One aspect of these types of movies that I didn't appreciate back in the 70s was their relative affordability to the local TV stations who kept me entertained on those late Friday nights and Saturday afternoons (after chores were done). If they'd been any more expensive, I probably would never have seen them at all! As it was, they were a nice complement to the books from Asimov Bradbury Heinlein (et al) and the magazines (Asimov, Analog, Fantasy & SF, et al) which stirred my young imagination, regardless of quality. And sometimes the girls were really cute! Which stirred all sorts of other things better left unimagined... I finally appreciated the value of these movies when I helped run the Filmboard at my university. For every blockbuster movie we could rent (and hope to sell enough tickets to pay for it!), there were hundreds of low-cost titles which could keep us chugging along based solely on the students' desire for a cheap night out. And while the production values were questionable, some of them, story-wise, were real gems.
The Terrornauts would be a great name for a spooky, surf rock type of band. Just because it isn't good doesn't mean it isn't fun is the lesson I've learned today. Thanks as always Terry.
Thanks for reminding me about these poor SF films. I saw them last year on the UK’s Talking Pictures TV channel. They are both awful but do reflect, as you say, the state of these films generally, in the 60s. I always wonder why Eastern European films weren’t shown more at the time as they were so much better. Maybe the mix of Iron Curtain and subtitles was just too much for the UK to deal with. The BBC regularly showed kids’ shows from that part of Europe, however. I allow myself to watch these poor films once, for the craic, but twice is just a step too far. Problem is there are soooo many of them. It is such a pity that filmmakers didn’t take SF seriously back then. These days there are, once more, too many less than good SF films, as they’ve become a go-to for Action film-making, which offers very little to take the medium forward. Groundhog Day was SF in disguise, but it’s premise has become as repetitive as it’s story. No-one seems to want to explore the idea in any fresh ways. Ditto much else. Are there no SF stories out there that contain new ideas or unexplored avenues? Perhaps not. I know it’s a common belief that Neuromancer was the last SF novel to offer a new idea in the genre, but I live in hope that film will offer something else, not just retreads of old ideas.
John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" is one of my favorite novels. I read it back in the 60's and reread it in the 90's. I think it would make a great movie in our current world. His description of the "muckers" has come to pass here in the US. We have almost weekly massacres by maniacs who kill many people for no reason. I believe that New Zealand and Australia have unfortunately seen a few of the events recently. The supercomputer named "Shalmaneser" might be considered as dangerous as AI potentially is.
We rarely have massacres. The last one was a year ago when Christian extremists set up a kill zone on a rural property and slaughtered two police and a neighbour with hunting rifles.
Since "They Came From Beyond Space" was made in England , I think it's a better title than "The Gods Hate Kansas", but then I don't run a film studio. I enjoyed the movie as a kid.
Wow....huge flashbacks to my childhood. I had actually forgotten about Terrornauts ( certainly its dodgy title). You just opened a window in my memory. Back in the day before streaming and 24 hour TV broadcast.....Stations used to broadcast "MOVIE MARATHONS" from midnight to dawn usually Comedy Horror or Science Fiction themed. I remember LOVING this film, quite possibly the childish enthusiasm of staying up late combined with sleep deprivation. In hindsight all i really remembered was Charles Hawtrey and the building being transported and Aliens,which really caught my imagination. Im sure watching it again would be a huge disappointment,but thank you for rekindling that memory.
I have a soft spot for The Terrornauts -- as a kid I sensed that they were trying something and I respected that. (1958 saw a famous monster movie called It! The Terror From Beyond Space, so sadly the phrase "from beyond space" had already been coined.) Thanks, Ter.
@@arcadiaberger9204 The movies would then have mentioned a "Beyondspace." The only sense I can make is that I've seen strange usages of "solar system," "galaxy," and "universe" all weirdly mixed up. Aliens from a distant star might get called "from beyond space" -- though I've no idea what the rationale for It! The Terror would be, because Mars is practically next door.
Hi Terry! Never saw THE TERRORNAUTS, I probably evaded it due to the title. Quite a coincidence concerning this episode: I finished reading THE WAILING ASTEROID two months ago. It would definitely present a challenge as a film; well written dialogue but fairly cliche' characters, lots of technobabble, claustrophobic sets, and a major anticlimactic ending. Then, I just watched QUATERMASS 2 10 minutes before I watched this video. It is very fresh in my memory, which is more than I can say for THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE. Lol.
As awful as The Terrornauts is I was fascinated by the idea of a cross-section of British society abducted by aliens by snatched an entire building with everyone inside! What an unexpected turn of events when everyone discovers they were all drafted by an alien race to learn how to operate a defense base located in our asteroid belt. The alien robot acted as a guide, using musical tones instead of words to convey instructions. The movie has an upbeat vibe, like classic Doctor Who from the 60's, especially the ending since no one knows these people saved the Earth!
