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Poster tagline: WARNING! BEWARE THEIR STARE! THE MANAGEMENT WILL SUPPLY YOU FREE WITH SPACE SHIELD EYE PROTECTORS TO PREVENT YOUR ABDUCTION INTO OUTER SPACE!!! Granted, it would be good stuff to screen at a party, while taking some stimulants, but I don't believe that even then the audience will still be enjoying it after an hour. Even considering the year it was made, when the naivety of the 1950s was already leaving cinema screens for good, this is an extremely bad film. A spaceship carrying bald aliens with elfin pointy ears, led by a woman who looks like Nefertiti lands somewhere off the coast of Long Island to "harvest" Earth women because all the women on their planet have died off, and the aliens need to reproduce. Into this mix comes a downed human pilot who has a machine for a brain and about whom his creator, a professor, fears that a negative experience could turn him into a Frankenstein monster with a desire to kill. So for the whole film, "Frankenstein" staggers around for several kilometres, killing someone here and there, while the aliens abduct women, who are cast in the role of passive cowards, incapable of resisting. Since we are in the 1960s and the sexual revolution is in its embryonic stages, there must be a swimsuit promenade (for one of the captives), an occasional rock 'n' roll banger, and one scene that alternates between night and day, depending on where the camera is – the director doesn't care. Then there are the haphazard proportions of the inside of the rocket and the view from the outside, and I haven't even mentioned the "monster" (a guy with a skull on his head and a gorilla skin) locked in the rocket and used against rebellious captives. Because the director's inability to sustain the material for 80 minutes is considerable, a good third of the runtime is filled with uninteresting cut-up period footage depicting military equipment, and everything is presented so blandly and uninterestingly that the guilty pleasure potential is completely unfulfilled.

Poster tagline: CRAWLING, SLIMY THINGS TERROR-BENT ON DESTROYING THE WORLD!!! Everything is bad. The filmmakers took Heinlein's novel “The Puppet Master”, deboned it and screwed-up whatever was left. The director didn't even bother with anything that could have visually refreshed all that babble. The whole film revolves around the fact that remote-controlled alien humans attach these black, slimy worms to the necks of Earthlings to bring their victims under their mental control, but even when the actors are explicitly looking at them, with amazement in their eyes, the viewer doesn't see the attached creatures because there was no budget for that. Visually, the film is quite repulsive, the camera sometimes chooses impossible angles (someone must have been playing Orson Welles), the whole set consists of one rocket, surrounded by scaffolding and several half-empty rooms, and the cherry on top are the completely unknown and unlikeable actors, who overact with gusto. Inside the spaceship, with the floating vapour, the white-bearded Methuselah and the crawling lumps with antennae, only the toughest can survive. One star for the only memorable scene, when the camera follows the gaze of a worm crawling on its victim and the viewer seems to see the surroundings through its eyes.

Poster tagline: ONE DAY AFTER A MILLION YEARS IT COME OF OUT HIDING TO... KILL, KILL, KILL!!! I'm astonished. A catchy title, and enticing advertising campaign and posters, but the monster itself plays only second or third fiddle. I really don’t like it when filmmakers make fools out of viewers. That said, in terms of filmmaking, there is nothing much to complain about. Despite the genre classification, this is no cheap B-movie at first glance – expensive, lavish sets with stacked herds of buffalo, multiple extras and impressive Mexican realism, all shot in widescreen cinemascope, only the monster has wandered off somewhere. In the 80-minute runtime, it appears for the first time after a full hour, and until then it’s not even mentioned in the slightest. On the contrary, they deal over and over again with a love triangle, the main character's problems with finding a herd of cattle, all with rustling eavesdropped dialogues. Granted, the last twenty minutes, when the stop-motion animated dinosaur doesn't leave the screen, improves the impression with its appealing action concept, but overall it's not a hit. If you want to experience a really impressive unusual crossover of prehistoric fauna vs. dirty Mexicans, choose The Valley of Gwangi, still alive thanks to Harryhausen's effects, while this film by Rodríguez is deservedly gathering dust.

