Inspired by Vinegar Syndrome’s impending release of The Terrornauts (★★½), which I had never heard of before, the Movie Gang gathered at Thunderbase to check out this scifi, um, classic(?) from 1967.
Not having the fancified new release, we watched an old version with bad image quality, green lines, and no subtitles… Which seemed appropriate for a film of this quality.
The story of a pre-SETI groups of brits using a radio telescope to look for alien life, and, right as they get warned about the shutting down of the project, they find a mysterious signal! Then a strange series of events lead Dr Burke, Keller (whose main job seems to be to lounge, eat fruit, and make remarks), Sandy (love interest/office manager), Mrs. Jones (tea lady), and Mr Yellowlees (accountant) off on a mysterious mission to the stars!
Witness mysterious worlds where the moons are so close that worldly smoke fills the sky behind them!
Blow your mind with visions of massive buildings being inexplicably lifted into the air!
Gaze with impressive wonderment as these brilliant human minds strive to unlock the secrets of unimaginably advanced alien technology!
Then, after the festivities, I tried to watch Super Fly again, but just couldn’t do it… So I opted for… Death Race 2000 (★★★)!
![](https://mr-wford.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TedHammond-Death-Race-2000.jpg")
Just about as cheesy as you can get, this old classic is something to see, that’s for sure, while David Carradine as the costumed Frankenstein and Sly giving his best “dumb drawl” performance as Machine Gun Joe are certainly the stars of this it’s also notable for the inclusion of Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov to give me Eating Raoul flashbacks.
The story of an annual car race across the county, driven by five drivers and their navigator/lovers in silly little cars that look like kit cars of the 70’s but with teeth or horns. While to win, you do need to finish the race, you also need points that are gained by killing people with your car. Like an early version of Carmageddon… So running down regular folks is an ongoing focus of the movie. That along with how many Nazi references there are, give it a bit of a grim backdrop.
The race is very much a bread and circus affair, where the country has clearly descended into fascism and the race with its violence and hero adulation is one of the big distractions helping the president to focus the public’s attention. Sort of like the same year’s Rollerball, but it is much lesser of a movie than that.
It’s cheap and silly, but also kind of fun and it’s intriguing to notice not only how cheap the sets are, but how many backdrops are really just the most obvious and badly done paintings.