That's sparked a dim memory, I think I've possibly seen The Terrornauts as a kid, something about a building being lifted whole and brought into space. That can't be a huge trope in science fiction. I definitely remember, They Came From Beyond Space, I started it just as an Amazon channel subscription was running out and didn't get beyond cracking open the meteorites.
Goodness me ! I remember seeing The Terrornauts on tv way back in the 70s - and loving it ! I do remember being quite impressed by the sets, but as an 11 year old, I wasn't that hard to impress. Overly 'theatrical' acting is a common feature of British tv in the 60s and 70s - you see it often in contemporary Dr Who stories. In fact the idea of being put through automated intelligence tests was used in Dr Who. (Notably in 'Death to the Daleks' 1974) I notice this movie is available (On Ebay) on dvd - just ordered it. Thanks Terry.
One thing I have always liked about British science fiction movies is that they always seem to have larger concepts than the budget can produce. They go more for story than effects and I have always liked that. If you read science fiction, particularly from the 40s and 50s it is more ideas than epic space battles. That is why old-time radio shows in the U.S. like X-Minus-1 did so well. I agree with you totally on the Terrornauts. It is a film to watch, but not really look at. "They Came from Beyond Space" was a more popular (or more shown on TV) so that may be why there are better prints available. The Terrornauts may have been forgotten for so long that no new prints were made. (Just speculation). In my youth, this was one of the first British science fiction films I saw on Saturday afternoon TV.
They're both 100% Saturday Afternoon TV Fodder. Cheap for the channels to get the rights to and just interesting enough to warp impressionable minds. 😀
Exactly the kind of retro scifi I have time for, even if they turn out to be poor. I own They Came From Beyond Space, seen Terronauts on streaming and there are some UA-cam films available too but with the occasional advert you can skip. Got a few lined up to watch. Have you seen 'Moon Zero Two' or 'The Monolith Monsters'. Got those too. Sometimes there are films that I've never heard of, considering my interest in scifi and retro scifi, like Monolith which I actually liked. Watched knowing nothing about it. Scifi shows, books, documentaries had passed it by and I had just not been aware of it over the years. I've seen a lot so that was nice.
I still , after all these years from watching Terranauts, cannot get my head around casting Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes in the film. I sometimes even think it makes the film better , but only in the so bad it's good way of thinking.
Good review, I remember watching the Terrornauts on TV back in the 70's or 80's, the story is quite similar in some respect to some "modern" SF I have read lately
I've never watched They Came from Beyond Space, but The Terrornauts is adorable. I just can't hate a movie like that. More entertaining to me than some $200 million movies I won't mention. With the otehr film, I just figured they must have been inspired by the 1958 title It: The Terror from Beyond Space. That alien didnt' come from beyond space either; in fact It came from marss!
Here is the list of 60's sci fi films we talked about, some you can do a review- The Lost World, Time Machine, Village of the Damned, The Damned, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Mothra, Day of the Triffids, Frist Men in the Moon, Robinson Crusoe on Mars,Alphaville,Fahrenheit 451,Fantastic Voyage, Thunderbirds are Go,Barbarella, Quatermass and the Pit,Planet of the Apes,Charly, Destroy All Monsters,Colossus: Forbin Project and Marooned.
I'll watch this review but ... this is a little guilty pleasure of mine, I find this movie totally charming! As as far as it is from meeting a serious sci-fi script, I really think they stretched a low budget using an arts and crafts approach. The ridiculous tea lady and auditor characters make me laugh out loud and I love the goofy robot character.
I finally saw "The Terrornauts" today 9-23-24. I had to buy a DVD from the U.K because I couldn't find a copy in the US. The DVD includes a 74 minute version with all the scratches and screwed up color and a 57 minute version that is cleaned up considerably. I watched the longer version. I thought it was not so bad. No big plot holes or extreme exposition. The story moves along at a decent pace and the editing is better that average for a low budget movie. Of course the space battle scenes are hilariously low tech. It far surpasses most episodes of "The Outer Limits" that I've seen, even the "monster" was better than most of the "monsters" in "The Outer Limits!" YMMV 👾
I've seen both movies. I agree with your assessment. Many of the theme in this movie, including the plate in the head, have been used in other movies. Wonder if this is where the "tin foil hat" came from. "Forbidden Planet" was a box office disappointment. This made the studios reluctant to put big money into science fiction projects. Science Fiction was viewed as kid's stuff. Wasn't popular with women. "2001" was released at the right time. In 1968 everyone was expecting a lunar landing soon. This made space and lunar bases, and travel beyond the Moon a feasible reality. This was the boomers' future, or so we thought.
