Our review - SPOILERS
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I have a lot of respect for John Agar who was a real decent “B” movie actor but even he couldn’t save this stinker. Instead of seeing a decent SciFi flick I saw another history lesson (see mobile7’s comments on “Lost Jungle”) but this time I was warping back to the 1960s look of my parent’s house. Shudder. What a flashback. If only I had tuned in that stereo of theirs to Venus.FM.
In a nutshell, Zontar (the Venetian alien) hops a ride on one of our satellites back to earth. Even though he/it claims that Venus is incredibly advanced, I guess all of the Venus-to-Earth gondolas were unavailable. Even funnier is the fact that we spent 50 million dollars to send up a satellite only to call it back to earth to check on its systems. Taxpayers revolt!!! Zontar, who is communicating with a Frankie Valle look-alike via hyperspace hypnotism, is out to take over Earth and to “save us from ourselves,” and give us perfection. Zontar lands our satellite in a cave. All power stops. Cars, faucets, radios, watches, iPods – just like “War of the Worlds.” We next see scores of people running every which way in a small Opie-like town, but not John Agar, our hero (again, think “War of the Worlds – remix), who fights against the human traffic to see what’s up. Zontar, sends out little bat-birds (a.k.a. Injectapods, the ORIGINAL iPods) that sting humans in the back of the neck and take over their emotions. There’s only one bat-bird per human, so if the bat-bird fails then that human must be killed via more traditional methods --- handgun, or having your RCA tuned into Jerry Springer 24 by 7. Anyway, it’s up to John Agar to save humanity, and it’s up to you to see how he does it. Or does he? Booohahahahaha.
Strange scene: Just where was that pin-up picture that the soldiers were looking at through their binoculars? They were in the middle of a desert at the entrance of some restricted scientific facility!
PMM: My favorite scene: Citizens are running amok in the town. An older woman stops a policeman and says, “My husband is in an iron lung. STOP! What should I do?” He says, “We can operate by hand, I think. Keep at it, I’ll get help.” That poor woman had one line in the entire film and the “stop” she screamed was probably written at the beginning of the sentence when she actually stopped the policeman, but she messed it up!
Blooper: There was supposed to be no power anywhere but when the lady scientist woke up from a nap she asked the others if there was any coffee. When they indicated that it was gone, she was going to make some. Sigh. She didn’t reach the kitchen. It’s amazing how much one can scream through strangulation.
PMM: Another inconsistency: All humans that were bitten were supposed to have the biological essence of the host --- a living extension. If Zontar knew that Curt killed batbug with the candlestick in the kitchen --- uh --- andiron in the living room, then why didn’t Curt’s (Agar) wife know immediately as well? Then she wouldn’t have walked into her own death so blindly.
PMM: The creatures on Venus were sterile and died out, and they want to give US perfection???? LOL.
PMM: The real hero of the story was Keith’s wife. She went to the cave after Zontar! You go girlfriend!!!
Motto of the story: Perfection can only be obtained from within ourselves, and it comes from learning, which is why many filmmakers learned to make better Scifi movies after seeing this one.
(PMM) SHRIEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!