The Cape Canaveral Monsters

In preparation of an invasion from outer space two aliens named "Hauron" (Jason Johnson) and "Nadja" (Katherine Victor) inhabit the bodies of a young couple and proceed to carry out their orders to sabotage rocket research at Cape Canaveral. However, after a series of inexplicable rocket failures a young scientist named "Tom Wright" (Scott Peters) begins to have suspicions about possible interference from sinister forces and proceeds to check it out. With him in his inspection of the local area is his girlfriend "Sally Markham" (Linda Connell) who also happens to be the daughter of the lead scientist in charge. But what neither Tom nor Sally fully comprehend is just how sophisticated these aliens are and how inhuman they can be. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was definitely a grade-B, sci-fi film from start to finish which pretty much had nothing novel or original to show for its efforts. Talk about a paint-by-numbers picture. Likewise, the fact that this was a made-for-television movie didn't help much in that regard either. It was all pretty boring. That said I have rated this film accordingly. Below average.

Cape Canaveral Monsters, The (1960)

* (out of 4)

A couple aliens from an unknown planet come to Earth where they cause a young couple to crash their car. The aliens then take over their bodies with plans to destroy a place where they are setting off missiles. The aliens are against the missiles so they begin to shoot them out of the sky so it's up to a couple other teens to try and save the day. Rumor, myth or truth, it's said that director Phil Tucker attempted suicide after the horrible reviews of his film ROBOT MONSTER. Who knows how much of that is actually true but this thing here is just about as bad. Those art house crowds would be best to stay away from this thing but if you enjoy bad movies then this one here is about as bad and as stupid as you can get. For starters, the plot makes very little to no sense because the screenplay, also by Tucker, never takes any time to explain what the missiles are being used for and we never really get to know why the aliens want to destroy them. The movie runs 68-minutes and the entire story just jumps around without too much logic. One minute a couple teens will get kidnapped and then the very next scene we have their friends, somehow, knowing the aliens took them so they go to find them. There's never any reasoning as to what's going on and this includes some rather silly devices used by the aliens to control the teens. One of the dumbest things is a running joke about the male alien constantly having his arm ripped off. I'm not sure if this was meant as comedy but it does separate this film from countless other sci-fi flicks from this era because the sight of a severed arm wasn't too common in 1960. The car crash at the start of the film was actually filmed fairly well as the camera was placed in the back seat as the "wreck" happened. That's about the best thing that can be said about this film. I wouldn't say this movie is as enjoyable as ROBOT MONSTER but it would certainly make a decent double-feature with that film.

This is a lesser-known effort than the same director's notoriously awful ROBOT MONSTER (1953) but it actually proves somewhat better, if still in no way a good film. It may well be the first zombie picture to receive a sci-fi slant (thus predating George A. Romero's regrettably landmark NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD by 8 years!}), but the monsters' use here is really no different than the various 'alien takeover' ploys we had seen and would continue to see until that particular fad burnt itself out! What is different is that the zombies were rendered so in a car crash, so that the victims are all scarred, bloody and literally torn to pieces (one of them keeps losing an arm throughout)!; their real form, then, is nothing more than a glowing speck which enters the human body through the brain.

The titular site, of course, is the U.S. rocket-launching base and the aliens are here to sabotage their every effort to breach outer space...which they do by shooting an unwieldy bazooka straight at the shuttle (at one point, the man does it while one-armed and hits the bull's-eye regardless – so much for his partner's whining that he should restore his other limb, of course by finding another human donor)! By the way, one of the film's main founts of amusement is the aliens' evident contempt for one another! – incidentally, they occasionally report to their intergalactic superior, who appears on their monitor in the form of a floating pancake!!