I remember Amicus for their Edgar Rice Burroughs trilogy which at the time I thoroughly enjoyed, maybe they have not aged that well, but they are brains out fun (as in they are fun, but leave your brain out of it 😉 )
As a kid I was all in watching low rent SciFi films back in the 60s; there were aliens so it was all good. Having said that, the movies I caught from the previous decade were the ones I was typically more excited about. I don't know if I'll find a copy of "The Terrornauts" (I might know a guy), but I did just catch "They Came from Beyond Space" again a few months back. Quality aside, I do like that Bentley Roadster Hutton drives about while saving the world.
Just checking, but you have seen "Robot Jox" right? It too was written by a Hugo winner (Joe Haldeman of 'The Forever War' fame) and is pretty bad and silly. Although the Tokesatsu-level model work is fun, and its soundtrack is way better than it deserves.
I actually have a copy of _The Wailing Asteroid,_ and I thought the tale was pretty good. It's a slim paperback from the days when publishing companies didn't want to fell trees to print 350-pp SF and fantasy novels. Never read _Stand on Zanzibar._ I did read Brunner's _The Atlantic Abomination,_ and that was so bad it turned me off him.
I normally listen rather than watching so I might have missed something, but why was the cgi segment at the 19:06 mark included? It seems to relate only by the theme of sci-fi. The ringed planet moving in front of the mountains is disturbing...
Only a matter of time, Terry, before you got to this ostrich-sized turkey. 'The Terrornauts' is a proper contender for the worst movie I've ever seen. In a scene of the alien planet landscape, when an explosion goes off I'm convinced the 'puff of smoke' goes BEHIND the red sun in the sky ... in a truly crappy post-production fail ! A sobering thought to remember that probably whilst this movie was being made, just a few miles away across London, Kubrick and Trumbull were busy putting together the special effects for '2001: A Space Odyssey'.
All very well said. I saw "They Came from Beyond Space" on TNT in the early 90's...a rubbish film, ridiculous and embarrassing which is a shame. I felt sorry for Michael Gough...but there was a paycheck!
They likely figured Brunner could use the Hugo to make up for this movie :) "The Screaming Asteroid" was actually written and released twice, the first without a added side-story about a lost Russian astronaut, but wasn't all that good.
The Hugos are egalitarian. Fans vote for them. I got to hand out a Hugo award in Baltimore in 1998. It was a hell of an honour. Brunner totally deserved it for Stand on Zanzibar.
I loved these movies. The old Publix's theater showed a lot of sifi and horror. for 75 cents You watched 2 movies and cartoons. also, remember Latitude Zero and the land or peaple time forgot.
I like what you said about sci if in Europe vs Britain and the west. Europe and especially Eastern Europe saw sci fi as an exploration of a futuristic new status quo. Britain and the west saw it as corny diversions that had movies with lurid posters and rubber masked monster people. Ideas schmideas ; sci fi is something to sell tickets and make money from suckers bored on a Saturday afternoon!😉
I really enjoy these forays into older films which in the day cool, but in this modern era have lost that coolness factor. Maybe I am jaded? Nah, I still enjoy them and feel really sorry for the younger folks who missed out on these gems. I blame Hollyweird, comic books (damn you MCU 😡) and the blood soak glut of the new cinematic paradigm. If I EVER get a bit of dosh, you can bet I will buy as many 2 of these classic films.
I have a stack of Hugo winners that I'm working through but haven't got to Stand on Zanzibar yet. Looking at the synopsis, it sounds pretty good so I guess I'll bump it up the list. I think I'm happy to 'watch' Terronauts and TCFBS vicariously, I don't think I have the patience these days.
I just know "Charles Hawtrey". as a name said by John Lennon as a joke in the studio chatter heard on the Let It Be album. I've seen the second film, someone should have sued for ripping off better films. Yeah, the kids today have sci-fi as a genre of respect and success, we had to deal with B films and zero respect from critics and studio heads. I got made fun of by peers and adults for liking sci-fi as a kid. I'd like to see those folks now.
Appreciate the brain power that you expend on old clunkers like these -- as you say, we should at least appreciate that they were made at all! And I need to find my silver pasta strainer to strap on my head to keep the alien emanations from other UA-cam channels from taking me over!!!
@@terrytalksmovies Around that time (and slightly before), Great Britain had a lot going on in the Science Fiction and Fantasy "New Wave." Interesting time, generally, for Great Britain in the commercial arts (Both Tom Jones (1963) and Tom jones, so o speak.
Network in the UK has Terrornauts on DVD. Their trailer doesn't look briliiant but at least it has colour in it, I'm presuming the film print is better than the one you watched.
I read the wailing on asteroid , i have the first addition. About 25% of the wat through I relived it was the source material for this film, i had already seen this film. Ok book…
I agree that's the one that could have been written better. Joe Haldeman wrote the screenplay for "Robot Jox" and I think he's said he's not proud of it, but you could guess the way that movie would turn out no matter who wrote it.