Poster tagline: THE FANTASTIC NIGHT OF TERROR THAT MENACED THE FATE OF THE WORLD! SIGHTS TOO WEIRD TO IMAGINE! DESTRUCTION TOO MONSTROUS TO ESCAPE!!! This film, more than any other, confirms the rule that the more enticing and exalted the posters, the dumber the film. The premise, a Martian woman and her deadly robot terrorize a small hotel somewhere in the Scottish Highlands in order to capture the male race that has become extinct on Mars, is straight out of Ed Wood's pen, but the potential for guilty pleasure entertainment is considerable, so I wouldn't be as harsh in my assessment as my colleagues here. There is, for example, the scene when they introduce the powers of the robot, which evaporates a tree, a tractor and a barn with laser beams, or the hypnosis scene, and, in fact, all the moments when the actress in the role of the martian with a serious face recites her threats. The way the film takes itself terribly seriously, the way the actors passionately deliver their lines, the deadly serious themes that are dealt with (the desire for family, the fear for one's fellow man, the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of the whole), all against the backdrop of the "threat" of a woman in a leather coat and a robot, who moves slowly like a snail and looks like a refrigerator with a light bulb for a head; all this, and the idea that people really experienced it in the cinema 60 years ago, takes on a kind of Dadaist dimension. And that’s exactly what I enjoy in films like this. Moreover, visually it was quite cute, the model of the flying saucer was adorable, its landing was pretty good and the overall theatrical stylisation (one house, a couple of trees around and a glowing spaceship) didn't bother me, on the contrary, I quite enjoyed it. So I give it a merciful 3*, even though I may end up roasting in "critics hell" :o)

Poster tagline: HE COMES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! A DEAD MAN STALKS HIS PREY! SO TERRIFYING ONLY SCREAMS CAN DESCRIBE IT! HORROR THAT CAN HAPPEN NOW... TO YOU! Taken through the lens of a viewer of the time, it must be said that this horror B-movie, so popular overseas, still deserves its reputation today. At the time it was released, censor and audience circles were concerned about the increasing violence shown in cinemas, and this particular film was held up as a deterrent, something that famed producer Sam Katzman was not too worried about. The killings (I counted seven in total) are captured subtly for our time, rather hinted at or through shadows. Strangulation, double stabbing, killing with a strong fist blow, breaking a spine (accompanied by a nice naturalistic crunch), all this won't scare a hardened viewer today, but in its time it must have caused a stir. The outline of the plot is properly pulp – a gangster, with the help of a German doctor, kidnaps people and replaces half of their brain with a device that allows him to control the person remotely like a puppet to carry out his "mission": killing inconvenient people. It's guilty pleasure especially in the last third, when the plot escalates, and for me personally it's always a joy to see my favourite charismatic, sci-fi and horror B-movie star of the time, Richard Denning. The execution is quite inventive and imaginative in places; in short, I have nothing to complain about here :o)

Poster tagline: HIS SECRET POWER MENACED THE WORLD!!! I watched the coloured version. The potential for fun is there, after all, the synopsis isn't entirely bad: a rocket crashes in Santa Monica with an alien who becomes invisible when he takes off his spacesuit and is only able to communicate through a Morse code. The problem is that it's all so stupidly executed. The beginning is interspersed with one quick shot after another, with the actors communicating coordinates in rapid succession, five, ten, twenty times, and by the time it's about ten minutes in, you start banging your head against the screen in despair. Then there’s twenty minutes of silly dialogue planning what to do next, and when the chase on the construction site comes up, the obvious symptom is revealed in all its glory: they are running all the time! Like Forrest Gump, from one place to another: a construction site, an observatory; it actually doesn’t matter where. They run not only in the laboratory, where the viewer is also treated to a few special effect sequences with the alien helmet floating in the air with the help of a front projection, or a key being pulled out of a lock, otherwise all the effects – the interaction of the undressed alien with the environment – are reduced to something invisible opening a door, moving a chair or a curtain, turning a doorknob, and, watch out, carrying a woman in the air, which is the only really good shot where the production team overdid themselves. The actors are acting, or rather running, kind of bored and the only one who’s really enjoying it is the dog constantly wagging its tail happily, I guess the director promised it a bone :o)