At the base, we have the usual motley crew of military brass, rookie scientists and the obligatory German expert, who comes with a geeky-but-cute niece who throws the Doc into a fit by flirting with the young man on his time! The two lovers have to cut loose in order to enjoy some quality time together, meeting with another couple to have themselves a picnic-by-moonlight; however, the hero is too immersed in his work not to notice the static on his pal's radio, which means that a transmitter is being illegally operated in the vicinity (and which, he reasons, may have something to do with the rockets going haywire)! While he and his girl go snooping around, the other two are abducted by the aliens to their cave hide-out and placed half-dangling into what appears to be a sink while the girl is undressed to then be wrapped in a plastic sheet (in preparation for her being transmitted into space), while the boy's body makes for a plastic surgeon's dream as the bruised-up alien pilfers whatever takes his fancy from him – assuming that, if he looks good, he should be less conspicuous when roaming outside!

Hero and heroine are soon in the aliens' clutches themselves, but he manages to escape simply by passing his watch in front of the controls: I have to wonder, at this stage, what would have happened had the leading man not been Physics-savvy! He lands in the home of a hillbilly (who appears before long toting a gun in his pyjamas) and calls the authorities – again, since he is who he is, we do not get the usual wasting-of-time with the hero attempting to make the cops believe his story! Even so, the pace of the 68-minute film is rather slow, being even stopped dead in its tracks at the climax so as to allow most of the cast (including the eminent scientist, who is actually present in some group-shots but not others!) – captured by the aliens by means of a paralyzing gun! – to methodically work out, via mathematical equations, what would cause an explosion from the materials at their disposal inside the cave!

Again, the film is nothing to write home about and yet it does contrive a circular twist ending which was totally unexpected and downright cynical for such a low-brow offering! For the record, this viewing came by way of an old and quite hazy TV transmission that is continually interrupted for ad-breaks (though these were somewhat haphazardly eliminated afterwards).

The man who made this film, Phil Tucker, was one of the worst film directors in history. He was responsible for such travesties as "Dance Hall Racket" and "Robot Monster"--the latter of which was among the films in Harry Medved's book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time". Incompetence, bad acting and crappy budgets--all hallmarks of this film legend. So, when I saw that "The Cape Canaveral Monsters" was also made by Tucker, I had to watch it, as I occasionally like a terrible movie. After all, with over 12000 reviews to my credit, I need a few truly horrible films now and again after watching artsy, foreign or silent films. Unfortunately, while "The Cape Canaveral Monsters" is very bad, it never comes close to being as bad as "Robot Monster".

The film is supposedly set around Cape Canaveral, Florida. But, being a Floridian, I was amazed to see LOTS of very, very high hills with caves and not a trace of a palm tree or alligator. Frankly, if there WERE caves around Canaveral, they'd be filled up with water, as the land is swampy and very wet. The location was about as un-Canaveral like as you can get--short of filming it in Alaska!

The plot involves two bad actors who have stolen human bodies killed in a car accident. Following their assumption of the bodies as their own, the pair destroy rocket test after rocket test, as their planet does not want the humans venturing into space. They also want to collect a few human specimens to take back to their home planet. Two young folks who work for a professor in charge of the rocket program stumble upon these two undead aliens. Can they stop them or is the Earth royally screwed? The story idea is pretty typical of the genre--and isn't that different from Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space". And, like "Plan 9", the film has a lot of bad acting, crappy props and the like. Bad movie buffs will love watching the Professor deliver his lines as if he's suffering from a traumatic brain injury. They will also love the one-armed guy who clearly has his arm tucked inside his jumpsuit! But the overall level of badness isn't uniform. The male lead isn't a terrible actor and the editing and direction occasionally don't look horrible. Not exactly glowing endorsements, I know, but things that make the film less attractive to those who seek out the very worst! Bad but not quite bad enough is how I see this one.

I did not know this science-fiction film from the director of ROBOT MONSTER, which was on the same line, the same spirit, same atmosphere and also the same kind of directing as this one. I mean a not so bad stuff, regarding the match box budget which was allowed to it. It is on the same scale as the Roger Corman's films from the fifties. It is really enjoyable, fun, perfect material for the drive in audiences on saturday evenings programs. It is not a masterpiece, and only the science-fictions fans will appreciate it. We are lucky that ths movie is still available, easily simple to find, to purchase. But, of course, don't watch it at the first degree, it is not WAR OF THE WORLDS....