@@jackbohn232 everybody needs money. :-) Also to be fair, Hollywood has a tendency to take a script and just utterly destroy it. John Varley lost about a decade of his life, writing and rewriting and re-rewriting his script for, “millennium,” and a pretty much disowns it
I think you are quite wrong in criticising this work of great art. I saw it at 10 and it really consolidated my interest in science fiction and science. It has true "cheepnis", as any Frank Zappa fan should appreciate, and is done with a lot of verve.
Both Hammer and Amicus operated on restricted budgets and yet both studios specialized in the Horror and SF genres. These genres often need a lot a money spent on them to make them look good and seem believable. That is where the fundamental problem lies with a lot of these B-movies. Of course, there are some very good quality productions out there to watch and admire, but they remain the exception that proves the rule, I think.
Here's a couple of '60s Brit SF movies I haven't seen and I'm probably not going to make much of an effort to do so. Just as well they are hard to find, I guess. Another helpful episode! 🥲
![A Bridge Too Far - Carry On Volume 4 - Convoy [Imprint]](/img/n.gif)
One aspect of these types of movies that I didn't appreciate back in the 70s was their relative affordability to the local TV stations who kept me entertained on those late Friday nights and Saturday afternoons (after chores were done). If they'd been any more expensive, I probably would never have seen them at all! As it was, they were a nice complement to the books from Asimov Bradbury Heinlein (et al) and the magazines (Asimov, Analog, Fantasy & SF, et al) which stirred my young imagination, regardless of quality. And sometimes the girls were really cute! Which stirred all sorts of other things better left unimagined...
I finally appreciated the value of these movies when I helped run the Filmboard at my university. For every blockbuster movie we could rent (and hope to sell enough tickets to pay for it!), there were hundreds of low-cost titles which could keep us chugging along based solely on the students' desire for a cheap night out. And while the production values were questionable, some of them, story-wise, were real gems.
They used to call them programmers and it works. Not every film can be film-festival excellent. Sometimes you want comfort films.
The Terrornauts would be a great name for a spooky, surf rock type of band. Just because it isn't good doesn't mean it isn't fun is the lesson I've learned today. Thanks as always Terry.
"Terrornaut" would be an edgy sort of term for an undercover agent infiltrating a terrorist group, maybe used by a police agency in the 1960s.
My pleasure.
Agree With Both Ideas 😅!!
Thanks for reminding me about these poor SF films. I saw them last year on the UK’s Talking Pictures TV channel. They are both awful but do reflect, as you say, the state of these films generally, in the 60s. I always wonder why Eastern European films weren’t shown more at the time as they were so much better. Maybe the mix of Iron Curtain and subtitles was just too much for the UK to deal with. The BBC regularly showed kids’ shows from that part of Europe, however. I allow myself to watch these poor films once, for the craic, but twice is just a step too far. Problem is there are soooo many of them.
It is such a pity that filmmakers didn’t take SF seriously back then. These days there are, once more, too many less than good SF films, as they’ve become a go-to for Action film-making, which offers very little to take the medium forward. Groundhog Day was SF in disguise, but it’s premise has become as repetitive as it’s story. No-one seems to want to explore the idea in any fresh ways. Ditto much else. Are there no SF stories out there that contain new ideas or unexplored avenues? Perhaps not. I know it’s a common belief that Neuromancer was the last SF novel to offer a new idea in the genre, but I live in hope that film will offer something else, not just retreads of old ideas.
Groundhog Day was a timeloop, definitely.
John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" is one of my favorite novels. I read it back in the 60's and reread it in the 90's.
I think it would make a great movie in our current world. His description of the "muckers" has come to pass here in the US. We have almost weekly massacres by maniacs who kill many people for no reason. I believe that New Zealand and Australia have unfortunately seen a few of the events recently.
The supercomputer named "Shalmaneser" might be considered as dangerous as AI potentially is.
We rarely have massacres. The last one was a year ago when Christian extremists set up a kill zone on a rural property and slaughtered two police and a neighbour with hunting rifles.
Since "They Came From Beyond Space" was made in England , I think it's a better title than "The Gods Hate Kansas", but then I don't run a film studio. I enjoyed the movie as a kid.
The Gods Hate Croydon would work. 😉😀
Wow....huge flashbacks to my childhood. I had actually forgotten about Terrornauts ( certainly its dodgy title). You just opened a window in my memory. Back in the day before streaming and 24 hour TV broadcast.....Stations used to broadcast "MOVIE MARATHONS" from midnight to dawn usually Comedy Horror or Science Fiction themed. I remember LOVING this film, quite possibly the childish enthusiasm of staying up late combined with sleep deprivation. In hindsight all i really remembered was Charles Hawtrey and the building being transported and Aliens,which really caught my imagination. Im sure watching it again would be a huge disappointment,but thank you for rekindling that memory.
