Review of The Cape Canaveral Monsters

During the cold weather months, I would come home from school and hit the books for hours of intense homework. NOT!! Instead, I would watch channel 11 WPIX in the New York market. Day after day I would waste valuable time watching their afternoon lineup of mindless shows starting with Popeye and ending with F-Troop. During the commercials, the booth announcer for WPIX would read a promotional trailer showing two disheveled grownups in jumpsuits, a woman with a grimy smudged face and an older man with his arm missing. The booth announcer's voice underneath tells the audience as follows," THE CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS will be on Chiller this Saturday night at 8:30." The title alone captured my attention. I was always fascinated with space exploration and anticipated with excitement those rocket launches from Cape Canaveral. Chiller is going to present monsters and space travel I can hardly wait. Our movie begins with a middle-aged couple relaxing on a beach. A gaunt 50-year-old male puffing on a pipe as his female counterpart comes towards him after a swim. They pack up and drive away as two bright orbs float into the car causing the vehicle to crash. Two stark figures are dead and bloodied. I noticed, even as a 7-year-old what appears to be a mannequin arm hanging over the car door. The orbs meld with the dead humans but the male, Hauron (Jason Johnson) forgot to take his severed arm as the dominating female Nadya (Katherine Victor) tells him to take it back to the cave and she will sew it on. Amputation alone is tough to witness at that tender age, but I must keep watching for more gore if any. Meanwhile, back at Cape Canaveral central headquarters. The scientists are baffled. After each unmanned launch, the rocket ship would explode. Our resident scientists Tom Wright (Scott Peters) and Sally Markham (Linda Connell) with the oversized spectacles to make her look more ridiculous have an attraction towards each other, much to the objection by the head scientist Dr. Von Hoften (Billy Greene). Despite obvious flaws in the set and continuity issues, for example, mountains and rough terrain which does not exist in the State of Florida. The issue of Hauron's arm, which you could use as a drinking game when it appears on and when it's torn off. Sally's oversized glasses with no lenses are obvious to the naked eye. Oh, by the way, get that woman, Nadya. A washcloth. As for the acting, Billy Greene's overexaggerated accent was annoying as the discerning head Scientist. Deaths do occur during the movie but are not actually shown, i.e. Amputation of body parts. As for the players in this film, Old man Wesson played by Brian Wood tries to steal scenes but comes across as farcical. The sheriff (Lyle Felisse) looks more like a big city crook than a small-town chief deputy. Billy Greene (Dr. Von Hoften), as the head of the space launches, has a European accent as good as mine. The only decent performances goes to our two diabolical aliens. Katherine Victor plays a strong woman. Very formidable and demanding. As I viewed this movie recently, over a span of 50 plus years, I noticed that this story was plagiarized in a Star Trek episode entitled RETURN TO TOMORROW where alien forms take over the human body in the same manner. It's a bad movie with all of the elements. Poor lighting, sketchy editing, stock footage, and poor music selection. But it has a good flow as the scenes and dialogue didn't drag along. It's probably writer-director Phil Tucker's best work which doesn't say much. Makes you wonder if Ed Wood and Phil were classmates in Film school and both finished at the bottom of their class.