Horror Double Feature: Killers From Space & Mars Needs Women

Although I was born a little too late to experience the Golden Age of the cinematic double feature – that is to say, the 1940s and ‘50s – I have been able to enjoy the next-best thing, thanks to where I happen to live. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, NYC boasted well over a dozen so-called “revival theaters” that showed the classic old movies, usually in double-feature format. Most of those theaters are no more, and the ones that remain today, sadly enough, no longer show two films paired together for a single ticket price. But those wonderful theaters still remain fondly in my memory. On NY’s Upper West Side, we had the Regency on 66^th St., the legendary Thalia on 95^th, and the Metro on 100^th. Midtown boasted the Hollywood Twin on 8^th Ave. and the Biograph on 57^th. In Greenwich Village there was an embarrassment of riches: Cinema Village on 12^th, the Theater 80 St. Marks, the Bleecker Street Cinema, and the Public Theater. And in SoHo, there was the Thalia SoHo and Film Forum. Not to mention the other theaters that showed old movies, although not necessarily in double-feature format: the Museum of Modern Art’s theater, the Walter Reade in Lincoln Center, the Anthology Film Archives, the Quad, the Waverly and others.

I would like to single out two of those theaters for special commendation and my personal thanks. The Regency was the first revival theater that I ever visited, and I recall that first experience very well. At the time – this was the spring of 1977 – Humphrey Bogart was my favorite film star (heck, he still is!), and so I could not possibly resist seeing the two Bogie films on display that evening, both of which I had not seen before: Knock on Any Door (1949) and In a Lonely Place (1950). It was a perfectly matched double, and before the Regency shut its doors three years later, I managed to see 235 films therein, all in double-feature format, except for the final film shown there, Gone With the Wind. The Regency’s owner/manager/programmer, Frank Rowley, was a true gentleman who never minded being approached, and when he opened his follow-up venture, the red-carpet Biograph, I tagged right along, and ultimately saw another 148 films there as well. So my big thanks to Frank Rowley for giving me my initial, in-depth film education.

The other theater that I would like to pay homage to is my beloved Film Forum, which was situated on Watts St. in SoHo when I first started patronizing it in 1985, and today continues to do sellout business at its home on Houston St., where it’s been located since 1990. My first double feature at Film Forum, on a blizzardy night, consisted of two noirish “cult films” that I’d never seen before: Detour (1945) and Gun Crazy (1949). It was another perfectly paired duo of films, put together by Bruce Goldstein, who remains Film Forum’s master arranger of repertory fare to this day. Thanks to Mr. Goldstein, I have so far seen 1,480 (!) separate titles at Film Forum, the overwhelming majority of them in double-feature format; a film education the likes of which I could never have gotten anywhere else. To Mr. Rowley and Mr. Goldstein, then, my eternal thanks.

There is a certain art in putting together a good double feature. Sometimes, the two films will have a director in common; sometimes, a common actor (as in my first Regency show); at other times, a common genre (such as two film noirs, or two horror films). And at other times, the two films will just seem to play off one another and work well together. And so, in this, the 10^th (and possibly final) installment of FanLit’s annual Shocktober series, I would like to pay tribute to the double feature, and its formative impact on me. It being Shocktober, all 23 of the upcoming double features will naturally have horror as a central theme, but this year I’ve decided to broaden the scope a wee bit by also including some science fictional and comedic horrors, as well. I’ve also challenged myself by not including any of the hundreds of horror films discussed in previous years’ Shocktober columns here. Now, my talent at putting together clever double features surely cannot match that of Frank Rowley and Bruce Goldstein, but I trust that the pairings that I’ve arranged for your seasonal shudders will get the job done in that regard.

I’d like to start things off on a lighter note this year, with the sci-fi horror Killers From Space and the sci-fi laff fest Mars Needs Women. So nuke up that popcorn and let the Shocktober fun begin … and doubly so!

KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954)

If Peter Graves’ character, nuclear physicist Doug Martin, seems disoriented and confused throughout the 1954 sci-fi shlocker Killers From Space, I suppose he has a good excuse. Killed in a plane crash while taking readings after an A-bomb test, Martin is brought back to life by bug-eyed aliens from the planet Astron Delta and forced by them into performing an impossible mission (whether he decides to accept it or not!): stealing the plans for the next A test. Perhaps adding to Graves’ personal disorientation is the fact that, just the year before, he’d costarred in Stalag 17, a product of one of the finest filmmakers of all time, Billy Wilder, and was now starring in a film directed by Billy’s brother, W. Lee Wilder … and it’s pretty clear who received the genes for talent in this family! Anyway, Killers From Space has been filmed on the supercheap, but somehow the lousy FX are strangely endearing. The film feels padded despite its 71-minute running time, with many stock shots of Air Force jets, nuke tests and “giant” animals, but nevertheless moves along fairly quickly and never commits the cardinal sin of cinema by being boring. The memorable aliens, with their pingpong ball eyes and hooded jumpsuits, do impress, and Martin’s method of ultimately handling their menace is clever, in a suspenseful conclusion. Yes, the film is shlocky, but I didn’t laff at it once, and really enjoyed seeing Graves and that giant grasshopper; in retrospect, a warm-up for 1957’s Beginning of the End. Fans of ’50s sci-fi should probably give Killers… a bonus star. One warning, though: The DVD that I just watched is from Alpha Video, an outfit notorious for lousy prints of countless treasures, and the print here is pretty badly damaged indeed, but still, fortunately, watchable.

MARS NEEDS WOMEN (1967)

When I first heard that Mars Needs Women, in the 1967 TV movie of the same name, I must confess that my initial reaction was “Big deal. Who doesn’t? Get in line. The line starts here!” But after seeing how serious and high-minded the quintet of Martian abductors in this film was, how peaceful and desirous of screening their potential victims, how they use hypnosis rather than violence to achieve their ends and save their dying planet … well, I grew a bit more sympathetic. Rather than trying to pick up women for the fun of it, these Martian dudes (who look just like us, by the way, especially after they steal some suits and ties and remove their antennaed helmets) literally have a world at stake when they go out and try to get lucky. We watch the five as they each go after a stewardess, a homecoming queen, a painter, a stripper (played by the appropriately named “Bubbles” Cash), and a lady scientist who’s an expert on space sex (!). (I suppose each of the gals is expected to get pregnant around 1 million times!) This last is played by Yvonne Craig, who, in the mid-’60s, was responsible for tightening the manly hydraulics of many baby boomer boys, in her role as TV’s Batgirl. Anyway, this film tries to be serious, but the dialogue is so stilted, the editing so inept, the acting so wooden, the stock footage so excessive, the FX so lousy and the pacing so draggy that it can’t be regarded as anything but camp, and something of a labor to sit through. Somehow, though, unsatisfactory as the whole thing is, part of me liked it and found it almost touching; probably the part of me that understands how difficult it can be to meet suitable women, and the part that remembers lusting over Yvonne way back when. One final thing: The sound on the DVD that I just watched is pretty bad; you may want to turn up the volume on your sound system ALL the way before going in. And having a few beers beforehand, too!

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Silent movies, mesmerism, murder, insanity, a spooky house, an escaped madman … it’s The Bells and The Cat and the Canary, in the Shocktober Double Feature #2….