Always happy to trigger happy memories, Doug.
If you're a scientist in a 1950's to 60's movie and your tie is loose, the solution is at hand.
Smart scientists tuck their ties into their shirts three buttons down.
Holy flaming globes of Sigmund, your right.
I have a soft spot for The Terrornauts -- as a kid I sensed that they were trying something and I respected that. (1958 saw a famous monster movie called It! The Terror From Beyond Space, so sadly the phrase "from beyond space" had already been coined.) Thanks, Ter.
Perhaps it's that there are a lot of folks inhabiting a region of space called "Beyondspace", and it's being mistyped...?
@@arcadiaberger9204 The movies would then have mentioned a "Beyondspace." The only sense I can make is that I've seen strange usages of "solar system," "galaxy," and "universe" all weirdly mixed up. Aliens from a distant star might get called "from beyond space" -- though I've no idea what the rationale for It! The Terror would be, because Mars is practically next door.
My pleasure.
Nah. It's just a silly title.
I've added these films to my list, and it turns out that Audible has a few John Brunner books available, including Stand on Zanzibar.
Brunner is sadly forgotten but such a forerunner of the genre.
Hi Terry! Never saw THE TERRORNAUTS, I probably evaded it due to the title. Quite a coincidence concerning this episode: I finished reading THE WAILING ASTEROID two months ago. It would definitely present a challenge as a film; well written dialogue but fairly cliche' characters, lots of technobabble, claustrophobic sets, and a major anticlimactic ending. Then, I just watched QUATERMASS 2 10 minutes before I watched this video. It is very fresh in my memory, which is more than I can say for THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE. Lol.
I know what you mean.
As awful as The Terrornauts is I was fascinated by the idea of a cross-section of British society abducted by aliens by snatched an entire building with everyone inside! What an unexpected turn of events when everyone discovers they were all drafted by an alien race to learn how to operate a defense base located in our asteroid belt. The alien robot acted as a guide, using musical tones instead of words to convey instructions. The movie has an upbeat vibe, like classic Doctor Who from the 60's, especially the ending since no one knows these people saved the Earth!
Saving Earth is its own reward.
That's sparked a dim memory, I think I've possibly seen The Terrornauts as a kid, something about a building being lifted whole and brought into space. That can't be a huge trope in science fiction.
I definitely remember, They Came From Beyond Space, I started it just as an Amazon channel subscription was running out and didn't get beyond cracking open the meteorites.
Farge's helmet looks like a colander. Probably was.
Looks like it.
Maybe he's Pastafarian?
Goodness me ! I remember seeing The Terrornauts on tv way back in the 70s - and loving it ! I do remember being quite impressed by the sets, but as an 11 year old, I wasn't that hard to impress. Overly 'theatrical' acting is a common feature of British tv in the 60s and 70s - you see it often in contemporary Dr Who stories. In fact the idea of being put through automated intelligence tests was used in Dr Who. (Notably in 'Death to the Daleks' 1974) I notice this movie is available (On Ebay) on dvd - just ordered it. Thanks Terry.
My pleasure, Peter.
One thing I have always liked about British science fiction movies is that they always seem to have larger concepts than the budget can produce. They go more for story than effects and I have always liked that. If you read science fiction, particularly from the 40s and 50s it is more ideas than epic space battles. That is why old-time radio shows in the U.S. like X-Minus-1 did so well. I agree with you totally on the Terrornauts. It is a film to watch, but not really look at. "They Came from Beyond Space" was a more popular (or more shown on TV) so that may be why there are better prints available. The Terrornauts may have been forgotten for so long that no new prints were made. (Just speculation). In my youth, this was one of the first British science fiction films I saw on Saturday afternoon TV.
They're both 100% Saturday Afternoon TV Fodder. Cheap for the channels to get the rights to and just interesting enough to warp impressionable minds. 😀
Exactly the kind of retro scifi I have time for, even if they turn out to be poor. I own They Came From Beyond Space, seen Terronauts on streaming and there are some UA-cam films available too but with the occasional advert you can skip. Got a few lined up to watch. Have you seen 'Moon Zero Two' or 'The Monolith Monsters'. Got those too. Sometimes there are films that I've never heard of, considering my interest in scifi and retro scifi, like Monolith which I actually liked. Watched knowing nothing about it. Scifi shows, books, documentaries had passed it by and I had just not been aware of it over the years. I've seen a lot so that was nice.
I've seen them both Umbrella put out The Monolith Monsters on blu-ray a couple of years ago in a double feature with The Mole People.
