While writing the Universal Horror reviews with Shawn McLoughlin, he called me on the carpet a couple of times for my appreciation of some “bad” movies (particularly House Of Frankenstein and House Of Dracula).  In my conversation with him, I tried to explain my position.  It’s something I explored briefly in the beginning of my review for Shock-O-Rama and also in my review for Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster.  The concept of a “fun/bad movie” versus a “painfully bad” movie is something that’s not easily explained, but I’m going to give it a shot again with this review, because for once I have a great example of two films that are both bad and genuinely unfunny.

In order for a bad film to provide a fun viewing experience, it’s been my opinion that the filmmakers need to be ignorant of how bad their film is.  When a director and writer believe they have an important vision to bring to the screen, and they do so with complete ineptitude, that's comedy gold.

However, that alone doesn't guarantee a winner.  At least three other things need to be in place as well. They are as follows:

Bad dialogue is the one thing no fun/bad movie should be without.  It lets you know you’re dealing with idiocy and really fuels the creative fire when finding ways to laugh at the movie.  Bad dialogue separates a bad movie like Plan 9 from a bad movie like The Tooth Fairy.  Both are terrible movies but only the first is laughably bad.

Terrible acting is important, also.  If you can get two people to really think they’re doing an amazing job, when in fact you’ve seen better in third grade holiday plays, you’re on the right track.  The key, though, is that, as a director, you can’t realize they’re bad. You have to think they’re amazing.  My favorite example of that is probably Plan 9, but Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster is a close second.

Finally, you need some action.  It’s not enough that everyone be serious and speak horribly stilted dialogue.  That will just put you to sleep if you don’t have something happening. 

Think about it: a straight up remake of My Dinner With Andre starring Kevin Costner and Pauly Shore would only be fun for ten minutes or so, if that. 

Which brings us to this DVD.  Dark Sky’s Drive-In Double Feature movies should be right up my alley. These should be exactly the sort of thing I get pleasure out of ripping apart in my living room. However, this particular set of films War Between The Planets and Creation Of The Humanoids, almost put me to sleep.  Both have bad dialogue.  Both have bad acting.  Neither have action, or at least not much to speak of.

War Between The Planets tells the story of the crew of a space station, desperately trying to find the source of a gravitational field that is causing massive devastation on Earth.  Tidal waves, earthquakes and raging fires have brought civilization to its knees. Soon, it’s become apparent that there is a rogue planet entering the solar system and it is on a crash course with Earth.  Only the brave crew of a space station outpost can save it. 

On the surface, this sounds exactly like what we’re looking for in a fun/bad film.  However, it suffers from something that affects many other films in the “space opera” genre.  It lacks action.  This movie is from a time when dangling toy rockets on strings and having them slowly move while roman candles shoot out of their “engines” was considered great SFX.  While we get to see a lot of that and also get to see crewmembers swinging on clearly visible strings simulating zero gravity, everything moves so slowly that it bores the absolute shit out of you.  I mean, I know it’s supposed to be slow because the guys are in space, but Outland took place in space also, and Sean Connery kicked serious ass in that flick!

As far as the other elements, the dialogue here is atrocious and the actors do a great job at selling it. The captain is a caricature of the James T. Kirk model of space commander and his ability to fly off the handle and punch crewmembers is to be admired. There is also some love triangle stuff going on, and there's a crewmember who has lost his family due to the catastrophe on Earth.  Still, the movie is mostly boring.

Creation of the Humanoids… well, let me put it this way.  Andy Warhol loved this film.  Lucky for Dark Sky and DIMP that no one put that on the packaging or I would have taken a shit on it and put it back, unopened, in the return mail.  Reading that Warhol liked this movie didn’t surprise me.  He had terrible taste in everything except The Velvet Underground.

Creation of the Humanoids is a movie where nothing happens, and it happens very slowly.  Mankind has made androids to help them run things.  The androids are evolving and are plotting to take over the world.  All of this takes place in a futuristic living room and a couple of other sets from Star Trek.  There are no chases.  There isn’t even any floating around on strings.  There’s just a lot of talk and a lot of people dressed funny or in blue makeup.  No, I will not make a Blue Man Group joke here.  This movie doesn’t deserve that.

It’s got terrible dialogue.  It’s got terrible acting. It has no action at all.  At the end of this film, I actually fell to my knees and wept with joy that there were no extras to speak of on this disc.

The one thing I do want to point out about these Drive-In Double Feature releases is that they really can be fun with the right set of films.  Dark Sky goes a long way to try to recreate the drive-in feeling by including authentic classic “intermission” and “snack bar” advertisements as well as classic “coming attractions” intros to trailers for other Dark Sky movies.  Two of the films advertised were Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and Horror at Party Beach. Had those been the two films on this double feature, I would be writing a different review right now.

Presentation
There is nothing spectacular here.  Again, I question what they had to work with.  The prints are generally good, and the sound is passable but not noteworthy.

Extras
Thankfully, there are none to speak of on this disc, unless you consider the trailers for Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster, Dog Eat Dog and Horror at Party Beach extras.  Again, though, I want to say that the double feature/drive-in setup is a cool feature and I’d like to see some of the other movies that Dark Sky does this with.

The Bottom Line
I can’t think of one reason to recommend this to anyone.  I’m giving it a half pant because of the drive-in thing.  Avoid this one at all costs.