"It Conquered The World" (1956) d/ Roger Corman

Here's some mortifying early sci-fi fare from prolific schlockmeister Roger Corman, who'd already directed six movies by then, this one, the third of four movies he'd already directed that year. To sell this far out piece of drive-in fodder, he needed some straight faced actors, and they didn't come much more straight faced than Peter Graves or Lee Van Cleef, who are both dynamically deadpan as ever. Paul Blaisdell, who provided special effects on some of my greatest Saturday afternoon memories as a kid, like It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) and Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), designed the... memorable alien monster suit in tonight's review, even going so far as to wear it dramatically on camera, as well. What balls, young man.


"Plissken...Plissken....where are you, Plissken?"
Dr. Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef) has been warning them all along about launching satellites into unfriendly space, when the government's latest nine million dollar project leaves our atmosphere. Dr. Paul Nelson (Peter Graves) is Tom's level-headed pal, far too level-headed to ever keep a c.b. radio set up behind a curtain for the sole intent of chatting extensively with angry-looking vintage orange juicers from the planet Venus while at home, as Tom might. Wouldn't you know it...the cucumbery Venusian King gets chatty with Tom, hijacks the satellite, and hitches a ride to Earth in it, wiping out all forms of power on the planet, save for his new pal Tom's car, electricity, etc. Immediately, the interstellar vegetable sends out eight rubbery flying pitas from Hell, each equipped with mind control stingers for the backs of the necks of some influential people.


"Nooooooo! Anything but tittie twisters!!!!"
Tom has had enough of skeptics and naysayers and is all on board with a total Venusian takeover, despite the empty protests of his frustrated wife, Claire (Beverly Garland), who sleeps alone while her husband and his space carrot buddy plot and scheme for world domination on his c.b. radio all night long. Paul remains adamantly pro-Earth, as evidenced by the hot slug he puts in his alien possessed wife's belly before she can slap a latex mind control pizza on the back of his neck. While Paul tries to reason with his brainwashed buddy, Claire sneaks out with his rifle, and drives to the cave where her husband's boss currently resides, pumping some shells into him before she ultimately gets pincer-choked the fuck out, for keeps. A nearby troop of  slapstick soldiers (led by Dick Miller, no less) fares no better with bazookas, until Tom shows up with a hand-held blowtorch with the Venusian's eye socket written all over it.Alas,  a momentary pincer-grab proves too much for him, and he slumps dead next to his c.b. pal, just in time for a summary pro-humanity speech from Paul that wraps it all up.


"The damned thing won't stop holding still, Sarge!"
I must've seen this one twenty times as a kid, between Dr. Shock's Mad Theater/ Horror Theater and Uncle Ted's Ghoul School, its unsophisticated visuals forever ingrained in my earliest genre movie memories. Stuff like this may not hold much appeal for today's sci-fi fan, bombarded with cgi-born spacescapes and state-of-the-art effects and make ups, but for an old schooler like me, it's a brief (just over an hour), nostalgic walk down memory lane. Still, as much as I love Roger Corman's stuff, I couldn't give this one more than one Wop, strictly for the many laughs it provided upon re-inspection. Approach with caution.


"Get away from me with that blow torch, Angel Eyes!", says the Monster (Paul Blaisdell).

"The Trip"(1967)d/Roger Corman

Inverse to the producers' warning that precedes tonight's review, a Hollywood flirtation with head-freakin' hallucinogenics as penned by no less than Jack Nicholson, is a short disclaimer from this guy over here:Ah, glorious lysergic acid diethylamide.Where does a guy like me begin to write about our many mind-blowing escapades together over the years.Without your entheogenic pleasures, I might not have ever mooned state troopers from a van window, shouting:"Behold! The fancy ass of the DEVIL!", I might not have been bitten by a pissed off African baboon spider that I thought I was communicating with, I might not have stopped my vehicle in courthouse traffic, worried that the front of the car, engine and all, had just dissolved into liquid metal and poured onto the asphalt.I might never have played naked hide n' seek with my girlfriend all over my apartment, culminating in a vista-revealing bathtub fuck that unlocked the secrets of the universe to me.Oh, you get the idea, already.Potent acid is tits, dudeskis.Tonight's feature focuses on some hip cats of the day and just such a journey to the center of the mind, as portrayed by genre faces Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper, among others, and as directed by the original Motor City Madman and B-Movie Bishop, Roger Corman, in between his uncredited work in the director's chair on A Time for Killing(1967) and 1968's The Wild Racers.Semi-corny in its posi-delivery of the microgram-laden mirth; it's always a good time to viddy when you're in an altered state yourself.Diiiig...

