And another one for the review books. This time it’s First Spaceship on Venus, a German duesy of a scifi flick. This movie is about a magnetic recording that was discovered to be from a spaceship from Venus. This is apparently what caused the Tunguska Blast of 1908. Anyway, to figure out what’s going on, we send a bunch of scientists in a spaceship off to Venus. They have some problems, and on the way discover that the recording contained plans on how to take over our planet. But it was too late to turn around.
When our scientists get to Venus, they discover that the natives have all been wiped out, but left several things behind, including metal bugs that they used for recording voice and data, as well as power plants, etc. When a scientist slips and knocks a rock into some black mud, it goes crazy and starts chasing them all, until one of them shoots it with a ray gun, at which point the mud creeps away ala reverse footage. At this point we discover that the Venusians had the ability to convert mass to energy as well as energy to mass, and the ray triggered the mass-to-energy reaction that would arm the weapon aimed at Earth to shoot radiation at it. We reverse the reaction, but sacrifice two scientists in the process. One who dies because his suit gets punctured, and the other just gets left behind when the gravity reverses and repels the spaceship from the planet’s surface (don’t ask me how or why, I don’t know).
Overall, it was an average episode. I rate it one extinct civilization’s population worth of empty seats—for the Venusians who died when their science exceeded their control.
Here’s another review for the series: King Dinosaur.
The movie was preceded by a short film from New Jersey about safe driving. It was pretty darn funny. Basically this guy dies in a car wreck because he’s an aggressive driver and he goes to heaven, where he is defended by his guardian angel, who explains how much “watching out” he’s done for the guy. This was made during WWII, because they mention doing our part for “the war” a lot. It’s full of kooky scenes about passing people, cutting drivers off, and running down pedestrians.
But back to the main point of this review—the movie. King Dinosaur is about a planet discovered in our solar system that is very similar to ours. We sent four scientists there to explore it. They befriend a local lemur they name Joe. Joe did some of the best acting in this film. The scientists do some tests, explore the area, and get attacked by giant bees, snakes that growl, and more unbelievable creatures. When two of the scientists take a raft to an island, they discover it is inhabited by dinosaur-type creatures. The main aggressor they claim is “very similar to Earth’s Tyrannosaurus Rex,” hence the King Dinosaur title. Any second grader today could tell you it looked nothing like the T-Rex, and was, in fact, a giant iguana instead. The giant iguana, or King Dinosaur, is the top of the food chain here, as it is attacked by multiple giant lizards and beats the lunch money out of each of them. King Dinosaur only loses when we detonate an atomic bomb on his turf.
The movie ended pretty quickly after that. Despite how bad it sounds and how dry the plot was, the movie was one of the more enjoyable MST3K episodes I’ve seen. I’m a little surprised that this one is not available for purchase, it wasn’t that bad. Certainly better than The Hellcats, which totally sucked.
I rate this movie 4 empty seats, for the entire cast of the movie.
To ME!
Happy International Women’s Day to everyone else.