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Zontar: The Thing from Venus
USA 1966
produced by Larry Buchanan for Azalea Pictures/AIP
directed by Larry Buchanan
starring John Agar, Susan Bjurman, Tony Huston, Pat Delaney, Neil Fletcher, Warren Hammack, Colleen Carr, Jeff Alexander, Bill Thurman, Andrew Traister, Jonathan Ledford, George Edgley, Carol Gilley, Bertha Holmes
screenplay by Hillman Taylor, Larry Buchanan, based on the movie It Conquered the World written by Lou Rusoff, music by Ronald Stein
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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A spaceprobe disappears from NASA's radar - and then reappears a couple
of hours later in its path as if nothing had happened. Everybody of course
is worried sick, everybody but NASA scientist Keith (Tony Huston), who
claims the space probe has taken a quick detour to Venus to fetch his
outer space pal Zontar, with whom he's in laser-radio contact for weeks,
and who has now come to ... subjugate earth. Of course nobody believes
Keith, even if his laser radio is impressive. Then though the local NASA
lab and the nearby village lose all power - heck, power is even drained
from cars and wrist watches -, and suddenly Keith's best friend Curt
starts to believe Keith's statements were more than the ramblings of a
madman. Then several key NASA and army people start to behave weirdly, and
Curt finds out that it's the doing of small flying alien living mind
control devices. Eventually, Curt has to come to the conclusion that even
his wife (Susan Bjurman) has been taken over by one such device, and she
has trained a mind control devide on him as well, but he destroys it ...
and then kills her. After that, he pays Keith a visit, and the two men get
into an argument. In the meantime though, Keith's wife (Pat Delaney) has
picked up a gun and gone to the caves Zontar is hiding to kill him - but
unfortunately, a Zontar can't be killed by mere bullets, and thus Zontar
kills her instead - which is transmitted live via radio to Keith's
apartment - and upon hearing his wife die, he rushes over to the caves
with a laser gun to kill Zontar - even if it kills him as well. It
Conquered the World, the Roger Corman film Zontar the Thing
from Venus was based on, is certainly not one of Corman's better
films, but a somewhat enjoyable piece of 1950's low budget drive-in
paranoia science fiction. Zontar the Thing from Venus was made 10
years later for television, and the problem of this movie is that it
doesn't even try to improve over the 1950's original. The budget here
seems even tighter, and thus the necessary special effects look even
cheaper, all the action sequences are badly shot and sloppily edited, none
of the narrative inconsistencies of the original film were ironed out, and
while It Conquered the World
was at least a document of its time, Zontar the Thing from Venus is
nothing but a lazy rehash of a long-gone era. Really not worth your time!
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