Okay, so we're in the way distant future of 2001. Apparently by this time man has evolved to such an extent that everyone on earth now lives in total peace and harmony (yeah, that happened). By this time man has also explored all of our neighbouring planets as far as Saturn. So it's next stop Uranus. No I'm not going to make any jokes, but they do pronounce Uranus in a weird way. It's sort of Ur-ann-us, with an emphasis and elongation of the 'ann' part. Anyway, it's neither of the ways I've heard it pronounced in my life and it annoyed the hell out of me.
So we join our friends on their space ship, already on the way to Uranus. There's five of them, and they're all guys in this particular film. It's supposed to be an international crew seeing as how the earth is all one big happy family now. So there's a German guy and an Irish guy in the crew, both of them having the most horrendous accents I've ever heard.
So they near Uranus and they all suddenly glaze over and enter a trance. Then we hear some awful sci-fi music and see something that looks like the Mysterons from Captain Scarlet, closely followed by a voice that speaks some appalling dialogue. "Come. I have waited a long time for this moment. Give me your minds, your innermost thoughts. You are powerless. I shall drain your minds. You will submit, and I shall possess you" etc. I think you get the idea. Then the Mysterons disappear and all of the guys come to.So they land on Uranus. Just before they open the viewing window to take a look, the surface magically transforms from a cold, icy, dark world, into something that looks suspiciously like earth with tress and shit. They venture outside and quickly establish that this environment has been created from their own minds, as one of the crew knows exactly where they are from earth. They reach the edge of the enclosed world that their minds have created. There's a sort of force field at the edge and they can't see through. The commander pokes a stick through the force field. When he pulls it back again it's completely frozen. Then having just seen this, for some idiotic reason the German guy decides to stick his arm through. He cries out in pain, pulls his arm back through, and now he has a blue, very cold looking arm. So the German idiot goes back to the ship and we're told that his arm has miraculously healed. The other four sit around a camp fire outside. They conclude that whatever has created the place they're currently in, it must lie outside the force field, so they decide they must venture beyond it.
Then as they're talking around the camp fire a farmhouse appears in the distance, apparently created from the commander's memory. The four of them decide to investigate. They enter the farmhouse and an attractive woman who the commander knows is there. Knowing that this can't be real their suspicions are heightened, so they quickly return to the ship. As the last guy is about to board the ship we see the Mysterons again. He glazes over and then we see two women from his memory, Lisa and Greta. They try and convince him not to go back aboard the ship, but he resists and gets back on board.
They decide that two of the guys should stay on board the ship. The other three will put on their space suits and venture beyond the force field. For some daft reason the commander decides to take the German guy again. Oh well, I'm sure he won't do anything stupid this time. Beyond the force field Uranus is cold, dark and icy, just as it should be. They see a hole in the surface and through it they can see some molten looking green goo below. The German guy decides to shoot it, exclaiming "Look, it moved when I shot it". We see the Mysterons again and the voice speaks some more bad dialogue. Then we see an incredibly badly animated and non-scary one eyed monster thing. They escape by shooting it in its eye and running back through the force field. So they return to the ship and the German guy admits that the monster thing was created by his mind because of his fear of rats. The thing looked nothing like a rat, but whatever. So the guys now realise that the Mysterons are tapping into their greatest fears too.
The commander goes back to the farmhouse to visit Ingrid, the woman created from his memory. He questions her to see if she knows anything about who or what is behind everything. She's remarkably forthcoming and says that everything has been created by a lone being on the planet who can use its massive brain at nearly full capacity. Quite why she would reveal this having been created by the being itself I don't really know.
So three of the guys venture out and find the massive brain thing that's behind everything. But the brain sends a big ass spider chasing after them. Thankfully they just used footage of a big ass spider for this, so no laughably animated monster this time. They manage to kill the big ass spider by shooting at the rocks above, which fall and land on the spider squishing it. They have to hurry back to the ship at this point because they're low on oxygen.
They decide they must destroy the brain. So they decide to build a massive acetylene torch to cook it. Rather conveniently there's a blacksmiths near the farmhouse, so they go there and begin construction. When construction is complete, for some reason the commander says they won't use the torch until the next morning. He says they'll take it in turns to guard the torch so that the brain doesn't try and tamper with it. Why not have two of them stand guard instead of one? In fact, why leave it at the blacksmiths at all? Why not take it back to the ship? Oh well. The commander says that our German friend will take first watch. So when the German guy is alone, the Mysterons return and a rather attractive girl called Ursula appears. Ursula distracts the German guy while another girl comes in and she does indeed sabotage the torch.
The next day four of the guys take the torch to where the brain is located. The German guy attempts to light the torch but oh no, the torch doesn't work! Our German friend gets absorbed into the brain and dies. The remaining three think all is lost, but then the commander says they'll try and use the liquid oxygen from the torch's tanks to freeze the brain. They successfully freeze the brain and then shoot it to shit with their guns. They quickly make their way back to the ship. Ingrid is there and the commander takes her on board the ship. The ship successfully blasts off, leaves Uranus and then heads for home. But of course sadly Ingrid vanishes. The end.
This film is a pile of shite. It was made in 1962 and given that fact it should've been way better. There are far more competent, earlier sci-fi films than this (possibly all of them). The rocket and the planets look like something from Button Moon. And the acting is so bad. Quite frankly they'd have been better off hiring Mr. Spoon because he'd have brought more feeling and emotion into it. On the technical front, there's really no real science to speak of in this film. And using scenes constructed from the minds of the crew means of course that they didn't need much in the way of spacey, futuristic looking sets, which is probably the main reason why they did it that way.
I'd like to say this was a 'so bad it's good' film but I can't. It's just bad. It was tedious, bland and unimaginative. And I didn't care what happened to any of the characters in it. IMDb currently rates it at a generous 4.8 stars. I really can't recommend watching this at all. Spare yourselves, it's too late for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment