Old Crazy Sci-fi

Recommended: 'Keep Watching the Skies'. Not always easy to track down but this is like THE ultimate guide to 50's Sci-fi. This thing is huge. Thank God for the obsessives of the world who have the wherewithal to do stuff like this. One of my favorite all time movie reference books.

 

Check out Ted V. Mikels' Mark of the Astro-Zombies." It's the worst! Actually a sequel starring Tura Satana, who was in the original. Also "stars" John Carradine ... after he died!

Evil aliens plan to conquer the Earth by slaughtering patrons of a Las Vegas strip mall with machetes. Great plan there, evil aliens.

 

Here ya go. Everything you asked for:



(Not really low budget, though.)

 

I didn't know there was a sequel to Astro-Zombies. Really the original is terrible. Poor John Carradine spouts pseudo-science babble while he sorts screws into little drawers. Then he and Tura Satana drive around in a station wagon with an antenna trying to pick up signals. It's just stultifyingly dull from start to finish. The only good bits are that the alien wears a snappy corduroy suit and the famous scene where he runs out of juice so he has to walk around with a flashlight pointed at his forehead.

I think Ted was better suited to the Sexploitation genre. Doll Squad and Girl in Gold Boots are his best movies, but glutton that I am, I will have to check out this 'Mark' movie. Thanks for the heads up.

 

I adore Ted's work. Be absolutely certain to get a DVD of Doll Squad and listen to Ted's director's commentary. It's even more hilarious and inane than his films. The entire commentary is basically a description of what you're seeing on the screen:

"Here comes Tura!"

"Ooooh ... she just kicked him in the head!"

"Here's Tura again."

"Now it's night."

"He's putting more bullets in his gun."

"Wow! Look at Tura!"

And on and on (and ON!) it goes for the entire movie.

And wait'll you see how they got a dead John Carradine to reprise his original Astro-Zombies role in the sequel. You will not believe your eyes!

 

Galaxina

 

The mid 50’s through the early 60’s spawned some real doozies. They are hilariously honest and I love them. The more bizarre the better.

 

Zardoz (1974)

 

Zardoz Trailer

 

Another Mill Creek doozy I have that might be up your alley is Classic Sci-Fi TV. A 12 disc set with 150 episodes of classic sci-fi shows and serials. Over 60 hrs!Blast off with the likes of Johnny Jupiter, Space Angel, Radar Men From the Moon, Captain Z-Ro, Flash Gordon, Rocky Jones Space Ranger and lots more...and no, I do not work for Mill Creek.

Got mine at Wal-Mart for around 10 bucks.

 

Check out Blood Freak. It's probably the only sci-fi/horror film that dares to explore the hazards of combining marijuana addiction with arcane poultry experiments. Unbelievable!

 

If you're looking for a parody of the space opera genre that's all great fun on its own, I highly recommend The Ice Pirates.

 

Just watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. Most of the movies are even better with the commentary overlay.

 

I have both the hardcover of this (which yes, weighs a ton)
and the e-book. Get the e-book (Kindle)...it's only $3.99
on Amazon, which is a steal.
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Watchin...65809&sr=8-1&keywords=Keep+Watching+the+Skies

 

At the time Flash Gordon had effects that were fairly good and not really what I would refer to as low budget. As a serial, it had one of the higher budgets out there.

Planet of the Vampires except for it’s predictable O. Henry/Twilight Zone twist remains one of Bava’s masterpieces. Yes, it’s low budget but it’s amazing how innovative Bava and his team were given the budget they had to work with. You are on target there is an eerie quality that transcends its limitations.

Space:1999 had, as you point out, lousy science but the stories were surprisingly downbeat many times with strong performances and visual effects (for the time)from 2001 veteran Brian Johnston.

The second season took everything that worked and threw it away in favor of Fred Frieberger’s cheesy concepts. The only good thing that Frieberger did was introduce Maya but at the expense of Barry Morse’s character.

 

That's the first example I thought about. It's bad, so bad that gets SciFi turned into a comedy making it actually funny .

 

Another weird, campy and 70's fashion looking movie. Both the plot and the look is pretty hilarious right from the beginning. I have the Region B Arrow release, it got a 4K scan and restoration and it looks pretty good.
Another movies that I think can qualify are Inseminoid (Horror Planet (1981) - IMDb ) , Xtro (Xtro (1982) - IMDb ) or Without Warning ,the poster says it all about the plot (Without Warning (1980) - IMDb ).

 

The second season of "Space: 1999" was a mess, but I wouldn't put the blame solely on Fred Frieberger. Most of the problems were a result of meddling from the suits in ITC's NY office.

People need to know that ITC had cancelled the series after the first season. Frieberger coming on and creating the Maya character is the only reason the second series was green-lit at all.

It was also ITC NY that forced the producers to use all the cheesy rubber-suited monsters, and the reduced budgets is why they needed to split the cast to film episodes concurrently.

Losing Barry Morse did suck too, as Bergman was my favorite character. I remember being very disappointed when I saw my first second season episode (and that feeling just kept getting stronger as the season progressed).

No teaser opening...no Barry Gray music...no Barry Morse...mostly new cast in mostly new sets...

Bleah!

There are still a few half-way decent episodes, but the majority are pretty dire.

The producers of the second-season bluray set included a re-edited and re-scored version of the episode "Seed of Destruction" to make it resemble a first season adventure.

The moody Barry Gray score helps immensely and makes the show a bit more palatable.

An excerpt of the episode is up at Youtube:

 

The color on that one still grabs me as do the sound effects. Perfect flying saucer spacecraft, too. The scenes of the underground Krell city would be re-used ten years later for The Time Tunnel and Robby The Robot appeared in an episode of Lost In Space as I recall.

 

And then there's the infamous Galaxy Of Terror.

Galaxy of Terror - Wikipedia

 

Journey To The Seventh Planet

with the ubiquitous John Agar. Sort of a cheesy Solaris with models.

 

One of my favourites is Silent Running

 

The gun is good..the ***** is bad!

 

While the suits and others did their damage to the series, it was the inept writing and u credited rewriting that Freiberger did to the scripts that largely contributed to a lackluster season. The only good concept that Friebeeger came up with was Maya and even that was derived from needing a “Spock” styled alien among the crew. There are maybe three good episodes during season two and those were largely from scripts written prior to Frieberger arriving. Still, season two is as almost as much cheesy fun as season three of Star Trek.

 

Barbarella - cheap effects, strange story line, crazy costumes, and lots of a to die for semi nude Jane Fonda!