Doomsday Machine (1972)

From my favorite movies..

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The movie is called "Doomsday Machine" but the title object barely appears in the movie at all. In fact, almost the entire movie takes place in space, where none of the destruction caused by this machine is made. It features a bunch of guys who go into space. They can't stop complaining about there are women on the ship. Yeah, it's pretty easy to call this movie sexist. Most of this film makes no sense at all. One guy tries to rape a woman and then another guy stops him. The first guy tells him to lay HIS hands off her and beats him up? What am I missing here? Even for 82 minutes, this film is needlessly padded.Even the very end of the movie contains about a minute of nothing happening and lots of footage of two people doing nothing. The movie ends with the last two survivors being told by aliens they won't be allowed on their planet, but can apparently...go to another side of the Universe. Whuh? Speaking of the title plot, why would the Chinese blow up the entire Earth with them on it? There's no motivation for anything that goes on in this movie and it's completely boring. Even the sets look stupid. I have no clue why anything's happening and I hate it. Why are always the worst movies the ones that are so easy to see online? *

The Chinese have created the titular Doomsday Machine Why? I don't know. In response, the Americans change a planned mission to space by switching three male astronauts for three female astronauts. Why? To assure the continuation of the human race just in case the Chinese destroy the world. As expected, shortly after lift-off, the Earth is destroyed. Can these seven astronauts make it to Venus to start a new human civilization?Even my poorly written plot summary makes Doomsday Machine sound far better than it really is. This turkey of a movie has got any number of problems that others have covered in great detail. I don't think I need to write much about the fact that half the movie was filmed in 1967 and the rest in 1972, other than to say that the differences are jarring. Instead, I want to focus on something else that bothered me - the mixed male/female group of scientists are about as unprofessional as you could imagine. As soon as they leave the Earth's atmosphere and climb out of their La-Z-Boys, their hormones immediately take over. I felt like I was watching an episode of Love Boat. The crew can't have been in space for more than 10 seconds when Grant Williams inexplicably takes off his shirt and comments on Ruta Lee's appearance - "You know, without your glasses, you're a very pretty doctor." I HATE lines like that in a movie! Are you so stupid you can't see the woman for the glasses? Like the rest of the movie, it's utterly ridiculous.And then there's the ending. I guess the 1972 crew had absolutely no money. How else do you explain two people in a poorly lit spacecraft doing absolutely nothing? I'm surprised they didn't cut corners more and use a matte painting of the astronauts. What a mess!One of the only things Doomsday Machine has going for it are some really funky, cool 60s moments. The multi-colors aboard the spaceship are a nice touch. The second thing is enough scientific mumbo-jumbo to fill a dozen movies. I don't think any character ever utters anything scientific that makes sense. It's a hoot! Third, I must admit I did enjoy a couple of the cast members regardless of what they were give to work with. Mala Powers, Henry Wilcoxon, and, incredible as it may sound, Ruta Lee give decent performances. Finally, the cat over the wall moment was a stroke of genius. I actually laughed out loud.

Spoiler: The sequel ending with details which no one else seems to know about or failed to comprehend. The film "Star Pilot" didn't just steal scenes from Doomsday Machine, it provided a sequel to the ending.Although Doomsday Machine leaves you hanging with the last two survivors of this rescued film in the add-on sequences, the film, "Star Pilot" gives us their fate. At the end of the rescued, add-on sequences of Doomsday Machine:The surviving couple were left stranded, alone in the soviet craft. Earth was literally destroyed & Venus refusing their approach after having destroyed their fellow astronauts in the US ship. Leaving the 2 astronauts the only option... to find another planet to settle as the Sole surviving human couple.Star Pilot finishes the story by beginning earlier in Earth's past where a group of scientists are taken captive to repair a space ship from Hydra. The aliens (human style) decide to take their captives to their planet Hydra as they also develop relationships.Enroute, they encounter a skeletal pair of astronauts in a soviet style ship from Earth's future. They realize time has passed faster on earth during their voyage to Hydra & learn of Earth's destruction from the craft recording system. This dead skeletal pair of astronauts were the same surviving couple on the finale of Doomsday Machine. So we now know they died looking for a new home planet.The Star Pilot Characters argue about returning to Earth (which was destroyed when it blew into pieces on Doomsday Machine) or continuing to Hydra. The alien Commander makes the decision for them by gassing everyone. Upon arrival to Hydra, she discovers her planet abandoned & contaminated by radiation with a monument which states the Hydra inhabitants have fled on their fleet of ships, seeking a new planet to avoid the pitfalls of radiation & mutation.It leaves one wondering if the inhabitants of Hydra went to Earth (which no longer exists) or found a new planet. The group is left wondering what to do with Earth gone & Hydra contaminated. They are now homeless as well. Earth violently destroyed by a doomsday machine & planet Hydra contaminated with radiation & abandoned. Did the inhabitants of Hydra find a new home planet? If so, where? Thus, another open ending.Is there a sequel to Star Pilot?

I feel like half of this movie wasn't made. You know, the half where stuff actually happens? It's not that I'm against the occasional non-ending. Although I do agree with the sentiment that since the end of The Sopranos, it's been wholly overused, and is a terrible cop out. However, in certain applications, it can be acceptable. At any rate, this movie came out long before then.Doomsday Machine's non-ending fails so badly because it forgot to have anything else! It has a beginning and middle in the sense that in the time-space continuum, it must. But for the majority of the film, almost nothing of any real importance happens. I've seen more happen in a half-hour sitcom than I did in this movie. They announce the threat in about the time it takes you to read this sentence, then nothing, they make sexist jokes, then nothing, they launch them in to space, more nothing, more sexism, one "action" scene, more nothing, then finally the biggest nothing of all: the end. There isn't a single scene in this movie that's worthwhile. They even spend EIGHT minutes of screen time showing two astronauts fixing a computer. And they don't even show what they're doing! No joke, you're practically looking at a still frame for eight minutes. That's how little was going on. Consider the short run time, the already very little that took place, then consider that they included an eight minute scene of LITERALLY nothing to that. This was a final draft? It looks more like half of a rough cut.The one "action" scene in this movie was not only wholly inaccurate, it also wasn't any good. And the fact that they didn't actually attempt to make another scene or two that was at least on that level just proves that this movie is one big NOTHING. Seriously, all it would have taken to get a little more credibility was to have one or two other "dramatic action" sequences take place, and they failed at that. We got one scene that sucked.I'm not even going to complain about the sexism. For one, this movie is clearly camp. Two, I would look at it as more speaking as the attitudes of the time. I can accept that. But regardless of it's campiness, low budget, etc., it doesn't excuse the fact that this movie is 83 minutes of nothing. Sure, no one expected it to be great. But we did expect it to be more than nothing.If it was going to be a movie which could not be taken seriously, it could have at least went to one or two extremes. Either gratuitous mindless action, gratuitous mindless raunchiness, or both. But you get the smallest taste of either. Seriously, if you're the biggest camp fan in the world, you'll still not like this. It barely qualifies as being a movie.