Science Fiction movies can be put into two categories - pre-2001 and post-2001.* Whether or not you like Kubrick's monument to humanity's inability to evolve on its own, it's impossible to deny how 2001: A Space Odyssey revolutionized the production values, character and intellectual depth of Science Fiction movies forever. The industry as a whole took some time to catch up (with that earlier asterisk pointing the way to the future of merchandising), as Sci-Fi was a genre dominated by low budgets, poor special effects and shallow sensationalism, and the public was willing to swallow all that in the name of Date Night. Only a scant handful of Sci-Fi flicks were comparable to "real" movies in terms of intelligence and production value in those days, and the 50's, the heyday of schlocky space/atomic monster movies, may not have produced a dang one (some would point to The Thing from Another World, but Carpenter's 1982 remake eclipses the original). The 60's saw both Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), a fascinating survival tale of a man marooned on the surface of Mars, and Quatermass and the Pit (1967), one of England's great Sci-Fi films and a seriously creative alternate history treat, but one more great film popped up before the Year of 2001 - The Terrornauts, straight from Amicus Productions. In case you're wondering, the poster is much stupider than the movie itself.
Based on the novel The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster, The Terrornauts follows a team of astronomers in Star Talk, a SETI-like enterprise on its last financial legs. The man running the project, Dr. Joe Burke (Simon Oates, a dead ringer for Martin Freeman in look and character), was inspired to search for life in outer space when he was a little boy - his archeologist father dug up a mysterious, bottle-like object at an ancient dig site. He accidentally broke it one day, and it was filled with blue rocks. That night he dreamed he was on an alien planet, and ever since then has been trying to reach out to whomever left that object.
Their financier from an unnamed Foundation arrives one day to tell them they have only three months to get results with their half-million-pound telescope, and wouldn't you know it!, they get a repeating audio signal from an approaching object. That object is an asteroid carrying a base, and a spaceship launches towards Star Talk, tractor-beaming the whole dang main building up with the team in it, as well as their cockney tea-cart lady and a cowardly accountant sent from the Foundation. On board, they are greeted by a spindly robot vaguely reminiscent of NOMAD...or DREXL. The robot leads them through a series of tests, such as being able to open a box of food with a strange handle, and having the compassion to give food to a hideous mirage-beast rather than kill it. What are the aliens' motives? What is the purpose of the tests? How would I know if you were worthy to save humanity if I told you?
I'll be a straight shooter with you here - the effects aren't much better than an episode of Thunderbirds, but those deficiencies are entirely made up for by the smart screenplay and dedicated cast and crew. While the ideas may not be new in the realm of Sci-Fi literature, they were pretty fresh at the time and are very well-developed, using the logical mystery of the aliens and their methods to draw the audience through the tasks and subsequent events right along with the characters. The context of a search for intelligent life hampered by spotty funding and suspicious management is a welcome dose of realism when compared to the pie-in-the-sky utopian visions of previous generations of space opera filmmakers, and beats Contact to the punch by decades. Not only does the movie capture the feeling of wonder at the secrets of the cosmos, it also shows a world where higher moral ideals can somehow traverse space and time, and mind beats out brawn. The actors are all fine, especially Simon Oates, whose modest determination in the face of ridicule and absurdity is quite admirable (much like Michael Caine crafting an excellent Scrooge across from Muppets). Yes, there are two useless tag-along comic reliefs, but they play off each other very well and end up getting all the best lines. As for the folks behind the camera, the most noteworthy one is Elisabeth Lutyens, an acclaimed British composer whose score for this movie is outstanding, miles beyond most space opera scores before it and worth a release on CD.
DVD? Feh. The only official video release in the states is the long-OOP Charter Entertainment VHS, and don't bother hunting it down unless you feel like blowing $49.99. I would point you to Sinister Cinema but they sadly discontinued their version (which came with the trailer in front of it). Your best bet outside of torrenting is All Clues, No Solutions, which has loads and loads of gray-market movies in their catalog for $7.00 a pop. Any way you get a hold of it, you won't be disappointed as long as you can turn a blind eye to the chintzy effects (or relish them, like I did). The Terrornauts is a very creative, very fun Sci-Fi adventure that'll leave you wondering why more of these kinds of Sci-Fi flicks weren't made back in the day, or now, for that matter.
Based on the novel The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster, The Terrornauts follows a team of astronomers in Star Talk, a SETI-like enterprise on its last financial legs. The man running the project, Dr. Joe Burke (Simon Oates, a dead ringer for Martin Freeman in look and character), was inspired to search for life in outer space when he was a little boy - his archeologist father dug up a mysterious, bottle-like object at an ancient dig site. He accidentally broke it one day, and it was filled with blue rocks. That night he dreamed he was on an alien planet, and ever since then has been trying to reach out to whomever left that object.
Their financier from an unnamed Foundation arrives one day to tell them they have only three months to get results with their half-million-pound telescope, and wouldn't you know it!, they get a repeating audio signal from an approaching object. That object is an asteroid carrying a base, and a spaceship launches towards Star Talk, tractor-beaming the whole dang main building up with the team in it, as well as their cockney tea-cart lady and a cowardly accountant sent from the Foundation. On board, they are greeted by a spindly robot vaguely reminiscent of NOMAD...or DREXL. The robot leads them through a series of tests, such as being able to open a box of food with a strange handle, and having the compassion to give food to a hideous mirage-beast rather than kill it. What are the aliens' motives? What is the purpose of the tests? How would I know if you were worthy to save humanity if I told you?
I'll be a straight shooter with you here - the effects aren't much better than an episode of Thunderbirds, but those deficiencies are entirely made up for by the smart screenplay and dedicated cast and crew. While the ideas may not be new in the realm of Sci-Fi literature, they were pretty fresh at the time and are very well-developed, using the logical mystery of the aliens and their methods to draw the audience through the tasks and subsequent events right along with the characters. The context of a search for intelligent life hampered by spotty funding and suspicious management is a welcome dose of realism when compared to the pie-in-the-sky utopian visions of previous generations of space opera filmmakers, and beats Contact to the punch by decades. Not only does the movie capture the feeling of wonder at the secrets of the cosmos, it also shows a world where higher moral ideals can somehow traverse space and time, and mind beats out brawn. The actors are all fine, especially Simon Oates, whose modest determination in the face of ridicule and absurdity is quite admirable (much like Michael Caine crafting an excellent Scrooge across from Muppets). Yes, there are two useless tag-along comic reliefs, but they play off each other very well and end up getting all the best lines. As for the folks behind the camera, the most noteworthy one is Elisabeth Lutyens, an acclaimed British composer whose score for this movie is outstanding, miles beyond most space opera scores before it and worth a release on CD.
DVD? Feh. The only official video release in the states is the long-OOP Charter Entertainment VHS, and don't bother hunting it down unless you feel like blowing $49.99. I would point you to Sinister Cinema but they sadly discontinued their version (which came with the trailer in front of it). Your best bet outside of torrenting is All Clues, No Solutions, which has loads and loads of gray-market movies in their catalog for $7.00 a pop. Any way you get a hold of it, you won't be disappointed as long as you can turn a blind eye to the chintzy effects (or relish them, like I did). The Terrornauts is a very creative, very fun Sci-Fi adventure that'll leave you wondering why more of these kinds of Sci-Fi flicks weren't made back in the day, or now, for that matter.
~PNK
*Hah! You thought I was going to say Star Wars, didn't you? Too easy!!!
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