"Yeah, I was Babalugats in 'Cool Hand Luke', maaann, I'll bogart this spleefie if I want to..."
Paul Groves(Peter Fonda) is a mild-mannered director of television commercials in the midst of a heavy divorce from his unfaithful wife, Sally(Susan Strasberg), a chick who's not opposed to rocking a salmon polyester pantsuit out in public just for kicks.Is it any wonder he's looking for some introspective on his own successes and failures in one o' them there acid trips all them youngins seem to be poppin' off on, in between their flower power and their Lothar and the Hand People records.He enlists his buddy, John(Bruce Dern), as a chaperone for his twelve hour mental vacation, as provided by Max(Dennis Hopper), a babbling, reef-tokin' white Navajo wanna-be in leather dungarees, who owns the local psychedelically painted drug spot frequented by the upper eschelon of turn-onners, tune-inners, and obligatory drop outs.A hot young blonde tells him that she thinks "acid-takers are groovy."Paul retreats upstairs with John and drops with some apple juice, while Max passes around a hog's leg downstairs and mumbles incoherently.John tells his soon-to-be-soaring associate that he probably won't wanna eff with all the recording equipment he's laid out for himself once he's on his trip.Before you can say, "Down on Phillip's Escalator", Paul's starting to see some things over there.John, guarding against a possible freakout, tells him, "I'm gonna be here, man, trust me.", as Paul starts getting into some beautiful stuff, like holding the sun in his hands, and swimming bare-assed and free.He imagines bedding the hot blonde from earlier and his soon-to-be ex-wife at the same time in a groovy ménage à trois until he's being chased on the beach by Templar-esque knights on horseback.Then he's on a merry-go-round with midgets being forced to watch his spouse share adulterous kisses with another man on a big screen, while Max appears and passes hippie judgement upon him for working for a living.John! John, where's that thorazine, maaaaaan!I wanna get off!

Would you let this man chaperone your first acid trip? Me neither.
John pulls the incoherent naked wreck out of the pool and towels him off, then does exactly what he promised he wouldn't do, in leaving Paul alone while he's gone to score some more juice.Paul imagines John is slumped dead in a chair with a paintified headwound, and slips out into the street in the middle of the night, peaking his nuts off.He lets himself into a strange household, rousing the resident little girl from her sleep, watching television with her and getting her a drink until her father wakes up and scares him off.He grooves on the washing machines at a laundromat and suggests to a spinster-in-curlers that they communicate with each other using only their minds, before running off when she calls the police as he tries to free the girl he imagines he sees spinning in a dryer full of the woman's clothes.He snags a table at a psychedelic club on Sunset Strip, but splits prematurely when the cops make the scene, somehow making his way back to Max's place to come down in the process.After he tells the drug dealer he may have led the cops to his doorstep, he's told to head back to the strip where John, who isn't dead afterall, can collect him again.This time, he bumps into the aforementioned hot blonde who speeds off with him in her convertible sports car to her place, where they have all kinds of trippy sex, while he hallucinates about the hooded knights, only they're Sally and the blonde in disguise.The next morning, she asks him whether his trip was a good one or not, and he remarks that though he found love, he may need another day to reflect upon the turn of events, as the screen freeze-frames on his face, then cracks like glass, Fulci-style.Roll credits...

Sex whilst trippin' face? L.S.D.elicious!
As you might have guessed, the flagrant use of boring jazz in the soundtrack was a big red light for me.I'm thinking Corman should have scored some genuine psych rock instead, a la Pink Floyd or the Amboy Dukes, for authenticity's sake, I dunno.You can see Henry Fonda's rebellious son, who's experienced a sort of cinematic renaissance of late, in a treasure trove of genre cult classics;The Wild Angels(1966), Spirits of the Dead(1967), Easy Rider(1969), Spasms(1983), and even the crappy remake of Escape From New York, 1996's Escape From LA.Dern, a premier psycho in television and movies dating back to 1960, was at his genre best in the late sixties/early seventies, scoring credits in everything from Bloody Mama(1970) and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant(1971) to Black Sunday(1976) and Hitchcock's Family Plot(1976).The curler-coiffed Barboura Morris dates back to early Corman, appearing in The Wasp Woman(1959) and The Haunted Palace(1960).Judy Lang, who plays Fonda's blonde sex-interest, can also be spotted in The Psycho Lovers and Count Yorga, Vampire.Curiously, LSD-25 was last completely legal in the United States in 1966, but you don't have to be a hardcore blotterhead to enjoy the cultish charm of Trip, which earns two double-dipped wops on the ratings scale.Add it to your collection.

Woooooooooow, maaaaahnnnn...