The Terrornauts (1967)

I'll tell you why so serious

Admirable film.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The Killer Tomatoes have nothing on the Terrornauts. This could very well be the worst movie ever made. I think among my favorite moments is the flimsy space fortresses appendages flopping all around during the something-less-than-epic space battle. It's also a very well known fact that any good attacking spaceship should have a flip open front end and weak red light as a weapon. Luckily, our intrepid space travelers have their custom swim caps to see them through. Particularly impressive, the aluminum funnel budget. Valuable lessons of science and space to be gleaned from The Terrornauts: Not only does fire burn in space, but the laws of temperature and gravity still apply. Smoke goes up, spaceship parts fall down. Finally, carrying incredible feminist overtones, one learns that a woman is definitely required to properly fire a defensive space missile. Good clean fun for the whole family.

This movie is one of my childhood memories. Our local TV station used to broadcast it semi-regularly and I recall seeing it several times as I was growing up. As a sci-fi nut I found the story intriguing, though full of holes and very obviously done on a limited budget.What made me want to track the movie down was, some years later, reading the book on which the movie was based. The book is "The Wailing Asteroid" by Murray Leinster, written in 1960. Like the movie the book is somewhat dated, though I think the book has probably aged better. Nevertheless, I'd still like to track down a copy of the movie and revisit my childhood Saturday afternoons.

Yesterday, I made myself ready to stare in the face of The Terror(nauts). But, no terror there. Anyway, this movie is a lot of fun - if your can accept the fact that it's kinda outdated, as far as the "Special Effects" are concerned. I won't give away the plot - shallow as it is - but the movie does not live from the plot anyway, it's charm comes from the characters, especially from those in the background like Mr. Yellowlees, Mrs. Jones and even Doc Shore. Not taking the movie too seriously is the key to enjoy it - the makers of this space flick didn't either, I think. And for fans of the high class B-Movie SciFi-thingy: Yes, they have star-ships, funny robots, bathing cap wearing aliens, ridiculous stuff to plug into your head and strange sound effects. The only thing I thought was rather stupid is the climax of the movie. To destroy the Enemy (no other name given), they blast them with missiles. And that's it, there is no Plan B, just go on shooting, hoping it will be fine - if we miss them, alas, so long, we only have those missile-pods.Otherwise, The Terrornauts features no terror indeed, but you can laugh, have fun (if you can have fun with this kind of movies) and behold one of the greatest special effects in history: An explosion which throws up a black cloud of smoke rises not in front of one of the twin moons of the alien planet - no Sir, it rises behind it. Now, that's way cool. I wondered myself, what they where doing (I will not state they were thinking anything)? Paste the moons on the camera lens? Maybe nobody will notice? Who cares.

I was constantly surprised by where this film took me.Initially expecting the the alien spaceship to have hostile intentions against the Earth, it simply kidnaps some miscellaneous and startled astronomers and makes off with them. After that it is nothing like the usual: aliens attack earth, humans fight back but are losing, humans find a clever trick/weapon/chemical/virus and defeat evil aliens (or get soundly defeated and taken over by evil aliens).They are dumped into an alien base on an asteroid and the fun part is watching them work out where they are, and why. The ending is novel for its time, but a little tacky.I enjoyed the film very much for its novelty and surprises (not its very basic special effects). It was a "nice" film. It is probably very dated now but I haven't seen it for 30 years.