Killers from Space (1954)

So much average

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Ah, the A bomb. When you want to clear a region fast, nothing else does the trick. Our hero knows this. Why, he's up in the air watching a-bombs blast the hell out of stock footage when his plane is brought down and he vanishes. His buddies, army folk, wife and nosey FBI all think he's a goner, but then he turns up at the army base with no memory and a scar on his chest.Everybody's flummoxed. Our hero then starts doing weird things, like getting all jazzed up about the next A-bomb nest, and trying to steal secrets to put under a rock in the desert (!). He also sees these weird eyes floating about. But why? Only a shot of good old commie confessor will do the trick.This one has it all, if 'all' means aliens with ping-pong ball eyes and weird eyebrows, giant insects and snakes, and about as much exposition from a bad guy as you can get in a film. Just as well, as the aliens disappear for the rest of the film (but there's still plenty of action).Although the make up on the bad guys is hilarious, I didn't particularly see this is a 'bad' movie, just a nice time capsule before the horrors of Chernobyl sullied the good name of nuclear technology. It doesn't last long either, so that always helps.

Atomic scientist/pilot Doug Martin is missing after his plane crashes on an reconnaissance mission after a nuclear test. Miraculously appearing unhurt at the base later, he is given sodium amethol, but authorities are skeptical of his story that he was captured by aliens determined to conquer the Earth with giant monsters and insects. Martin vows to use existing technology to destroy them.Mission Impossible!This is one of those 50s sci fi flicks that will bore the pants off you.And not in a good way.It was so cheaply made the sound echos when they are indoors. The aliens are bug eyed and then they throw in cheap stock footage of bugs being burnt

This is directed by W. Lee Wilder, the less famous brother of Billy, and co-written by their other brother Myles. W. Lee Wilder has a small oeuvre of off-beat, very-low-budget films, most of which seem to reflect his status as an immigrant to the "land of opportunity" and his lower status therein. In this case, the terror of American McCarthyism and Cold War paranoia is palpable, even the soundtrack seems to enforce a sense of depression and disillusionment. The wonderful old film zine "Delirious" had a special feature on W. Lee's work back in the 90s, and observed the use of the "eyes" motif in this film – from the Bug Eyed Spacemen of the title, to the doctor's eye-reflector, to the extreme closeup on the gas station attendant's eyes to the "unsleeping eye of radar" mentioned in the opening narration. Life for a European immigrant in 1950s America may have seemed to be filled with eyes, with watching and snooping. When the FBI man interrogates the protagonist's wife, he quotes more or less from J. Edgar Hoover's text _Masters of Deceit_, a handbook for nosy suburbanites to snitch on their suspicious neighbors.

EAGGGH .. oh that's another film... well then, KILLERS FROM SPACE elicits the same reaction: and looks like a 70 minute shortened version of THE PHANTOM serial but filmed at the Republic cave sets and studio kitchen corners, but released by RKO. The most shocking and even incomprehensibly startling thing about this LOST PLANET level gibberish is that RKO released it on a double bill with a musical: THE FRENCH LINE...!! For a genuine 'what the...' reaction imagine the crowds flocking to see Jane Russell shake her tuille feather and instead get Peter Graves solemnly saving earth from aliens who look like cinema projectionists in overalls and cummerbunds... and ping pong ball eyes. What a joke! and this in the days when adults went to see THE FRENCH LINE and got this junk first instead. A musical and a kiddie sci fi episode. No wonder the industry died the death of a mangy dog in 1957.