The Terrornauts

Poster tagline: THE VIRGIN SACRIFICE TO THE GODS OF A GHASTLY GALAXY!!! An incredibly throwback sci-fi flick with visuals and a mood that did not belong at all to the late 1960's, the time of revolutionary social changes, the time when the innocent naivety of the Golden Age had almost disappeared; this film seemed to have arrived from about 15 years earlier. This paradox becomes even stronger when you realise that Kubrick came a year later with his groundbreaking Space Odyssey, which is out of this world compared to The Terrornauts. But maybe that's why I liked it so much. The effects are unbelievably bad ("Edwood-esque" you might call them, but this comparison is no longer applicable to the experienced viewer of contemporary science fiction – there were plenty of "Ed Woods" in Hollywood at the time), the space rocket model is visibly flawed, but the real "fodder" comes with the alien station, where the space monitors look like canvases painted by Kandinsky, or some other abstract expressionist, and when you look at the space monster (the "virtual hologram") it’s impossible not to laugh. The savages on the alien planet wear pink robes, their faces are painted green and they have green bathing caps (see the poster where they want to sacrifice one of the female characters). And in the last 15 minutes or so, the main characters walk around with white bathing caps with antennae, using them to control the alien station's weapons arsenal and prevent the evil terrornauts from attacking Earth. Summary? I could understand a Boo! rating, the film would have been a welcome addition to the midnight screenings at the Summer Film School in Uherské Hradiště, or at the Shockproof Film Festival, but I had fun and the ending was a nice wink from the filmmakers. (19.07.2016)