BLUE DEMON AND THE INVADERS (1969) ***

I’ve seen a lot of crappy special effects in low budget science fiction movies before, but the crappy special effects in Blue Demon and the Invaders is some of the crappiest I have ever seen, and if that doesn’t make you want to see it, I don’t know what will.  The alien’s spaceship looks like a Pogo Ball (or at least the transparent image of a Pogo Ball) that flies around on a string past close-ups of knickknacks that look like they came out of your grandma’s China cabinet.  I’m sure the director would’ve loved to have ILM working for him when the time came to show the spacecraft landing in a lake.  Instead, he had to settle for a shot of a Christmas ornament sinking to the bottom of a fishbowl, and if that doesn’t make you want to see the movie, I don’t know what will.

It gets better.  

The aliens aboard the spaceship are a bunch of moderately attractive women who dress like Dean Martin’s Gold Diggers and materialize out of a humidifier.  To get an idea of what the planet is like, they turn on television and watch a women’s tag-team wrestling match.  Their goofy, semi-lobotomized expressions are worth the price of admission.  

The women then go around kissing men and turning them into their slaves.  The specimens they want to keep for themselves get sent back to their spaceships mid-kiss by the magic of a jump-cut.  Naturally, it’s up to everybody’s second-favorite Mexican wrestler, Blue Demon to stop them.

What’s great about Blue Demon and the Invaders is that usually in these kinds of movies, it’s the alien men who want to mate with Earth women.  Having the alien sexpots be on the make for human husbands gives this a unique flavor.  In fact, I was having such a good time that I kind of forgot I was watching a Blue Demon film since he doesn’t even show up until the start of the second act.  

Admittedly, he’s kind of the weak link in all of this as he doesn’t get a whole lot of wrestling to do.  He only gets to participate in one tag team match, but it’s still a pretty good one.  On the plus side, his tussles with the brainwashed henchman are solid, especially the ones that go down in the alien’s secluded hotel hideout.  There’s also some of the requisite padding in the form of a musical number and a dance routine, although not nearly as much as I was expecting.  

Even when it spins its wheels, Blue Demon and the Invaders remains a silly and fun adventure.  Just when you think it has run out of steam, the hot aliens grab flamethrowers and start torching people, which gives the final act a much-needed lift.  The climactic dueling alien spacecrafts scene is good for a laugh too and ends things on a high note.

AKA:  Blue Demon and the Diabolical Women.