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myhahnestopinion · 8 years ago

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The Night A TECHNICOLOR, CONSPICUOUS INVISIBLE MAN Came Home: THE ASTRAL FACTOR (1977)

Alright, I’m back. Ugh, what day is it? October 28th? Alright... 3 more days ‘til Halloween... I can do this. Alright. *deep breath* What’s the film for today? 1977′s The Astral Factor? Oh, okay, sounds perfect. A movie all about astral projection is fitting, given the current dissociative state that I find myself in thanks to this endless cannonade of terrible, inept films. I’m positive that this will be the film to finally give me a bit of release, and won’t just be a mind-numbingly awful and boring film, containing what is perhaps the most incompetent movie editing job I have ever seen. I’m sure it won’t be like that at all...

The film opens at a prison for the criminally insane. It’s nighttime, as evidenced by this extremely dark shot of inmate Roger Sands meditating in his cell. ...Nope, wait, it’s daytime, as evidenced by this extremely bright shot of another inmate in the cell across from Roger! Cut back to Roger, and it’s dark outside again, and there’s once again no lighting! Man, time sure does fly when your editing skills are utter trash. I think that’s how that saying goes. Anyway, Roger body begins to sparkle like the old-school Enterprise transporting effect, and he disappears. He reappears, and the other inmate begins to understandably ask questions. Glowing star icons appear over Roger’s eyes, and the other inmate is sent flying backwards, as... a purple filter falls over the shot...?

Why is there suddenly a purple filter?

Why is there suddenly not a purple filter?

What the hell is going on?

So, yeah, this is one of the most perplexing elements seen throughout the entire film. The film quality is so poor that shots will, for brief moments, switch to random different colors. You’ll be watching a scene, and suddenly the film will turn green! Then it’s normal again! Then it’s blue! It’s so bewildering! I mean, you pretty much have to go out of your way to make your editing this absolutely awful. Sure, it may just be a bad copy of the film, but this is the copy that they chose to have available for people to stream, so I am not going to hold back with trashing them on it.

So, yeah, after the brief purple shot of the inmate being thrown to the ground, we’re back to normal lighting, as the mattress flies off of the inmate’s bed through telekinesis, and is flung on top of him. Wow. You threw a mattress on top of this grown man. How scary.

Oh, also the shot is purple once again.

Oh, and now it’s normal again.

Some guards come in to check on the commotion. Roger turns invisible, and escapes when the guards open up his cell to investigate. There’s a lot of POV camerawork involved with the invisible man that would be fairly interesting, if there hadn’t been a moment where a guard had to awkwardly run around the man he’s supposed to not be able to see, so that he wouldn’t hit the cameraman.

So, after escaping from prison, Roger visits a graveyard. The film transitions to show a yellow-filtered shot of a woman, Roger’s mother, combing her hair in front of a mirror. At first, it looked like it was to be a flashback, but instead, Roger starts having a conversation with his dead mother, the film bouncing back and forth between the aggressively yellow shots of the mother, and the darkly lit shots of Roger.

It’s yellow!

It’s dark!

It’s yellow!

It’s dark!

This film made my eyeballs hurt.

Well, at least the color filter made... sense?...here, as it actually is restricted to just the shots of the mother, and doesn’t appear to have been dropped in at random. I mean, it doesn’t help clarify if this is half-flashback, or an actual conversation with the dead, or what, but at least I know that something is intentionally off about it. During this conversation, it’s revealed that Roger’s mother was a famous actress, but she refused to acknowledge him as her child, the whole thing culminating with Roger shouting “YOU ARE MY MOTHER!!” to the sky, in a wonderful unintentionally comedic moment. A police office shows up, but Rogers gets starry-eyed again, transforms his gun into pixels, and throws him into an open grave with his mind. Cut to opening credits.

Yes, all that was our cold open. I must admit, it did an excellent job of establishing what we can expect... from this film’s aggravatingly inept editing. Everything else established here will instantly turn into a boring, convoluted mess.

After the credits, a blonde woman returns home. Suddenly, there’s a blue filter. Suddenly, there’s not a blue filter. The camera, Roger’s POV, begins to stalk this woman to her bathtub. Suddenly, there’s a yellow filter. Suddenly, there’s not a yellow filter. Is this like a color-pattern hypnotizing thing? Why are you doing this? Anyway, in the bathtub, the woman begins wriggling, and grasps onto the air close to her neck. And, she dies....? ....Ooohh! I finally get what’s happening with this movie! An invisible killer, who just strangles people to death! This is perhaps the laziest, stingiest movie I’ve come across yet! There’s no wonky prosthetic work, no corn-syrup blood, no household items repurposed into deadly weapons. Just blonde women pretending they’re bring choked by an unseen force. How terrifying...

