Customer Reviews

Elvira's Movie Macabre: The Doomsday Machine

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

"The Doomsday Machine" is a dreadful sci-fi thriller set in the future year of 1975. Essentially, the Chinese develop a nuclear weapon that can rupture all the faults of the earth. In a bit of forward thinking, the US government alters a seven man space mission to Venus to add three women to the crew, enabling continuation of the human species after nuclear Armageddon. The film is hilariously cheap: numerous completely different models represent the spacecraft; diverse stock footage portrays much of the space launch and almost all of the nuclear devastation; and most amusingly of all, Casey Casem co-stars as the Air Force officer who does the countdown (!) for the space launch. There are various subplots, including my favorite about two crewmembers who get stranded in space after a repair gone awry, who then happen to notice an abandoned Apollo capsule within floating distance. Contrary to what Douglas Adams wrote, I guess space isn't really that big after all.

The special effects are dreadful (especially the airlock induced eyeball bleeding scene), while the acting is mortifying: the reactions to the earth being destroyed are especially priceless. The conclusion is obviously tacked on...essentially the main ship just goes away, while the Apollo capsule gets a voice warning from Venus not to land and a promise that the last two humans are embarking on a new adventure, followed by more stock footage of a real rocket.

This movie has possibly the worst continuity I have ever seen (and I have seen every film made by Ed Wood) and is utterly laughable in every regard which is why it was an ideal candidate for Elvira's "Movie Macabre" series. The host segments are modestly amusing, but the real attraction is the bottom of the barrel grade-Z film itself. I highly recommend this film to connoisseurs of laughably bad movies: everyone else needs to stay far, far away.

Elvira didn't show a lot of science fiction movies on Movies Macabre. One look at this film does a lot to explain why this was the case. Even with borrowed special effects shots and one of the most unimpressive (and thus inexpensive) spaceship sets in cinema history, the filmmakers behind this dud of a film still ran out of money before it could be completed in 1967. Five years later, somebody else decided to actually finish the thing - without any of the film's actors or actresses. The difference is exceedingly noticeable, turning what was a pretty lousy movie into a hopelessly bad cinematic experience. That five-year delay does answer some puzzling questions I had about the film, though - such as why the lift-off procedures of the astronauts were so unrealistic. By the time this film came out in 1972, we had already been to the moon several times, yet the astronauts here did little more than buckle themselves into Lazy-Boy recliners for liftoff. Of course, this doesn't explain why the spaceship completely changes shape four different times as the movie progresses (sometimes it's a rocket and sometimes it's a rotating space station), why the script is so incredibly bad, or why no one mentions the well-known fact that Venus is completely uninhabitable for humans!

This spaceship that changes shape and size is the culmination of the work of Project Astra and was designed to carry seven men to Venus. That was the plan, anyway - until the military learned about China's possible use of a Doomsday Machine to wreak havoc along all of the Earth's fault lines. We don't know why the Chinese would want to destroy the Earth; apparently, it's just one of those "you know those Red Chinese" sorts of things. All of a sudden, though, the Venus mission's schedule is bumped up, important secondary checks are neglected, and -- to the great consternation of the crew - three of its astronauts are unceremoniously dumped for three female scientists - one of whom is actually a Ruskie. It doesn't take a genius for the remaining male astronauts to figure out what is going on here - even though none of them believe the Chinese would be stupid enough to destroy Earth. The resulting crew interactions are interesting, as one of the "highly professional scientists" suddenly grows several sets of hands, one of the women actually compares the whole mission to a hayride, and the whole story starts to turn into a bad soap opera. Things really get crazy when the ship has to start dodging big ole pieces of exploded Earth and the odd man out figures out that only three of the seven crew members can actually make it to Venus. Then, just when something actually starts happening, the original production ends, and you're forced to endure two faceless actors in a dark room doing absolutely nothing for what seems like forever.

