WAR OF THE PLANETS (1966)

A narrator intones this bit of profound philosophy: "The universe is endless and timeless—who knows how it all began?" This has nothing to do with the story which begins on a New Year's Eve in the future as the population of the space station Gamma 1 celebrates with dancing, drinking, and putting on spectacular tableaux shared with the other space stations of the World's United Democracies on video displays, like spacewalk acrobatics done to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," or an array of dozens of astronauts floating in space spelling out Happy New Year like a band at a college football game. But troubles are about to arise. On Earth, people are concerned that Captain Dubois of Space Command has not turned up for his shift. We see him attacked by glowing green clouds of gas, and we realize later that he has been possessed by invisible alien forces, called Diaphanoids; they are referred to as "bodiless patterns of energy" who act a bit like Star Trek's Borg in taking over individual beings (called hosting) for the greater force. A distress call from the space station Delta 2 ends the partying. Commander Mike takes a small crew, including his girlfriend Connie and his buddy Jake, to Delta 2 where they find the crew members frozen in place, not quite alive but not yet dead. When Dubois shows up on Earth, he is said to have "gone galaxy," but he's actually now a spokesperson for the aliens and heads up plans to possess some of the Delta 2 folks and dispose of the rest. There is much more to the plot but I am pretty unsure about the details, so I'll leave the summary right here.

Despite a confusing narrative and cheap effects (green gas is a lot cheaper than making dozens of alien costumes), this is fun to watch.  It's the second of four films that director Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony Dawson) made which were retroactively labeled the Gamma 1 Quadrilogy. I reviewed the first one, WILD WILD PLANET, some years ago, but I'm reviewing this as basically a stand-alone film and not trying to parse out connections of characters or places. The miniature sets, in the Thunderbirds style, are cheap and charming, as are the interior sets and costumes. The laser guns they use are basically flamethrowers. After the first 20 minutes, I wasn't always sure where scenes were taking place but I don't think it mattered all that much. The acting is exactly what you'd expect from a mid-60s dubbed Italian sci-fi movie, alternately serious, humorous and campy. American Tony Russel, who made his name in Italian films, is the commander who frequently fights with his 'feisty' gal (Lisa Gastoni). Franco Nero (best known as Lancelot in CAMELOT) is nice eye candy as the buddy. I like that Connie calls Mike out as a martinet for ordering her about. My husband and I kept referring to Capt. Tice as "big head" because his head looked ready to pop right out of his space helmet. Not suited for viewers of the current generation who take their sci-fi seriously, this is pretty close to delirious fun for the rest of us. In the picture above, Tony Russel is in the center of the crew. [DVD]