But hey, pretty colors! Random, inexplicable, split-second, pretty colors...

Well, actually I may have spoke too soon even on that point, as during the very next scene, the film randomly becomes black and white for several seconds! Yep, this film can’t even consistently deliver on its inconsistent coloring! So, we’re introduced to our main set of characters, mainly the police force who are sent to investigate this woman’s murder. There’s Lt. Charles Barrett, our bland curly-haired leading man. His wife, Candy, who constantly refers to herself in the third-person, and is the kind of ditsy, pleasing wife character that you only ever see written by a man. There’s also Barrett’s partner, Detective Holt, who will not STOP CLICKING HIS PEN! That is his only character trait. He clicks his pen ALL THE TIME!! When this film isn’t boring, it’s actively annoying!

So, after investigating the crime scene, Barrett and Holt head to the police lab to analyze the evidence. A lab assistant leads them to a microscope where.... he shows them the fingerprints they gathered from the scene... He left fingerprints... This killer not only can turn invisible, but has telekinesis. He has pretty much every possible tool to evade capture at his disposal, and he manages to leave behind the most easily preventable form of evidence, even for a regular criminal... To make matters even more insultingly stupid, the lab assistant proceeds to show them that these fingerprints match up perfectly with those of Roger Sands. I...just...why...? WHY EVEN CENTER YOUR FILM ON AN INVISIBLE KILLER IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE HIS IDENTITY SO QUICKLY KNOWN TO EVERYONE?! Well, actually, I know the answer to that question already. Invisible choking death scenes... And just when I thought this movie couldn’t be anymore incompetent, it decides to continue to undermine all of its set-up. The officers talk about how Roger Sands killed his mother because she refused to acknowledge him, and now kills other famous blonde women who remind him of her. Let me repeat. They know that Roger Sands was this actresses’ son! This is public knowledge! THEN WHY, WHY DID ROGER YELL AT HIS MOTHER’S GRAVE THAT HE NEEDS EVERYONE TO KNOW THAT HE IS HER SON?! WHY DID THIS FILM JUST COMPLETELY RUIN THE MOTIVATION THEY HAD SET UP FOR THE KILLER?! JUST WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! WHY IS TELLING A SIMPLE STORY SO HARD TO SO MANY PEOPLE?!

So, Lt. Barrett heads to the home of Darlene DeLong, a generic blonde actress who had been targeted by Roger Sands before, to set up a protection detail. He heads to the backyard swimming pool to talk to Darlene.

Suddenly, in the middle of his walk, as Barrett talks to a nearby parrot, without warning, the film cut to black!

Um...hello...?

Guys, it’s still black... Pitch black...

Um, still black...

Is....is the movie over...? Did they just give up...? I mean, I wouldn’t blame them! I mean, this trash isn’t really salvageable at this point, so good move, film-makers!

Yep, still just black.

Well, uh...

OH! We’re back! We’re back, after a quick “bleep” noise! They had to change the film reel... They had to change the film reel, and they were so absolutely and thoroughly awful at their job, that they just ended up leaving a lengthy section of the film entirely black in-between.... Oh, and the new film reel starts off with a brief green tint! Hooray!

So, anyway, Barrett is finally able to talk to Darlene, but their conversation is entirely boring. Darlene rambles on about struggling to find an identity in her world of fame, and the film attempts to build a romantic tension between the two, but since the acting is so wooden and the writing so hackneyed, it’s all uninvolving. Oh, but at the end of the conversation, the film gets a yellow tint again! Maybe this is all intentional, as the jarring switches in color tints are the only thing in this lame garbage film that can make the audience snap to attention.

So, next, we’re briefly introduced to Roxane Raymond, another generic blonde woman who is a potential target of Roger. Roxane is practicing for a dance routine, and the scene ends with the camera dramatically zooming in on an empty row of seats in the audience. Wow, an empty seat. How terrifying. Why even hire actors for your movie? What if you just made a movie about a whole town of invisible people, and then just shot empty streets and chairs for 2 hours? That would be genius! Think of all the money you would save!

