Look, I'm a Freddie Francis guy. He's made some films considered low-rent compared to Fisher and Roy Ward Baker, but I think some of his Hammer and Amicus work is pretty solid. However, They Came from Beyond Space is a blight on his resume. I'm not sure how he is stuck with certain stinkers, but this paltry sci-fi effort has few redeeming qualities. I hate writing this, considering I think Michael Gough can be fun to watch in the right roles, but here he looks pallid-skinned, wears a cape for heaven's sake, and is stuck with some awful trash he must embarrass himself with in terms of the alien race he represents. The aliens are "pure mental energy" coming from a planet of Zon, where they once had physical bodies. Millions of years saw this race become these bright balls of light. Facing extinction, they had "lower forms of creatures" build them a ship which crashed on the moon. Gough is actually called "Master of the Moon". Gah. Robert Hutton is fun to a certain extent but as a hero he's rather square. He stars as a brilliant scientist whose intellect the aliens desire. He has a metal plate in his head because of a car wreck in one of his "ancient cars he collects"! He has a pal (Zia Mohyeddin) who is also a genius, and he will equip him with a metal helmet (made with equipment that just suddenly appears..where did all of this come from? Poor Zia must give up his mass array of trophies in order to have a helmet that will keep him from being mind controlled) to help from the human-possessed alien mental powers of persuasion. Jennifer Jayne is Hutton's much younger love interest who is possessed by an alien mental power which has her leading a mission to build a rocket. This rocket eventually will fly to the moon where the aliens hope to return home to die as their numbers have dwindled. This ludicrous subplot includes meteors which "carried" the aliens to earth (in crystalline form) to gain mental control over a few humans. They also cause a fake plague which supposedly kills humans in Cornwall, but this is actually a ruse so the aliens can use them as slave labor on the moon. I could go on and on, but what's the use? This is just a dreadful affair, and it is unfortunate Francis and the Amicus name is tied to it. It has chintzy effects that rival the old Buck Rogers serials as gaudy in their cheapness. I can't imagine Francis was happy with this final product. The camera-work is the lone part of the film that is ace: no surprise considering Francis is an expert visual artist. Everything else reeks.
Review of They Came from Beyond Space
