Long before the credits rolled on They Came From Beyond Space I knew that I wouldn’t be able to write a serious review of the film. It’s awful, absolutely awful. I’m sorry, not least because I like a LOT of the people involved, but if I told you that the movie was like a cross between a particularly poor Dr. Who episode and something created by a child who had a videocamera and as many LEGO men as he could get his hands on then I’d be getting your hopes up. Because THAT would be entertaining. This isn’t.
The story concerns a bunch of meteors that land on Earth and then allow people to be taken over by extra-terrestrials in energy form. Lucky for Dr. Curt Temple (Robert Hutton), he was in an accident that left him needing his skull reinforced with a metal plate and this makes him impervious to any attempts by the alien forces to take over his mind. Sadly, the woman he loves (Jennifer Jayne) has no metal plate in her head, despite the fact that her towering hairdo could very well hide an entire power plant, and is immediately “possessed” while investigating the meteor site.
Let me sum up my reaction to this movie in one sentence that is as laughable as it is true – Killer Klowns From Outer Space was more realistic and tense than this film and that was an intentional comedy. Not even so bad that it’s good, They Came From Beyond Space is actually saddening to watch.
Freddie Francis has directed a number of fantastic movies in his career and to see his name attached to this one is just a massive disappointment. I can happily agree with people who never thought he was a consistently great director but I’ve never seen him do anything so close to being unwatchable. Okay, I may have a lot more of his filmography left to explore but I can’t imagine him doing much worse than this one.
The novel by Joseph Millard was a bit of a hit at the time but there’s nothing here to show why that would be. The script by Milton Subotsky obviously didn’t do a great job of translating the material from page to screen but the bland cast doesn’t help either – Robert Hutton isn’t great, Jennifer Jayne is worse and Zia Mohyeddin and Bernard Kay seem to keep their performances in line with the general sub-par quality level in order to just fit in. Michael Gough is someone almost always worth seeing and his few scenes are certainly better than anything else in the film.
I can’t bring myself to recommend this one to anyone. In fact, if anyone reads this review and then watches the film out of sheer curiosity then I’ll feel slightly guilty. I’ll get over it quickly enough but there will be that fleeting cloud passing through my sunny psyche.
They Came From Beyond Space lands on DVD on Monday 30th July but I’d save your money for something better if I were you.
DIRECTOR: FREDDIE FRANCIS
WRITER: MILTON SUBOTSKY (BASED ON THE NOVEL BY JOSEPH MILLARD)
STARS: ROBERT HUTTON, JENNIFER JAYNE, ZIA MOHYEDDIN, BERNARD KAY, MICHAEL GOUGH
RUNTIME: 82 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: UK
Film Rating: 
