Killings At Outpost Zeta, The (1980)
Killings At Outpost Zeta, The (1980)
"The Killings At Outpost Zeta" (1980) (Bob Emenegger + Allan Sandler)
Two separate missions have been sent to establish a base on Outpost Zeta, a barren planet on the edge of the Milky Way, but both in turn have fell silent to radio contact after only being on the planet for a short time. Desperately, Earth Base puts together a third crew of soldiers and scientists to travel there and discover the fate of the earlier expeditions. Upon arriving on the mysterious planet, they discover scattered corpses of the previous crews; now hollow husks with their insides sucked out. But before they even have a chance make sense of anything, they too begin to fall prey to the grim unknown of Outpost Zeta. In the midst of being massacred themselves, they discover their doom to be a bizarrely indigenous species of volcanic-rock monsters. Quickly, the astronauts must organize their surviving members and protect their base long enough to uncover a way of defeating these deadly creatures and escape from the planet with their lives.
In 1980, Allan Sandler and his independent production company made a lump sum package deal with Gold Key Entertainment to produce 10 films with science fiction overtones. Sandler and Co. were paid “X” amount of dollars to make all 10 films; with Gold Key having script, star and final approval. In the hands of a small, talented and efficient core crew of filmmakers (including writer/director/composer Bob Emenegger, who directed 8 of the 10 films) and rotating casts, each film was shot in two weeks; with all interiors filmed inside of an old Bank Of America building that was rented and used as a mini-studio for the productions, and exteriors shot elsewhere as needed. What emerged was 10 independently made and strangely original genre goods deliverers. “The Killings At Outpost Zeta” is one such unique, imaginative and oddly beguiling film that came out of this creatively opportunistic situation. Partly reminiscent of the imaginative and efficient low-budget science-fiction astronaut space movies of the 50’s and 60’s, “The Killings At Outpost Zeta” remains a visually interesting, fun, entertaining and partially intangible genre obscurity. And thanks to the nature of its fun and novel plot, subdued washed-out unique color palette and visual style, its seemingly peripherally pedestrian, cheap and practical/utilitarian but somehow hauntingly iconic production design/art direction (from the spacesuits and helmets to the interior space station and ship corridors and rooms), its odd moods, cinematography, and shot composition style as well as its soft, analogue, ambiently melodic and tonal experimental electronic film score (composed by co-director Bob Emenegger); it will probably drift through the bulkheads of your mind long after you’ve forgotten piles of other genre entries.
As an interesting contextual side note: The two guys who make up the Scottish electronic music act Boards Of Canada must have liked this film as well, because a still taken from it (two astronauts pressing their space/motorcycle helmets together) was used as the album cover of their "Twoism EP". It’s not hard to see why they might value it, as much of their own exhibited washed-out, melancholy, strangely time-trampled sensibilities (as seen/heard in their album covers, video pieces and music itself) are definitely on the same wavelength as the aforementioned stylistic sensibilities of “The Killings At Outpost Zeta”. It is also very possible that some of Emenegger's score was even sampled and used on the "Twoism" EP (especially similar sounds seem to be present in the EP’s title track).
1980 / 92mins. / English Language/ Color / USA
"Without mercy, a man is not a human being." Sansho the Bailiff, 1954