Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66056 in VHS
• Released on: 1993-09-08
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 80 minutes

Customer Reviews

Killers From Space
Combine Cold War paranoia with a pinch of speculative pseudo-science and a dash of radiation anxiety, shake it in a cheap sci-fi tumbler for 70-minutes and you get KILLERS FROM SPACE.
A very young Peter Graves plays the desert scientist studying nuclear blasts and counting the radiation. When his plane crashes after one blast and he's missing for a few days things change. A big, ugly cautery scar over his heart doesn't explain much, either. Of course, nobody believes him when he tells them there's a troop of ping pong ball-eyed aliens living in the caverns in Yucca Flats, poaching our electricity and growing gigantic beetles and rock lizards....
KILLERS FROM SPACE is goofy, and for all of its campy charm pretty slow moving. Graves plays "astonishment" in every key in his repertoire. The alien outfits and makeup aren't very convincing, but they look comfortable. The big bugs look like... well, they look like rear-screen projections with amplified sound (probably amplified to drown out the sound of the director shouting "Now look surprised, Peter!", "Now look astonished and disgusted, Peter!")
Anyway, it's no sillier than most science fiction. I purchased this one because it's directed by master director Billy Wilder's brother W. Lee. If his name wasn't in the credits there's no way I'd know the two were related. Cult fans should get a kick out of this. The print quality is pretty poor, especially where the dubbed print was near the end or beginning of a reel.

Attack of the hard boiled egg-eyed aliens
According to some, Killers From Space is a great example of a bad movie so bad that it is good; some would even grant it B movie cult status. I take more of a middle ground because, to me, the movie isn't really that bad. Sure, it has some silly aspects to it, but it's a lot more enjoyable than many a 1950s science fiction thriller you can find out there in the wild. Admittedly, the prominence of Peter Graves also helps because I can't help but think of him as a legitimate actor despite a good bit of evidence to the contrary.

As for the plot, it all starts on a bright and shiny day when all kinds of folks have come together to watch the detonation of an atomic bomb - don't worry, they are all wearing goggles, so I'm sure they are in no danger whatsoever; as we all learned on Mystery Science Theater 3000, radiation can only hurt you if you touch it. Anyway, Dr. Douglas Martin (Peter Graves) is flying around above the explosion taking readings when his pilot spots a glowing object below and commences to take the plan into a vertical dive toward the earth. There is no sign of Martin's body in the wreckage, but no one could have survived the crash. Then, shortly thereafter, who should come wandering up to the gate of the local military base but Dr. Martin himself. He comes home with no memory of what happened, but he does have a shiny new surgical scar covering the left upper side of his chest. He soon begins acting strangely, and ultimately he gets nabbed hiding some secret information about the next atomic test under a rock in the desert. In with the truth serum, and out comes a story of aliens with hard-boiled eggs for eyes breeding a zoo of genetically mutated super-sized critters. He insists that the future of the planet is in grave peril, but no one believes him. Thus, as is always the case, it's up to Peter Graves to save the world single-handedly (and, as luck would have it, the aliens were stupid enough to pretty much tell him how to destroy them).

Some individuals have posited that this film helped create a template for future alien abduction accounts. This idea is pure rubbish, in my opinion. Sure, the aliens have huge eyes that seem to haunt Martin, but no E.T. ever looked as stupid as these guys; Martin also wakes up on a table surrounded by aliens performing some kind of medical procedure on him, but the scenes in this movie are by and large pretty laughable. Besides the aliens, the other thing this movie is known for is its whole giant insect montage. When Martin tries to escape from the aliens, he winds up running around in their menagerie - in other words, he runs back and forth between some projection screens showing extreme close-ups of spiders, lizards, and other creepy-crawlies. This scene would have been fairly effective had the director shown any restraint, but these shots just continue for far too long. If you've seen Peter Graves in The Beginning of the End, you will feel quite at home here. In the final analysis, Killers From Space is obviously not a great movie, but I personally don't think it is quite bad enough to be considered a full-fledged "bad movie."

Egg Eyes, Beetle Brows, and Atomic Blow-Outs
Peter Graves can't catch a break. First he's killed in a plane crash and then he comes to half-naked and vulnerable in the hands of egg-eyed creatures from outer space who plan to invade earth--because their own world is dying, so they say, but I suspect they're just really in search of a beautician with a really good set of eyebrow tweezers. O-kaaaaay...

This 1954 abomination was directed by William Lee Wilder, brother of noted director Billy Wilder. Apparently Willie began his career as a manufacturer of ladies' handbags and when Billy hit it big in Hollywood he went out west, traded on the family name, and proceeded to make bags of a slightly different kind. These included PHANTOM FROM SPACE and THE SNOW CREATURE, the latter of which is often said to rival THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS as the single worst pseudo-sci-fi horror flick in the entire history of cinema. By most accounts the brothers didn't speak much.

Peter Graves, very young here, arises from the alien operating table clutching his tattered flight suit around him in the manner of a despoiled virgin and manages to keep a straight face when he espies all this bad costuming. He also does a lot of running: from the police, the military, the military police, wife Ellen, and giant alien-mutated cockroaches and such. For his efforts he is rewarded by seeing the aliens explode in an atomic blow out, which he somehow glimpses from what seems to be a bedroom window that unexpectedly appears in what seems to be a hydro-electric plant. Well, don't ask me, I only live here and I only know it is so.

Bad movies can be a lot of fun to make fun of, and KILLERS FROM SPACE is no exception; even so, there is a limit to the number of giggles you can drain off from this one. The movie is good for perhaps two viewings, ideally under the influence, before you palm it off on an unsuspecting rummage sale customer.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer