Reviews

They probably should have stopped making Falcon movies when George Sanders and Tom Conway had finished their runs with the franchise. Hard to watch the Falcon become a shell of his old self. Spending more time with his dog than the ladies, and driving a Studebaker. The script may be okay, but it has a low-budget B Movie feel to it.

I saw this when I was seven years old at at the United Artist theater in Pomona California with my parents. As a seven year old in the dark theater with the eerie music and scenes it was the only sci-fi or horror movie at the time that actually scared me. Seeing it year later of course, it isn't scary at all. But the script had everything you could want. A secluded house in a canyon surrounded by radioactive gasses. A group of strangers assembling there including a gangster, his cheap girlfriend, the homeowner and his sweet wholesome daughter, a love interest for the daughter, and a prospector with his donkey. The gangster, who drove up to the house in his convertible with his girlfriend was Mike Connors (Mannix) displaying his early acting skills by coming across as thoroughly unlikeable and menacing. Adele Jergens was more than convincing as his cheap girlfriend who has been around the block more than a few times too many. Paul Birch plays the father well. The father and homeowner has everything a good sci-fi movie character should have, including a knowledge of science and even a ham radio set. Overall, this movie is everything you should expect from a 1950's sci-fi movie shot on a budget probably in two weeks or less. Unlike the other gentleman who found it, and other fifties sci-fi to be a waste of time and junk, I enjoyed it.

Wow, glad I didn't listen to all the crappy reviews so many people seemed to enjoy writing. To me, it wasn't a great movie, but I didn't expect it to be. But it was a good movie, a good couple hours of action drama, exactly what it was meant to be. And they even did it without throwing in all the silly needling and bickering that is so popular between the leads of movie and television shows these days. A film doesn't have to be great to be a good solid entertaining movie these days. Too many people seem to expect the near perfection that you get with 250 million dollar budget Marvel movie these days. Unless you're a movie snob, or just plain picky, you'll probably enjoy this movie, and like some of the rest of us, say, "Hey, this movie was okay, entertained me well for the couple hours it was on.

While I enjoyed the movie itself, I was disappointed in the treatment of the end credits. They started out very stylized with a cool black on yellow with a nice green shadow effect, overall they ended up being displayed in a quick fashion that really didn't give viewers enough time to read them. It gave the feeling of those fast credits of a low-budget television program. It was a good movie with a good look to it and deserved better when giving credit to the thousands of contributors to this film. The end credits just weren't a class act befitting a good film like this. They should have cared more about the people who worked on this film, and those who take the time to actually read the end credits. It wouldn't have hurt to stretch it out another 3 minutes to make it more readable. Can't help but wonder who made the decision to cut it short and why.

It was a great show in it's time. But like others have said, it declined in it's final season. They kept Stuart Bailey, but completely changed him from the suave, always a gentleman private eye, and tried to get us to accept him as a gritty, wisecracking 1940's type film noir P.I. It just didn't work. One thing that always amused me was the beginning of the show when the white Thunderbird convertible would pull out of the Dino's lot onto Sunset Boulevard. From the time it left the lot and entered the boulevard, it transformed itself into a Ford Fairlane 500 convertible, or a Galaxie 500 convertible depending on the year it was broadcast. It was no longer a Thunderbird once it hit the street.

I've noticed lately that Science Fiction Theater is available on DVD for the entire run of the show. But it does look as if it's made from available sources. That usually means it could have a lot of poor quality images by being made from old VHS recordings. Just wondered if anyone has purchased the set, and if so, is it worth the money? I've seen it advertised at $49.99 from the source, which doesn't seem to be a mainstream distributor, and also on e-bay for prices about $29.99 stating that it is for new un-opened sets. But I guess at that price it would be worth it even if it isn't great quality.

It was always a treat to watch it back in 1956 and 1957. I think it was the first show of it's type that I had encountered. Watched it once and I was hooked. Had to see it every chance I got after that. Being only 8 years old in 1956, I still have fond memories of it. And as someone else mentioned the parabolic disc antenna, yeah, it caught my eye too. There was one almost exactly like it atop the Southern California Edison building in Pomona, California. I gazed at it every time my parents would drive past that building. Wondered what secrets it held!

As a young kid in Junior High School (Middle School) I was fascinated when the movie crew came to our small town of Chino, California to film "The Stripper". I hate to ruin the perception of some that it was actually filmed on location somewhere in the mid-west. But since we were only about 35 miles from downtown Los Angeles, and Chino was a small farming and dairy town of about 10,000 population, we looked like many mid-western towns. But back then some of the crew told me that the film had a working title of "Celebration". Every day after school I would ride my bike to whatever part of town they they happened to be filming in. I think it took about a week or two to film all of the outside shots. They were filming at my school, Chino Junior High School, with some classroom shots and a shot outside on the steps of the old building. That was really exciting to me as a 13 year old student. Other days they were filming in other various spots in our small town. One day I spent all afternoon watching them film the shots of the old car pulling into Esparzas' gas station in the old downtown of Chino. I think Louis Nye, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joanne Woodward and Michael J. Pollard were in that scene. Another day watching Joanne Woodward walking up and down the front walk of an older wood frame house in her nightgown. She was very nice. As she saw me watching she smiled and said "Hi". Have to admit though, when the movie came out, I was a bit disappointed. Having all of those scenes stored in my mind in vivid color, the way that I remembered it and saw it acted out, the resulting black and white version seemed somewhat dull and dreary.