So, next, Lt. Barrett and Det. Holt visit Roger Sand’s childhood home. Despite the fact that this scene just involves two completely unrelated people, the film decides to cut to a flashback to Roger murdering his mom. The flashback is presented with a heavy yellow tint, so thick that it’s near-impossible to even see what is happening. Roger and his mother argue over her refusal to acknowledge him as her son, culminating in Roger shouting, “I’m going to bust this thing wiiiiiiiiiiide open!”, shaking his head to extend the vowel to show us how crazy he is, I guess. Anyway, after the flashback, Barrett and Holt begin to head upstairs, but suddenly invisible Roger starts throwing ceramic pots at them. Well, actually the pots are just thrown at the two from off-screen, because the film is too cheap to even have simple wire-work involved. Why even have pots? Why not have invisible pots? Man, I could have gotten this movie done with half of their presumably $10 budget!

Roger runs off (presumably, since he continues to remain completely invisible), and the two detectives search the bedroom upstairs! Suddenly, the film is tinted yellow, Barrett’s skin becoming a light blue! How? How were they that terrible at this? Anyway, when we return to a normal tint, Barrett discovers a list of Roger’s intended victims on Roger’s bed. ...He wrote down a list of his intended victims... He then left this list out in the open for the police to find... The list even includes one target that the police weren’t even aware of, so if he hadn’t made this list, he could have actually gotten away with one... Despite facing an invisible killer, the detectives in this film haven’t had to do a single ounce of actual police work. The killer gives them pretty much everything that he possibly could to catch him. I mean, might as well have just made the script invisible at this point!

We cut to a young blonde woman painting in the woods. Then, we cut to black. Yep, the film’s pitch black again, folks. Oh, we’re back! With a blinding flash of pink, we’re back, just in time to see the woman head off into the woods in search of her dog. From Roger’s POV, this woman is once again “strangled” by an “unseen force.” The actress cups her hands in the air by her neck to give the impression she’s holding onto Roger’s invisible arms, but if that’s the case, then apparently Roger has wrists the size of a half-dollar.

So, Barrett returns home, but upon entering his apartment, someone leaps out at him, screaming wildly. It’s his wife, Candy. “Candy wanted to surprise you,” she says, in the third-person. Why is this woman written as if she’s his 5 year old daughter? No, scratch that. Even children aren’t this vapid and infantile. The wife is just an all around bizarre character, from the fact that she bought herself a gift for Barrett’s own birthday, to her lack of any character traits beyond being stupid and perfectly obedient to him, to, of course, her constant use of the third-person. It’s so obviously the product of one immature man’s wish fulfillment, especially since her character has absolutely no relevance to anything in the entire film. Yep, should have gone with the invisible script.

So, the next day Barrett visits the ESP Research Institute. The lead scientist, Dr. Ulmer, tells Barrett all about telekinesis. “Are you telling me a man could strangle someone from a distance?” Barrett asks. Yes. Yes they could. In fact, that would be the sensible thing to do if you had the power of telekinesis and wanted to murder someone. SO WHY IS ROGER STRANGLING THEM WITH HIS HANDS, LEAVING FINGERPRINTS EVERYWHERE IN THE CRIME-SCENE?!! In another incomprehensible bit of exposition, Dr. Ulmer describes how Roger is using astral projection to kill, using an out-of-body experience to enact his crime. Except, that’s not what’s happening here... I mean, alright, I know the movie is called The Astral Factor, and the description even said that the killer uses astral projection, but so far all the killer has been doing is turning invisible! There’s no astral projection involved! To make matters even more confusing, the film was also released under the name Invisible Strangler, which would have been the name to go with, everyone, except now the film is trying to convince us that it was astral projection all along! Why can’t you just pick one power and stick with it?! Both of them will give you the cheap, boring deaths you so desire!

Speaking of cheap, boring deaths, we next head to Roxane’s dance show. After Barrett and Holt set up a perimeter (and Barrett rips the pen out of Holt’s hand, replacing it with an unclickable pencil, which is apparently what passes for character development in this film), the show begins.

It’s a thing of beauty.

You see, this dance show is the source of all our color woes!

Yes, as the dance sequence goes on, the film begins to rapidly shift colored filters. Red, blue, green, purple, pink, etc. Not like the rapid flashes before. No, this time, the color will linger, and naturally fade into one another. I don’t understand how, I don’t understand why, but apparently this film wanted a technicolor dance sequence, and, in doing so, somehow manage to spill color all throughout its film, as if the film was editing by a 3 year old who still hasn’t mastered coloring inside the lines.

Really should have just made the whole film invisible, if you ask me.

So, anyway, the dance routine ends with Roxane being strangled to death by an unseen assailant. It’s just as exciting as the last two times this has happened.