I still , after all these years from watching Terranauts, cannot get my head around casting Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes in the film. I sometimes even think it makes the film better , but only in the so bad it's good way of thinking.
Agreed.
Thank you for all of the info! I had not heard of these movies before. I did enjoy hearing you vast amount of knowledge!
My pleasure. Clay.
I saw both of these as a double-bill as a kid in the '60's.
Definitely films better seen as a kid.
Good review, I remember watching the Terrornauts on TV back in the 70's or 80's, the story is quite similar in some respect to some "modern" SF I have read lately
It's a golden age for all SF right now.
I've never watched They Came from Beyond Space, but The Terrornauts is adorable. I just can't hate a movie like that. More entertaining to me than some $200 million movies I won't mention.
With the otehr film, I just figured they must have been inspired by the 1958 title It: The Terror from Beyond Space. That alien didnt' come from beyond space either; in fact It came from marss!
Yep. There's no truth in advertising when it comes to science fiction movies.
Here is the list of 60's sci fi films we talked about, some you can do a review- The Lost World, Time Machine, Village of the Damned, The Damned, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Mothra, Day of the Triffids, Frist Men in the Moon, Robinson Crusoe on Mars,Alphaville,Fahrenheit 451,Fantastic Voyage, Thunderbirds are Go,Barbarella, Quatermass and the Pit,Planet of the Apes,Charly, Destroy All Monsters,Colossus: Forbin Project and Marooned.
I have Charly. Cliff Robertson's acting is the cringiest best actor role ever.
@@terrytalksmovies I agree with you there. Alan Arkin or Peter O'Toole should have won.
Thank you for introducing me to these!
Thank me AFTER you watch them.😉
You know you're on to a winner when there's a man with a Colander on his head:)
Always a bonus in any movie. 😉
I'll watch this review but ... this is a little guilty pleasure of mine, I find this movie totally charming! As as far as it is from meeting a serious sci-fi script, I really think they stretched a low budget using an arts and crafts approach. The ridiculous tea lady and auditor characters make me laugh out loud and I love the goofy robot character.
The robot is weirdly wonderful.
I finally saw "The Terrornauts" today 9-23-24. I had to buy a DVD from the U.K because I couldn't find a copy in the US. The DVD includes a 74 minute version with all the scratches and screwed up color and a 57 minute version that is cleaned up considerably. I watched the longer version.
I thought it was not so bad. No big plot holes or extreme exposition. The story moves along at a decent pace and the editing is better that average for a low budget movie. Of course the space battle scenes are hilariously low tech.
It far surpasses most episodes of "The Outer Limits" that I've seen, even the "monster" was better than most of the "monsters" in "The Outer Limits!" YMMV 👾
It has a certain naive charm as long as you don't take it at all seriously.
I love the robot greeter from the Terrornauts! Look like something from an early Doctor Who epusode!!❤❤❤
Looks like the Earth space probe Nomad from OG Star Trek, too.
I've seen both movies. I agree with your assessment. Many of the theme in this movie, including the plate in the head, have been used in other movies. Wonder if this is where the "tin foil hat" came from. "Forbidden Planet" was a box office disappointment. This made the studios reluctant to put big money into science fiction projects. Science Fiction was viewed as kid's stuff. Wasn't popular with women. "2001" was released at the right time. In 1968 everyone was expecting a lunar landing soon. This made space and lunar bases, and travel beyond the Moon a feasible reality. This was the boomers' future, or so we thought.
Until the neoliberalist ideology took over and everything had to be for profit.
I remember Amicus for their Edgar Rice Burroughs trilogy which at the time I thoroughly enjoyed, maybe they have not aged that well, but they are brains out fun (as in they are fun, but leave your brain out of it 😉 )
You just engage a different part of your brain.
I loved this movie as a kid! The food the creature was eating should have been made into a candy or some kind of special confection.
LOL. You could probably do it now in your kitchen.
I love your pedantry about the titles of these films. 😂
Names are important, @Grrurk
Remake please.Fantastic Voyage had a big budget and was a succes, but i know it's an exception to the rule.
Yep, too few good ones and some bad ones that could've been better with bigger budgets and more money.
SF movies from the Eastern Bloc during this time really showed what could have been done. Or maybe that was a bit later?
Russian Fantastika and movies from Poland and Austria were really interesting at the time.
As a kid I was all in watching low rent SciFi films back in the 60s; there were aliens so it was all good. Having said that, the movies I caught from the previous decade were the ones I was typically more excited about. I don't know if I'll find a copy of "The Terrornauts" (I might know a guy), but I did just catch "They Came from Beyond Space" again a few months back. Quality aside, I do like that Bentley Roadster Hutton drives about while saving the world.
You can find them in the links in the video description.
Makes me think, what if Sid & Marty Kroft did a "serious" movie. Down to the reusing of sets from earlier productions. Fond memories. :)
Sid and Marty's output was always fun.
