countries, but I get the feeling there was also a desire to avoid being explicit about an interracial relationship.  I can imagine producers getting together and agreeing that white women dating Asian men does happen in real life, and movie heroes are supposed have love interests, but they need plausible deniability so they don't lose the all-important 'bigoted asshole' demographic.  Not that they have anything against the idea personally, you understand, but public opinion is public opinion.  They completely support interracial relationships, but how would they explain something like that to their children?

Another thing I notice is how much Terror Beneath the Sea reminds me of The Time Travelers or The Green Slime, though it is less colourful than either.  It has that kind of comic-book-y 60's sci-fi aesthetic, where they don't necessarily seem to care if what they're showing you looks real as long as it gets the idea across.  In fact, many of the sequences of shots, with odd angles or a focus on only eyes or a smile, look very much like panels from a manga comic.  The comics industry was flourishing in Japan in the mid-to-late 60's, and it's quite possible that the film-makers mimicked this style on purpose.

Terror Beneath the Sea also, as I noted in the opening paragraph, has a great deal in common with Invasion of the Neptune Men, including the same production company, same star, and a similar level of effects work featuring guys in costumes and toy-like miniatures. For all that, though, Terror Beneath the Sea is better at its worst than Invasion of the Neptune Men was at its best.  Both films are confusing, but Terror Beneath the Sea is funny-confusing, whereas Invasion of the Neptune Men was just frustrating-confusing. Why the difference?

I don't think the colour film has anything much to do with it – Invasion of the Neptune Men would still have been an ordeal in colour.  I think it has a lot to do with the characters.  Terror Beneath the Sea actually has some.

The main characters of Invasion of the Neptune Men, such as they were, were five nameless children and Space Chief.  We never really got to know them – indeed, the kids' names were not presented in a way that made them remotely memorable.  All I know is that one of them was Kenny.  In Terror Beneath the Sea, we have only two main characters who are easy to differentiate visually, audially, and by their actions.  Their personalities are sketched out, just barely, well enough to give us an idea what each of them would have done alone in this situation: Ken would have done pretty much what he did anyway, and Jenny would have stood around and screamed a lot.  They're not particularly complex or interesting characters, but they are characters.

Likewise the villains.  The Neptune Men just kind of blundered around trying all kinds of random things and not really achieving much.  The underwater Illuminati, or whoever they are, of Terror Beneath the Sea seem to have a plan, even if we're not entirely sure what that plan is (it seems to involve ruling the world – they always do).  Progress has been made in the building of the underwater base and the creation of the mindlessly obedient fish-people.  We are shown in great detail the process of transforming a normal man into one of these creatures, and there's some moments in this that are quite effectively gross, if not exactly convincing.

But a lot of what makes the movie engaging comes from how hysterically, over-the-top bad it is.  Almost everything in it is taken just a little bit too far. Invasion of the Neptune Men seems rather restrained in comparison and maybe that's another thing that hurt it.

Take, for example, the fish-men (according to their creator, they are technically water cyborgs). They obey commands given to them by a computer, which the humans control using a dial on the wall that has points labeled with things like 'work' and 'fight'.  Their full-body costumes are quite elaborate but often don't fit very well, sagging at the buttocks and wrinkling at the joints.  When the dial is turned to 'fight', a pair of them get into a ridiculous slap-fight that shows off exactly how badly the suits fit, accompanied by dubbed-in fin-flapping noises! Nothing in Invasion of the Neptune Men even approached that level of gratuitous silliness.

Then there's the acting.  All the dialogue has that same quality as The Green Slime, in that it sounds like its translated from Japanese even when it's coming from white actors whose mouths show that they're speaking English, but it's the dubbing that really raises it to comic heights. The people actually on the screen are pretty hammy themselves – there's one who guy actually manages to over-act raising an eyebrow – and the dub actors providing the English dialogue are terrifically melodramatic in slightly different ways.  The dissonance of this is as funny as anything else.  Somehow, even the guys in the full-body fish-men suits manage to overact.

A lot of the scenes, especially the fights, do go on a little too long. This is especially true of the fish-man creation sequence – it lasts forever. Fortunately, the general ridiculousness of the proceedings, with punches that obviously miss by a couple of feet and the exaggerated and mismatched reaction shots, can usually keep you giggling long enough to get through them.  This is pretty obviously done to pad out the running time to eighty minutes, which the movie only just barely achieves.  At least ten minutes could be cut from Terror Beneath the Sea without damaging the very minimal storyline, probably more.  MST3K would have had no trouble making it fit.

There isn't anything much to think about in this movie, but I did manage to tease one actual idea out of the mess.  While Terror Beneath the Sea gives very little time to Professor Moore's evil plan, he does describe his goal as a totalitarian society in which the citizens, like the water cyborgs we see, will be drones adapted to specific tasks.  One of his partners in the scheme refers to this as “a world that makes sense”.  Like a number of thinkers in science fiction movies through the decades, the undersea Illuminati seem to believe that true peace and cooperation are only possible when human beings lose our individuality.  As if to emphasize this, one of the scientists points out that the water cyborgs show no sexual dimorphism: males and females are externally identical.

It's actually kind of hard to argue with the basic idea here: utopia is probably impossible as long as people remain recognizably human, because frankly, humans suck. Ninety-nine percent of people just want to do their thing and get along, but there's always that hundredth one who decides to be an asshole and ruin things for everybody else.  Fiction likes to play with this idea, but in Terror Beneath the Sea it is merely a trope.  Ken and Jenny are horrified by the idea that the water cyborgs were made out of human beings, but there is no actual discussion of the ethical or philosophical ramifications of the idea.  When the fish-men turn on their masters, it is not because their humanity has reasserted itself, but merely because the computer is stuck on 'fight' setting.

Terror Beneath the Sea is basically b-movie cotton candy.  It's fun for as long as it lasts, but when you're done with it you realize it was mostly empty space and not particularly satisfying.  This is perhaps the point in which it most resembles Invasion of the Neptune Men: you're not really sure what you just watched or why you watched it.  Of course, with Terror Beneath the Sea you can answer both questions with 'Sonny Chiba fighting ridiculous fish-men'.  Invasion of the Neptune Men didn't even have that.