NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT (1967)

In England it's wintertime, but offshore on the island of Fara, the villagers are struggling with a record heat wave that doesn't even cool off at night. Cars are overheating and telephone lines are filled with static. At an inn called the Swan, a gruff and secretive man named Hanson (Christopher Lee) goes out in the woods and sets up cameras that will snap pictures when triggered. The owners of the inn are author Jeff Callum and his wife Frankie. Jeff is struggling to come up with another bestseller and has hired a secretary. When she arrives from the mainland, she turns out to be Angela, a former mistress of Jeff's. Things went badly between them, but she's determined to reignite their affair. Jeff feels the pull but resists until Angela threatens to tell Frankie about their past (though Frankie already has her suspicions). Angela's arrival during this heat wave piques the lustful drives of young bar regular Tinker. The local doctor (Peter Cushing) is at as much of a loss as anyone else to explain the heat. Then people start hearing a high-pitched whining noise, often preceding phone blackouts or exploding televisions. A tramp, poking around one of Hanson's cameras, hears the whine and is burned to death in the woods. Sheep start dying, also from burns. One man burns to death while driving at night. Eventually, the enigmatic Hanson shares his theory: aliens looking for a new planet to colonize have traveled here in the form of radio waves, then take on substance as they try to heat up the atmosphere to a temperature of their liking. They are attracted to light and they drain energy sources, but Hanson, Callum, and the doctor are determined to find an alien weakness and drive off the invasion.

This was originally released in the United States under the much more interesting title ISLAND OF THE BURNING DAMNED. Unfortunately, that title conjures up expectations that this film is not equipped to meet. Despite some potential in the story, budget limitations severely hurt this film. It’s a very talky movie which spends too much time on the soap-opera melodramatics of the love triangle, though all three actors (Patrick Allen as the author, Sarah Lawson as his wife, and Jane Merrow as his mistress) are fine. Kenneth Cope brings some life to the character of Tinker who, maddened by the heat, assaults Angela and is eventually offed by the aliens. William Lucas and Thomas Heathcote are good as secondary characters. But the two biggest names in the cast, Lee and Cushing, are rather bland, and are actually supporting characters in terms of plot (especially Cushing who only gets a handful of scenes before joining much of the rest of the cast as a victim of the aliens). For most of the film, we don't see the aliens, just the whining noise, a really bright light, and the victims clutching their faces and screaming as they die. When the aliens are revealed, they are huge disappointments. Hollywood B-sci-fi movies of the 60s had better aliens than these, glowing blobs that just lie on the floor and pulse. Despite attempts to make the heated atmosphere feel real (it was filmed in the winter), it never really does. Characters are given huge sweat stains on their clothes, but they look like huge stains of glycerin and, except when being attacked by the aliens, no cast member ever really looks uncomfortably warm, let alone hot. The first time I watched this, I kept napping on and off the whole time, so I rewatched it a week later, and only fell into a nap once. If you decide to watch this one, have plenty of black coffee or Coca-Cola on hand. Pictured are Patrick Allen and Christopher Lee. [YouTube]