(Streamed via Pub-D-Hub)
A meteor crashes in the snowy wilds of northern Sweden. Some American scientists, including a horndog lothario geologist, investigate. They eventually discover the meteor is actually an alien spacecraft. Hopes of a peaceful first contact are dashed when the giant hairy alien stomps around, cause avalanches, kills people, and runs off with a pretty ice skating champ.
Directed by Virgil (The Mole People) Vogel and written by Arthur C. (The Human Duplicators) Pierce, Terror in the Midnight Sun is jam-packed with a whole lot of nothing. The non-stop padding includes a longwinded Swedish nightclub performance, stock nature footage of Sweden, and long sequences of people skiing, ice skating, and walking endlessly through the snow. Whenever something threatens to happen, Vogel cuts away and gives us more dull scenes of people skiing.
Some amusement can be had from the scientists debating about the meteor’s “skid marks”, but this is a fucking slog from start to finish. While the monster is OK (it looks like a pig-faced Bigfoot), the forced perspective scenes that try to make him look towering are laughable and the avalanche scenes are phony as fuck. These shoddy effects aren’t enough to make it worthwhile for even the most die-hard B-movie fan.
A few years after its initial release, Jerry Warren got his mitts on the movie, re-edited it, added new footage of his usual stock company (including John Carradine and Katherine Victor), and rereleased as Invasion of the Animal People. Usually whenever Warren does this, the results are abysmal. While I haven’t seen that version with my own eyes, one thing is for certain, Warren’s movie can’t be much worse than this one.
Despite the fact I have been showcasing various Roku channels for this column, I really haven’t gone into much detail about them. One cool thing about this channel, Pub-D-Hub, is that they play trailers and drive-in intermission shorts before and during the movie. The mid-movie break featuring old school commercials were certainly welcomed and helped alleviate some (but not all) of the boredom.
AKA: Invasion of the Animal People. AKA: Space Invasion of Lapland.
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