One of the very few interesting things about Doomsday Machine is the fact that both Casey Kasem and Mike Farrell make an appearance. Farrell appears only briefly, while Kasem is the communications officer back on Earth (and, no, he never tells the astronauts to keep their feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars). There are some hilarious little treats like the crew's ingenious way of dealing with a radiation threat by basically just hanging a big piece of aluminum foil on one wall and a vivid example of why females working in secretive installations should not wear their hair in pigtails, but you really don't want to expose yourself to this kind of cinematic train wreck without Elvira there to talk you through it every 15-20 minutes. Of course, you don't exactly need Elvira to point out the painfully obvious flaws in this film, but she's just what the doctor ordered for anyone exposed to the Doomsday Machine. It's movies like this that truly show why Elvira was the hostess with the mostess. Who else (besides MST3K) could turn a two-star movie into a four-star viewing experience?

I didn't quite know what to expect from this DVD--anything that's an episode of a movie-related TV show is kind of suspect when it comes to actual movie quality--so imagine my surprise to find that Shout! Factory actually remastered 'Doomsday Machine' from a film print (!), and that it looks about as good as it's ever going to. The DVD, furthermore, provides the option to watch the movie by itself or with Elvira popping up to provide commentary once in a while; the only drawback to this is that, if you choose to watch the movie alone, you're still going to get the occasional artifical fade to black that wasn't in the original film. Since this is 'Doomsday Machine,' it's not as though it's a great compromise to the movie's original artistic intent or anything.

As for the movie itself, if you read the jabootu.com recap (as I did) before watching it, you know exactly what kind of junk you're in for. It's amazingly bad, and I mean that as a recommendation. If you love awful cinema, don't hesitate to get this; it's highly enjoyable with or without Elvira's asides (though frankly, I myself needed them much as a drowning man needs a life presever). Or, if you prefer--and why wouldn't you--get the Elvira Double Feature with 'Werewolf of Washington,' which gets you another entire movie for less than four bucks more.

This embarrassingly awful film, released in 1972, features some fairly well-known B-movie actors from that era, including Grant Williams, Ruta Lee, Mala Powers, and, for some odd reason, musical star Bobby Van. I suppose devotees of truly terrible films might get a smile out of the absurd plot, wooden dialogue, atrocious acting, and laughably cheap production values. I just felt bad thinking that this was the final film performance of Williams, who had actually been a professional musician (opera singer, pianist) before going into acting. His earlier science-fiction films (notably, "The Incredible Shrinking Man," but also "The Monolith Monsters," and "The Leech Woman") and soap operas ("Written on the Wind," "Susan Slade") may not have been masterpieces, but no one should go out of this world with a cinematic pustule like "The Doomsday Machine" as their parting contribution to civilization.

Who didn't stay up late on Saturday night waiting for Elvira to host a movie so dreadful that no one would ever watch it, unless Elvira herself was there to help us along with her own brand of slapstick comedy? Well now we can watch Elvira again and again as we collect her DVDs so we can relive those terrible movies and Elvira's one of a kind charms.

Doomsday Machine is by far one of the worst movies I have ever seen and I collect and live to see rotten movies. B grade movies from the 50s and 60s are really great, but the 70's brought us some films that are just beyond bad. Doomsday Machine is bottom of the barrel entertainment and it is hard to believe that this film was made by professional adult movie makers. I think Elvira had the ending of the film pegged. It is such a tacked on ending, that the actors obviously didn't even want to be in it. There is just a 'space painting' with a voice telling the new Adam and Eve about there next great adventure.

The plot is simple enough, the Chinese decide to destroy the world with a Doomsday Machine. But before they can do this, America launches a manned ship to the planet Venus. Now what confused me (an Elvira) was that throughout the movie, the astronots are in 4 different spaceship models! There is stock footage galore, and the space scenes are extrememly crude paintings that the director probably stole from an elementary school art class. This movie is just plain bad, bad, bad. It is enjoyable enough with Elvira to prod it along, but without Elvira, no one in their right mind could possibly watch this.