Oh man...and I always thought Reptilicus was weird. An Atragon rip-off (at least as far as Manda's concerned), Reptilicus also had some extremely awful acting, dialogue, and dialects that just didn't fit well with what Western monster movies were doing at the time. Reptilicus was also directed by the director of today's movie, Sidney Pink. Journey to the Seventh Planet contains the implicit weirdness of Reptilicus, exceptt, much more explicitly. It is Star Trek: The Original Series by way of The Twilight Zone, almost like an Old Dark House movie that also involves space travel. Take heed indeed: it is a space horror movie, from a more innocent era, long before things like Alien and Dracula 3000 were invented. Alas, we are becoming buried in references. Let's go on this journey and see what happens.
A group of five White Men™ go into space in some indeterminate future, probably the '80s. Thus far in human history, every planet in the solar system has been explored except the seventh, Uranus (pronounced Yer-AWN-oos in this version to avoid the usual giggles). Upon landing, the homogeneous gang are confronted by a cluster superimposed Psyched by the 4D Witch lamp effects, which, in the most jarring of ways, proclaims that it will possess their souls and use them to go to Earth, where it will feed upon all of humanity. It becomes clear that the astronauts must solve the mystery of this voice--and why the entire ostensibly-frozen planet is actually home to a thriving jungle, as well as a village full of lush, beautiful dames. How convenient! From here on out, the crew tries to journey outside of the mysterious barrier surrounding this jungle, with interruptions from the omnipresent-but-intangible alien presence. Up to and including the alien's reveal, there is an atmosphere of genuine creepiness and suspense. This entire planet is the alien's domain, his giant haunted house. The generic heroes generically win at the end, even if they do lose the chance to find love.
What's remarkable to me is that Journey to the Seventh Planet manages to recall such a variety of movies: Equinox, Ghosts of Hanley House, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier all ran through my head as I perused this one. Indeed, there is a full "What does God need with a starship?" vibe here, which is row-row-row-your-boat levels of excellent. Add in some claymation creatures (scratch Equinox, think Winterbeast!) and you've got a recipe for success. It's fortunate that this movie is acted by the exact sort of people you'd think would be in it: chiseled-jawed, empty-souled folk. The men that populate this movie are all chins, fists, and accents. Fake accents. Deliciously fake.
There's humor to be found, too, in the movie's somewhat unusual sexuality. As far as I can gather the women the alien creates for the men are based on ladies from their past. And the men are quite joyous in their desire to relive the good old days of their boning chicks (and certainly not dudes). But this is the early '60s and so every keeps it in their pants, except for tongues. And even then, tongues are not ordinarily kept in pants. What I'm saying is, the making-out that this movie features is amusing to see in action. This movie does try to press early '60s buttons, almost to the point of being an old-guard sexploitation sorta thing. But most of the time you will be reminded that most of these actors are now your grandparents. And this was how they spent their time.
There is sincere gravitas to this movie. The sheer weirdness, often of the psychedelic-colored variety, is staggering, and often throws you out of sync with things long enough to shock you when the alien chimes back in to yell at the astronauts. When it's not being weird, it's a straight-up adventure film, of the same variety that a lot of us grew up with, especially Jason and the Argonauts and Journey to the Center of the Earth. When those movies weren't focusing on the pulse-pounding action, they were setting up atmosphere or impressing us with effects. At least, that's how I remember them--I could be totally wrong. If I am wrong, the failures of those films probably exist in Seventh Planet too. You may still have to disable some flags in your mind if you're fond of "good" variants of this genre, but keep your mind open.
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