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Like,
take off, eh.
We
open in 'da outer regions of 'da Great White North der, eh. Better
known as Canada -
the new American Atomic Radar Station #6 near Manitoba - to be more
specific der, eh. (Okay, okay, no more attempts at a Canadian
accent.) The local farming community isn’t very happy with
the disruption the base has caused. (I guess Air Force jets
and cows don’t mix.) To make matters worse, a dead body has
been found on the base perimeter.
Major
Jeff Cummings (Marshall
Thompson) and the
base’s security officer, Captain Chester (Terry
Killburn),
must find out
what happened and dispel the myth of the evils of atomic energy to
the locals.
The
Mayor (James Dyrenforth) and
the dead man’s sister, Barbara (Kim
Parker), won’t allow an autopsy that
could help clear things up. The local doctor (Peter
Madden) claims it was heart failure, so
an uneasy truce is established between the base and the town.
So
the atomic radar tests continue. The idea is to use atomic power to
boost the effective scanning range, so we can keep an eye on those
pesky Russians. Each attempt ends in failure, however, as a
mysterious power drain hampers any progress.
Meanwhile,
an invisible, but very noisy, assailant kills a farmer and his wife.
This rekindles the suspicions of the townsfolk. This time an autopsy
is performed -- and a grisly discovery is made. The victims have had
their brains and spinal columns sucked out by an unknown force.
Cummings
continues his investigation by going to see Barbara. We’re treated
to a nice cheesecake shot as she’s just finished her shower, not
realizing she’s no longer alone. He apologizes for barging in.
While she dresses, he notices some manuscripts on thought projection
she’s transcribing for her boss, a Professor Walgate (Kynaston
Reeves).
Before
he can get much information on the work she’s doing, they’re
interrupted by the town Constable. Constable Givens (Robert
Mackenzie) (take
off, you hoser! Sorry.) is so belligerent towards Cummings,
they come to blows. Barbara breaks it up and asks Cummings to leave.
It’s
too much of a coincidence, that the killer is some kind of psychic
vampire and that Walgate is experimenting with mental telepathy. So
as the focus of the investigation shifts to Walgate, the mysterious
phantom creature kills the Mayor.
This
time the locals don’t blame the radiation, but are now convinced
that the base is harboring a psychotic GI. Givens forms a posse and
goes hunting for the killer.
Cummings
visits Walgate, a likable old guy, but he seems to know a little too
much about the atomic experiments going on at the base.
Meanwhile,
the posse doesn’t turn anything up and is on the verge of
disbanding. Givens pushes them on, but he gets separated from the
group, and is attacked. The others can’t find him, so they head
home.
With
now more people turning up missing, the town council convenes to
formulate a plan of action. Cummings is there, to offer assistance
from the base, but their meeting is interrupted by a loud and
incoherent babbling. The door bursts open
and Givens stumbles in. He managed to fight off his attacker but it
got part of his brain.
Later,
Cummings visits with Barbara to try and deduce what happened. He
decides to go to the cemetery to check and see if the Mayor died the
same way. (The
mayor must have been well off because he’s buried in a large
crypt.) He finds the Mayor’s coffin, already open, and
Walgate’s smoking pipe on the lid. Someone then seals him inside
the crypt. (No big mystery. It’s obviously Walgate.)
Chester
grows concerned for his AWOL buddy, so he gets a hold of Barbara to
find out where Cummings went. Together, they go to the cemetery and
rescue Cummings before he suffocates.
Cummings
confronts Walgate with his damning evidence. The old man is pretty
stressed out by this and has a heart attack. Before he passes out,
he warns Cummings to shut the atomic reactor down.
As
he leaves for the base, we get the first inkling that a relationship
is brewing between Cummings and Barbara.
He convinces
his superiors to shut down the reactor; but something has sabotaged
it, so it can’t be shut down without replacement parts.
Walgate
has recovered and is ready to make a full confession. What’s left
of the local authorities, and the top brass from the base, meet at
his house.
It
seems the good Professor’s
experiments in thought materialization went horribly wrong. (They
always do.) He used electricity to boost his brain output but
that wasn’t enough so he devised a way to drain energy from the
atomic reactor.
That
did the trick and his attempts to "detach his thoughts"
and make them a "separate entity" resulted in a monster. (It
always does.) It destroyed his lab and escaped.
Meanwhile,
back at the base, the atomic reactor has gone critical and it's
slowly revealed why. All the personnel have been killed by the
psychic vampire.
Back
at Walgate’s, the monster appears to have multiplied as they
surround the house and attack. The inhabitants start barricading
themselves in, when the monsters suddenly become visible.
The
monsters resemble a disembodied brain, with the spinal cord and
nerve ganglia still attached. (They
also appear to be filled with chocolate pudding.) Walgate
deduces that this can only be caused by a marked increase in power.
Which can only mean the reactor is still running, and at dangerous
levels.
Their
only hope is to cut off the creature's power source. Cummings comes
up with a plan to blow up the reactor's control room. Walgate beats
him outside and distracts the creatures, sacrificing himself, so
Cummings can get away.
-
- - -
Wait
a second. Did he say he was gonna blow up the controls of an ATOMIC
reactor?
-
- - -
Since
the monsters aren’t invisible anymore, they can be killed more
easily (and
believe me, for 1958, they die real messy.) Each one that
gets plugged, stomped, or axed, dies in an eruption of black goo --
complete with gruesome sound effects.
Cummings
makes it to the base (sort
of) and finds that the creatures have killed everyone there.
He runs, from body to body, as he makes his way to the control room.
(Well somebody does. Whoever that actor is, it isn’t
Marshall Thompson.) He fights off a few creatures and lights
the dynamite's fuse. (Don’t do it you fool!) He
barely gets clear before the control room explodes.
And
Canada is radioactive for nine lifetimes.
With
their power source gone, the monsters dissolve into big globs of goo
and evaporate.
The world is saved.
The
end
Man
I like this movie. It’s as solid as they come and genuinely
creepy.
I
thought the film had one major plot hole until I realized what had
happened. Walgate creates only one monster but for the gruesome
grand finale, there are easily over a hundred of them.
This
bothered me until I remembered from the early autopsy scene that the
victim’s brain and spinal cords were missing. The creature is
described as a "psychic vampire" so, in a sense, it really
is a vampire. When it sucks the brains out it infects them like a
vampire does, turning it into a monster like itself. Their massive
numbers came from all the massacred air base personnel.
The
stop motion effects are really good but break down a little when
they try and split screen them together. I can’t stress enough
about how nastily these things go splat.
I
also liked the different approach
to the Barbara character. A love affair is inevitable in this type
of film but at least Cummings has to work a little bit to win the
girl. It was refreshing that during the attack she pitches right in
to help barricade the house and it's the deputy mayor who behaves
like a headless chicken.
The
film does have a few stumbling blocks. I found it funny that all the
Canadians talked with either a Scottish or Irish accent. (Was
this an English production? It sure smelled like it.) Also
Marshall Thompson must have had a clause in his contract because
whenever his character had to run, his stunt double took over.
Don’t
get me wrong, I like Marshall Thompson;
a lot. I’ve been a fan of his since I first saw him as the young
Jim Layton in Battleground.
As his career progressed, though, he seemed to get typecast into the
same stoic lead in a batch of sci-fi movies including this one, The
First Man into Space and
IT!
The Terror From Beyond Space.
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