Just checking, but you have seen "Robot Jox" right? It too was written by a Hugo winner (Joe Haldeman of 'The Forever War' fame) and is pretty bad and silly. Although the Tokesatsu-level model work is fun, and its soundtrack is way better than it deserves.
Robot Jox is silly fun, too.
Perhaps "beyondspace" is like "hyperspace", a region outside of our normal universe which spacecraft can pass through to travel faster than light...?
Nope. Not in this movie. 😀
@@terrytalksmovies I may tuck that away to use it in one of my stories, though....
Beyond space is where you arrive when you go to infinity and beyond.
As they used to say on my favorite cartoon show,
"Bibbledy, babbledy, that makes good sense --
"Good old NONSENSE!"
I actually have a copy of _The Wailing Asteroid,_ and I thought the tale was pretty good. It's a slim paperback from the days when publishing companies didn't want to fell trees to print 350-pp SF and fantasy novels.
Never read _Stand on Zanzibar._ I did read Brunner's _The Atlantic Abomination,_ and that was so bad it turned me off him.
Stand on Zanzibar and Shockwave Rider were very influential novels in the genre. Shockwave is proto-cyberpunk.
I normally listen rather than watching so I might have missed something, but why was the cgi segment at the 19:06 mark included? It seems to relate only by the theme of sci-fi. The ringed planet moving in front of the mountains is disturbing...
It was stock footage to illustrate the aspiration of science fiction, visually.
Only a matter of time, Terry, before you got to this ostrich-sized turkey. 'The Terrornauts' is a proper contender for the worst movie I've ever seen. In a scene of the alien planet landscape, when an explosion goes off I'm convinced the 'puff of smoke' goes BEHIND the red sun in the sky ... in a truly crappy post-production fail ! A sobering thought to remember that probably whilst this movie was being made, just a few miles away across London, Kubrick and Trumbull were busy putting together the special effects for '2001: A Space Odyssey'.
Yep the sfx are laughable.
All very well said. I saw "They Came from Beyond Space" on TNT in the early 90's...a rubbish film, ridiculous and embarrassing which is a shame. I felt sorry for Michael Gough...but there was a paycheck!
Yep. Gotta pay the mortgage sometimes.
They likely figured Brunner could use the Hugo to make up for this movie :)
"The Screaming Asteroid" was actually written and released twice, the first without a added side-story about a lost Russian astronaut, but wasn't all that good.
The Hugos are egalitarian. Fans vote for them. I got to hand out a Hugo award in Baltimore in 1998. It was a hell of an honour. Brunner totally deserved it for Stand on Zanzibar.
Every few years i watch these films not because they are goodbut because I can not remember anything about them
They are deeply forgettable. 😀
I loved these movies. The old Publix's theater showed a lot of sifi and horror. for 75 cents You watched 2 movies and cartoons. also, remember Latitude Zero and the land or peaple time forgot.
Latitude Zero is totally insane.
Funny to see Charles Hawtry reading his lines off idiot boards outside the Carry-ons.
Yep. A weird man.
Hawtrey looks like he's reading from cue cards in the scene at 4:24, lol.
He might well have been.
I saw The Terrornauts and then read the book, which unsurprisingly is far superior. I admit I'm a fan of Leinster anyway.
Books are usually better than the movies. Once you embrace that, you can relax and enjoy the movie.
I like what you said about sci if in Europe vs Britain and the west. Europe and especially Eastern Europe saw sci fi as an exploration of a futuristic new status quo. Britain and the west saw it as corny diversions that had movies with lurid posters and rubber masked monster people. Ideas schmideas ; sci fi is something to sell tickets and make money from suckers bored on a Saturday afternoon!😉
Yep. Science fiction was the ugly adopted child of cinema in the 1960s in the US and UK.
I really enjoy these forays into older films which in the day cool, but in this modern era have lost that coolness factor. Maybe I am jaded? Nah, I still enjoy them and feel really sorry for the younger folks who missed out on these gems. I blame Hollyweird, comic books (damn you MCU 😡) and the blood soak glut of the new cinematic paradigm. If I EVER get a bit of dosh, you can bet I will buy as many 2 of these classic films.
I think any era has groovy movies if you cherry-pick the films. it's a matter of hunting them down.
The Terrornauts sounds like a concept ahead of its time.
Nah, but it is solid old school science fiction made on a really low budget.
I have a stack of Hugo winners that I'm working through but haven't got to Stand on Zanzibar yet. Looking at the synopsis, it sounds pretty good so I guess I'll bump it up the list. I think I'm happy to 'watch' Terronauts and TCFBS vicariously, I don't think I have the patience these days.
Brunner's Shockwave Rider is also worth reading. Very influential on cyberpunk.