So, with three targets down, the cops rush to protect Bambi Greer, yet another generic blonde woman. The cops believe that she will be able to remain safe until they get there, because she is on a yacht in the ocean. Suddenly, Roger climbs onto the boat... in full scuba-gear... He’s not invisible. Let me be clear, this isn’t one of those times when the clothes don’t turn invisible with the person. No, he can turn his clothes invisible, but he decides to take on this target in plain view in a complete scuba outfit. I didn’t think it was possible for this film to be lazier than just having every kill be invisible strangulation, but they did it. They really did it.

Roger kills the police officer on the yacht already with a harpoon gun. Yes, this guy is not only no longer being invisible, but isn’t even killing people with telekinesis. He then proceeds to strangle Bambi. It’s a visible strangulation, and yet it still manages to be an even dumber moment than all the others. So, the cops arrive, find the bodies, and then Barrett spots Roger escaping in a speedboat. Yes, not only is he not using his invisibility anymore, but he’s not even using his scuba gear now... So, Barrett enters into a speedboat as well, and the two have a multi-minute chase, before Roger heads towards land, and finally turns invisible to escape. I mean, was this whole scene even from the same movie...? It feels like they started filming this as a standard serial killer movie, but blew all their budget on Day One on this speedboat chase, so decided to turn this into an invisible killer movie instead...

So, since the cops have failed to prevent even one death from what has to be the dumbest criminal ever, they all gather at Darlene’s house to protect her. Darlene and Roger have another conversation that supposed to paint them as two “lost souls” with romantic chemistry, but it is so, so, so boring. I mean, I’m fairly certain my head drifted to start staring at my white-painted walls because they were more interesting than this garbage. But hey, random purple filter brought my attention back! Oh, look! Now the film’s yellow again! There better be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow dumpster fire, because I don’t know why I’m doing this otherwise.

So, after a few cops are taken out off-screen, because we don’t even have the budget for invisible strangulation at this point, Roger is able to sneak into the home. Yes, he is invisible once again. However, he apparently forgot that being invisible doesn’t make you inaudible. So, the detectives are able to hear him as he breathes heavily walking up the flight of stairs to get to Darlene. Aw man, you need to work out more, bro! One flight of stairs shouldn’t leave you this out of breath! So, to make his position even more obvious, Roger begins talking, saying, “I want everyone to know that you are my mother.”

Once again, I have to remind you that everyone already knows that this actress was Roger’s mother.

So, because Roger has still failed to grasp the concept of invisibility, his talking gives his position away, and Barrett begins spraying semi-automatic rifle fire all up and down the stairwell. The film instantly cuts to a inverted black-and-white shot of Roger screaming, before once again randomly cutting to black.

Still black.

Yep, still black.

Oh, we’re back now, as we watch a shot of Roger’s body fall into space and explode into stars. Yes, all it took to take down the invisible man was bullets. Roger didn’t even bother trying to use his telekinesis to stop the bullets, or kill Barrett before he fired. He gave away his position by yammering on, and they just unloaded a round of bullets into him. Wow. I think I have a new pick for worst horror movie villain ever.

So, the film ends with Barrett returning home to kiss his wife, as the credits begin to play.

After listing like five people from the crew, the film once again cuts to black.

Still black.

Oh, there we go! The film’s back, and we still have more credits!

Nope, sudden cut to black again!

Still black!

The music continues to play, but the film is black.

Still black.

Oh, I guess that was it. The movie’s over now. They couldn’t even hold off having that one last random jarring cut to black when they only had one minute left in the movie. I expected nothing less from this film.

The Astral Factor is probably my most hated film of this series so far. It’s not as terrible as Silent Night: Deadly Night Part 2, and doesn’t have an aggravatingly stupid twist ending like April Fool’s Day, but The Astral Factor is just the laziest and cheapest film of them all. There’s no ambition anywhere to be found in this film. You know, Horror House on Highway Five may be utterly incompetent, but at least they shot for the moon with that whole Richard Nixon/Magical Nazis thing! However, you centered a film on an invisible strangler so you didn’t actually have to put any work or money into the deaths, and still didn’t even manage to stick to that concept very well. I had fun mocking it, but the film itself is just aggressively boring, and is complete worthless trash.

But hey, pretty colors. Random, inexplicable, split-second pretty colors...

Ugh... October 28th... Almost through this...

The Astral Factor is available to stream on Amazon Prime, and is on DVD.

Tomorrow: The Night AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL, UNCOMMITTED, FOREVER BLUE MAN Came Home...

#film #TheNightXCameHome #Halloween #TheAstralFactor

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