Poster tagline: SEE HOW IT WILL HAPPEN... IN YOUR LIFETIME!!! A superb achievement, very serious, almost as technically proficient as the legendary Destination Moon, the film that kick-started the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1950s, and with a sensible plot that even raises philosophical questions about the meaning and significance of space conquest. The special effects are more than appropriate for their time, whether it's the movement of astronauts in space, the depiction of weightlessness (here again humorously overcome by magnetic boots), or the depiction of the deformation of the human face in a state of overload when reaching space speed. The space station is in the shape of a fairground spinning wheel, something Kubrick would use 13 years later in his sci-fi opus. I was amused by the scene of the astronauts' lunch with pills of different colours that replaced meat, vegetables, coffee, etc. (with signs indicating the each kind), during which I remembered the "amaroons" of Polák's The Visitors, or the funny pre-flight communication with relatives and lovers via a telebridge. The actors were fine, every single one of them, but the one I enjoyed the most was Phil Foster as a good-natured non whiner. Of course, this film has to be judged by the optics of the time, of the as yet acquired knowledge of the cosmos, so you have to turn a blind eye to the fact that Mars has an atmosphere with clouds and snow, and other such "niceties". I can wholeheartedly recommend this fine sci-fi flick even to those who are just starting out in this era of cinema.

Poster tagline: THE SCIENCE-MONSTER THAT COULD DESTROY THE WORLD!!! The technical aspects and overall concept are cute and even funny in some parts. Particularly in the middle passage, after the boy's disappearance, the pleasantly naive effects, when the invisible Tommy performs mischief on adults, everything culminating in a bizarre bedroom scene with the dad fighting with his son – and it looks, judging by the movements in the air, as if he had some kind of malarial attack. The filmmakers made a short story about the unfortunate influence of a computer on the fate of a little boy and eventually the whole world that originally didn’t feature a robot. But after the huge success of Forbidden Planet in 1956, Robby the robot was very popular, and so he was pushed by the producers into this film, under the motto "strike while the iron is hot". Robby duly enjoyed his position as the main star, the scope of his role is not insignificant (he’s the one who makes Tommy invisible), especially in the final scene, when he faces a shower of rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers, and a fence is not an obstacle for him; he’s crucial for the overall plot. Technically and visually, taking into account the period and the genre, the film is on a decent level (big sets of a giant mega-computer, a hovercraft, a rocket launch, Robby himself) and it can be said that this harmless flick hit the mark for me this time.

Poster tagline: FREEZING HORROR!!! ... AS A LIVING NIGHTMARE STRIKES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA!!! The only interesting thing about this film is its enticing title and poster, otherwise it's an almost unbearable experience. The famed producer Samuel Z. Arkoff probably suspected that it wouldn't be a hit, so he paired it with Corman's (and much better) The Day The World Ended in a one-night-only screening for distribution purposes, which proved to be a shrewd and profitable act – after all, that's how most B-horror films of the time worked. It's not that the 2nd tier actors don't have anything to play, it's just that Milner's direction is really sloppy and what he didn't mess up, his brother in the position of editor did, so that some scenes build on each other in a very clumsy way. And the cherry on top is the monster itself, it’s as unremarkable as the animated tree in Milner's subsequent film From Hell It Came, which can no longer be a coincidence. Unfortunately, however, it lacks that same potential for unintentional fun. The monster spends the whole film peeking underwater, in brief shots of a few seconds, its skeleton is so clumsy that it’s unable to even grasp the leg of a drowning fisherman, and in the final "action" scene the actor has to attach its tentacles to his body to give at least some semblance of interaction. The plot itself is at least slightly enlivened by a detective subplot with a murderer killing his victims with a harpoon, and the character of Dr. King, the head of the Oceanographic Institute, is in physical form a literal double of the infamous "cellar master" Josef Fritzl.

Poster tagline: A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN BY DAY – A LUSTING QUEEN WASP BY NIGHT!!! The beginning, with really terrible image quality (the "hallmark" of the only two outdoor scenes in the film, there are no more), might put the viewer off, but the camera and the narrative improve rapidly as we enter the headquarters of the cosmetics company. The vast majority of the film takes place in four rooms – a conference room, a secretary's room, the office of the company's boss and a laboratory – which is enough for a simple story and you can only dream of some artistic narrative. Fortunately, Corman's approach is quite likeable; the whole story can be taken as a sarcastic poke at the desire of women to be eternally young and beautiful. The costume of the "wasp queen" (i.e. the monster created after injecting wasp serum into the blood of the CEO of a cosmetics company, who craves for an eternally rejuvenating serum) adds a flavour of unintentional parody to the final impression – it looks like a child's Halloween costume with bluebonnets, antennae and a black jumpsuit. Overall, it's not much of a ride, though perhaps unintentionally amusing, as the wasp monster doesn't appear until about 20 minutes before the end, but the likeable cast (especially the interesting Susan Cabot) and the tense jazz soundtrack enhance the overall impression. A better 2*.