I just know "Charles Hawtrey". as a name said by John Lennon as a joke in the studio chatter heard on the Let It Be album. I've seen the second film, someone should have sued for ripping off better films. Yeah, the kids today have sci-fi as a genre of respect and success, we had to deal with B films and zero respect from critics and studio heads. I got made fun of by peers and adults for liking sci-fi as a kid. I'd like to see those folks now.
If you could be sued for ripping off better films, Disney would be broke.
I'm from Texas and I get the Vegamite reference. I've seen this film.
Vegemite is the breakfast of champions.
Appreciate the brain power that you expend on old clunkers like these -- as you say, we should at least appreciate that they were made at all! And I need to find my silver pasta strainer to strap on my head to keep the alien emanations from other UA-cam channels from taking me over!!!
Try Temu or Ali Express 😉
The TV network execs in the U.S. still don't like Sci Fi.
Streamers are a little more SF friendly.
I saw this about 53 years ago. John Brunner and a former Bond Girl, there was at least an effort here . . . .
Brunner wasn't well known at the time outside the fannish circuit.
@@terrytalksmovies Around that time (and slightly before), Great Britain had a lot going on in the Science Fiction and Fantasy "New Wave." Interesting time, generally, for Great Britain in the commercial arts (Both Tom Jones (1963) and Tom jones, so o speak.
Network in the UK has Terrornauts on DVD. Their trailer doesn't look briliiant but at least it has colour in it, I'm presuming the film print is better than the one you watched.
I don't know. There might not be a great print from which to strike a digital copy.
I read the wailing on asteroid , i have the first addition. About 25% of the wat through I relived it was the source material for this film, i had already seen this film. Ok book…
Adaptations are often a bit wobbly.
I remember these films, how bad they were. I agree that first film is a better film than the second.
It definitely is. Weirder, too, which is a bonus.
I would suggest that project moon base is probably the worst science fiction movie written by a Hugo winning author. It is really really bad.
I agree that's the one that could have been written better.
Joe Haldeman wrote the screenplay for "Robot Jox" and I think he's said he's not proud of it, but you could guess the way that movie would turn out no matter who wrote it.
I like Project Moonbase.
@@terrytalksmovies I have no idea what to say to that. But there’s plenty of terrible movies I like, so no judgement from me. :)
@@jackbohn232 everybody needs money. :-) Also to be fair, Hollywood has a tendency to take a script and just utterly destroy it. John Varley lost about a decade of his life, writing and rewriting and re-rewriting his script for, “millennium,” and a pretty much disowns it
I love your voice it's awesome
Should I start an OnlyFans?😯😀😉
I think you are quite wrong in criticising this work of great art. I saw it at 10 and it really consolidated my interest in science fiction and science. It has true "cheepnis", as any Frank Zappa fan should appreciate, and is done with a lot of verve.
:-)
I watched "They came from beyond space' a few weeks ago and yes, it was pretty awful 😀
Yeah, not great but strangely watchable.
Totally agree with you.!!
Thank you 😀
TTM for breakfast!
Cheers
Breakfast of f champions.
They travel in terror. 🤷♂️
IKR? A silly title.
Both Hammer and Amicus operated on restricted budgets and yet both studios specialized in the Horror and SF genres. These genres often need a lot a money spent on them to make them look good and seem believable. That is where the fundamental problem lies with a lot of these B-movies. Of course, there are some very good quality productions out there to watch and admire, but they remain the exception that proves the rule, I think.
It's a shame. Japan leaned in to genre cinema and did really well. Toho made a fortune.
Saw this not long ago- it is pretty bad but kind of fun on a (very) slow day.
I can see that. Low stakes viewing but fun.
The Dalek Movies are what?-they are brilliant of course.
I rewatched them last year. They're... ordinary.
Nice classy baseball cap
Thanks. My home-town zoo.
Charles Hawtrey??!! Wow! Were the Deaf-Aids along for the ride?
Huh?
@@terrytalksmovies Lennon, "Let It Be". Preface to "Two Of Us".
Like evangelicals and Scientologists 😂😂😂😂
Yep. 😉
It looks very Doctor Who.
In a very sketchy way, yes.
The terranauts isnt that bad..... What planet are you from?
The one where UA-cam comments are much less clichéd. 😉😀
They came from beyond space wasn't bad either
Have you even seen these movies
Yep.
wilfully ignorant
Unnecessarily cryptic.
Here's a couple of '60s Brit SF movies I haven't seen and I'm probably not going to make much of an effort to do so. Just as well they are hard to find, I guess. Another helpful episode! 🥲
Thanks.
I always wear a colander on my head just in case.
You need to add a silver plate to the colander. Rookie mistake.
i'd say juan miro ....refering to the stylish pictures
Miro works, too.