Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)

Thanks for the memories!

Fantastic!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie is based on the true story of the Martian Invasion of 1965. The handsome astronaut who bravely goes into space to do something that needs doing. You, the viewer will weep openly not just once as this story unreels. The Earthlings speak perfect martian. I did not realize Martians chose to land in the US because they speak the same language we speak. Austin Powers is the Martian. The Queen or whatever, is Liz Taylor, I think. The general is the guy who works at the garden shop. Nobody eats anything on Mars and probably not on Earth. A movie with no food. Don't ask why there is a monster where the monster appears. The guy who played Frankenstein is actually very good. He did a few movies. This movie would go well with Mars Needs Women and Teenagers From Outer Space. Look for a Rambler and a Studebaker. If you like sixties music this has some sixties sounding songs in the background. Not any real hits. Worth watching and finding good quotes.

*Spoiler/plot- Frankenstein meets the Space Monster, 1965, Martian invaders with their queen are exploring our solar system. Martian invaders prepare an Earth attack as NASA sends a rocket to Mars manned by a android astronaut. Mistaking the exploration rocket for an attacking warhead missile, the aliens fire on the launching rocket and send the android back to Earth in a fiery crash. The android pilot is damaged with heavy computer & facial trauma and the NASA man-like pilot goes on a murderous rampage throughout Puerto Rico's beach areas. The aliens land and make-off with beach babes as breeding stock for their planet, Mars. The rampaging pilot and alien patrols converge on a beach pool party with disastrous results.*Special Stars- Marilyn Hanold, Lou Cutell, Bruce Glover, James Karen, Nancy Marshall *Theme- Andriods are not always your friends despite their helpful NASA programming.*Trivia/location/goofs- B&W, American, Look for Bruce Glover(Diamonds are Forever 'baddie' and famous Hollywood acting coach) in a dual role as alien Martian invader and the Space Monster. The Space MOnster suit was a re-issue use from the fine Crash Corriganville film called, "It, the Terror from outer Space". This film is supposedly in the TOP 50th worst films ever made. The Martian alien spaceship rooms have ceiling fluorescent tube lights and walls made of obvious plywood especially in the beach babe 'purification room'. The NASA scientists leave in a B-52 bomber. However, the plane they land in is a Boeing C-135. Flight change?*Emotion- A very enjoyable "bad" B-movie with the climatic ray-gun-firing battle between android and the Martian Space monster. True campy fun of the post 50's with all the trimmings: bikinis, music, cars, airplanes, and clothing.

The film involves a mission to Mars scheduled to be manned by a single crewmember, Capt. Frank Saunders. Like many a low-budget sci-fi film, NASA is run by two or three people at the most. In NASA's headquarters, which bears a striking resemblance to any given high school with a "John F. Kennedy Space Center" banner drapped over the entrance, Frank is unveiled in a press conference the day before the historic mission to no less than three, semi-attentive reporters. In the middle of the conference, Frank completely freezes, and is rushed off by two scientists. The reporters are curious, but quick thinking General Bowers offers them drinks, and their desire for a good story is outweighed by the urge to get some free booze.It turns out that our boy Frank is really a half-man robot (pronounced "robut" by his creator, Adam Steel), a sort of modern Frankenstein, if you will. Despite the fact that Frank has malfunctioned and become completely unresponsive two minutes into his unveiling at a press conference, he is sent out into space the next day as planned after some mild tweaking.Meanwhile, a malicious, insipid race of aliens is coming to Earth for a single purpose. It seems their planet has been destroyed by a nuclear holocaust, and these saps are the lone survivors. The aliens are led by, Princess Marcuzan (who, you would think would be queen now) and Dr. Nadir, who informs the crew: "We are extinct as a race, unless of course we can find some good breeding stock to repopulate the planet." Wow.The aliens mistake Frank's spaceship for an attack, and blow it up. Frank crashes somewhere in Puerto Rico, where he emerges damaged and begins to wander the countryside attacking random people. (Incidentally, Frank at no point resembles a classic Frankenstein or the guy on the cover of the DVD – he looks more like a bargain-basement version of Batman villain Two-Face than anything else.) The aliens also land in Puerto Rico, and start capturing girls that don't look Puerto Rican in the slightest.The film's idea of incorporating a Puerto Rican into the story comes when hero-scientist Adam Steel (love that name!) needs to make a phone call and struggles to communicate with a native. "Telephone?" Steel says, and the native is confused. Steel puts his hand to his ear in traditional phone-mime and says, "El telephono?" and the guy understands. Yikes. I'm one of the whitest white people alive and I'M offended.Fortunately for our evil alien friends, all the Earth girls are remarkably easy to capture, and beyond shrieking periodically they provide no resistance whatsoever. The first girl is caught while on a beach in a bikini, sees her boyfriend edited out of the movie before her eyes (I think it was implied that he was blown up via ray gun), and once on the ship is totally compliant and mute. She doesn't even get cheesy lines like, "Gee! Are you from outer space?" Instead, she just kind of stands there and does as she's told as the Princess and Dr. Nadir leer at her in creepy, exploitation movie fashion.It goes without saying that the aliens have themselves a monster locked up in a cage, which looks like a Mexican wrestler in an ornate costume.Naturally Steel and Karen find Frank in some isolated cave and calm him down a little, leading us to assume that his killing spree is over and he's somehow "good" again.Steel sends Karen off to get help, but she is nabbed by those pesky aliens and taken to their spaceship. Speaking of the spaceship, it's one of those cases where the exterior makes the ship appear no bigger than a one bedroom efficiency, but the interior seems to have endless room for cockpits, hallways, and holding cells. Then again, we're talking about Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster, so who am I to complain about such technicalities? The pulse-pounding chuckle-inducing conclusion sees Frank freeing the Earth girls and Karen, and fighting the spacemonster. This is where the title feels like false advertising, because Frank and the spacemonster do not meet, per se, as the title promises; they just start fighting. What a rip-off! One can only imagine the stimulating conversations these two might have, but instead they do some lackluster fighting that would have benefited from REAL Mexican wrestlers in those costumes. Frank finally gets a ray gun and starts firing randomly, until he blows up the whole idiotic alien race in what is intended to be a self-sacrificial moment.The special effects are pretty hideous even by B-movie standards. I know they had no budget, but the spaceship in flight appears to resemble a Christmas ornament leaking gas. The director intersplices stock footage of the military liberally, which only makes his sets and actors look all the more fake. To really put things in perspective, Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster was released in 1965. Four years later, Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001: A Space Odyssey was made, with special effects that hold up better than the "state of the art" digital effects in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.This cheap, exploitative schlockfest actually tries to deliver an anti-nuclear war message, a la a genuinely excellent science fiction classic The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). Sadly, such attempts are thwarted by the fact it is a dim-witted movie titled Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster. If you are a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan (like me), or if you enjoyed Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space (like me), you need to see this movie. For the rest of you: Stay very, very far away.–Daniel J. Roos (film.ispwn.com)

I just watched this cheddarfest this morning. It's a solid 8 if you love cheesy movies; it's about a -2 if you don't.Oh, a note to MooCowMo. The martians were not armed with hair dryers; those are Whammo Air-Blasters - a delightfully dangerous toy from the 1960s.You'd cock the Air-Blaster by pulling the lever on top. Pulling the trigger would expel a blast of air which was able to topple a house of cards from about 40 feet. More usefully, when fired from close range at a friend's ear it was fully capable of rupturing their eardrum.For some reason, Whammo no longer markets the Air-Blaster.