****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This is a wonderful double dose of silly sci-fi features from 1959 and 1962, the golden era of the genre. John Agar is a principal in both, and in both cases plays his role in his typical, formulaic, yet understated, way while chaos erupts around him and he takes on various monsters, including one with a "honeycomb cyclops brain".In "Invisible Invaders" invisible invaders from the moon take over the corpse of scientist John Carradine who brings extra-terrestrial warnings from space to the protagonists of the film. (We also get to thrill to many Carradine voiceovers.) The Earth is engulfed in a stock footage war, but fortunate for us all, the brilliant cast is able to figure out not only how to make the aliens visible (it involves a latex bath, in part) but how to destroy them as well. (Whew!)In "Journey to the Seventh Planet" John Agar and friends venture to Uranus in a ridiculously roomy spacecraft and discover lots of hilarious stock footage monsters (I am especially fond of the spider) and a brilliant opponent that can alter nature based on the memories of the humans. It is like a more primitive episode of "Star Trek" featuring John Agar as Kirk. This one is hysterical. It is set in the peaceful world of 2001, which is ruled by the brilliant and wise United Nations, and where everyone is happy and prosperous and there is no more war. (I will pause to let you collect yourselves now: I told you it was silly.) The film was made by the infamous Sid Pink in Denmark, with a mixed group of Danish and American actors. The result is a peculiar spectacle where only some voices are dubbed, It also features music you have no doubt heard in other movies of this ilk, most notably in "Zontar, The Thing from Venus" (also starring Agar, of course.)This is a great little package of early cold war nostalgia, and I recommend it highly to anyone who likes B-movies.
