Arena Of The Unwell: terrorvision.

After The Shape of Things To Come I fancied another top quality sci-fi movie this week, unfortunately this is all I could find.

The Terrornauts (1967).

Dir: Montgomery Tully.

Cast: Simon Oates, Zena Marshall, Charles Hawtrey, Patricia Hayes, Stanley Meadows, Max Adrian, Richard Carpenter, Leonard Cracknell, André Maranne, Frank Forsyth and Robert Jewell.

They're houseproud, I'll say that for them. They're houseproud!

Welcome to Project Star Talk - a UK based radio telescope mission - that appears to have been designed by Mr Spoon from Button Moon - set up to search for radio signals from outer space.

Seems legit.

In charge of the project is the bri-nylon clad hunk o' love that is Dr Joe Burke (Doomwatch star Oates) who, whilst helping his "uncle" on an archaeological dig as a child, found a spooky cube that cause him to have strange dreams of alien worlds.

Seems even more legit.

Anyway it was this experience that drove him to create Project Star Talk, tho' I'm pretty sure he never mentioned that during the funding process.

The Famous Five re-union looked a wee bit grim.

Assisting him in the mission are the fruit obsessed electronics expert Ben Keller (Brit teevee and movie stalwart Meadows) and token lady Sandy Lund (Marshall who was in Dr No don't you know).

Unfortunately in the 4 years since the project began they've achieved absolutely bugger all much to the chagrin of facility manager Dr Henry Shore (Adrian, star of such - actual classics as Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, The Music Lovers, The Boy Friend and The Devils as well as a top turn in Doctor Who), who gives them a (fairly high pitched) ultimatum - find aliens in the next 90 days or the project is finished.

Luckily they still have a few quid left in the kitty so Keller is sent out to Cash Converters to buy an old CB radio and some wires in the hope that when plugged into the massive Sigma IV aerial on the roof they might have a bit more luck reaching out to Uranus.

Sorry.

We had one of these bad boys on our roof in the 80s...surprised no planes hit it.

With all this extra cash getting spent - and not wanting it to turn into another SNP/camper van debacle, the grant board send an accountant, Mr Joshua Yellowlees (Carry On god Hawtrey) to check on everything they've purchased - as well as to give Cockernee char lady Mrs Jones (Comedy legend Hayes) someone to flirt with.

No, seriously.

And it's during one particularly saucy, innuendo laden late night encounter over the Battenberg cake and crumpets that Burke and company finally receive the signal they've been waiting for - a repeating pattern coming from a fantastically complex robot-controlled space base (disguised as a colander with a few egg boxes attached) on small asteroid in the outer reaches of the solar system.

Excitedly Burke sends a signal back and eagerly awaits a response.

Imagine their collective surprise then when the following night the reply comes, not in the form of a Close Encounters style PC start-up ditty but as a huge spaceship that lifts the entire building - and its occupants - into its hold and whisks them away to the asteroid, leading the telescope's staff to think that Burke's space shed has exploded killing everyone inside.

Even tho' they all saw the UFO out of the window.

Fake news indeed.

I wouldn't want one of them swimming up my arse....but then again...

Upon arrival on the asteroid, our heroes are greeted by a robot (that appears to be constructed from an upturned compost bin with a pair of garden shears, an outdoor clothes dryer and an egg whisk attached, expertly played by former Dalek operator Jewell) that sets a series of cunning - in a kind of proto-Adventure Game way* - tests to discover if they are worthy of the task ahead.

And what, pray, do these tests involve? I hear you ask.

Well first up they have to unlock a lunchbox full of cakes, then they have to decide how best to get thru a sliding door and which way round to hold a gun before deciding whether to shoot a scary alien, fuck it or feed it sandwiches.

No, really.

Let's hear it for that old favourite....."LAUGH NOW!"

Obviously our heroes quickly pass with flying colours (it is a short film) tho' there was some visible wavering regarding the pretty lipped alien monster - especially from Ben if I'm honest - and are rewarded for their endeavors with access to the space bases control room complete with a bright green skeleton wearing a wire festooned shower cap and an extensive library of 'knowledge cubes' which look exactly like the one found by Joe when he was a child.

Result.

Admit it, you would.

Grabbing an armful of the aforementioned cubes - and a couple clean shower caps (which it appears allows you to 'read' the boxes) - the heroic band excitedly head back to the control room but on the way a very clumsy - or is it drunk? - Ben accidentally knocks Sandy onto a small coffee table which causes her to disappear in a puff of smoke.

And a really choppy jump cut.

Yup, turns out the coffee table was in fact a hi-tech matter transmitter which has transported Sandy to a strange alien world very similar to the one from Joe's childhood dreams.

Unfortunately the planet is home to a violent tribe of wobble-breasted men in green facepaint, ill-fitting dresses and bald wigs intent on killing Sandy.

I shall refrain from commenting for fear of reprisals.

"Put it in me!"

Luckily good ol' Joe figures out what's happened almost immediately and armed with the groovy space gun he was given earlier heads down to the planet for a wee bout of violent gun play and babe rescuing before returning to the space base for a wee kiss and a cuddle.

Fuck yeah.

Whilst all this action stuff has been going down Ben has been busy sorting out the cubes in order of colour (well it was either that or watch Mr Yellowlees and Mrs Jones get more and more suggestive as time goes on - ready for Joe (well he is the hero) to return and tell them what to do next.

And that is sit around like an utter tool wearing a childs swimming hat whilst attaching the wire on top to the side of one of the boxes in order to narrate the history of the alien planet below.

Seriously not even a disheveled Sandy can hide how fucking embarrassed they all look.

Even I felt sorry for them for a minute or so.

Well with only about 15 minutes of the scant runtime left it's time to get down to the rest of the plot good and proper with the terrifying reveal that the savage planet below is actually the home of the folk who built the space base and they've regressed to such a barbaric level due to the effects of a spooky space ray belonging to an alien invasion fleet.

A fleet that is now heading to Earth.

I made this.

And so begins a race against time - and taste - as our merry band frantically try to figure out which button (hint, it's the big red one) controls the space bases rockets in an attempt to destroy the incoming invasion fleet before it destroys Earth....

Based on the 'popular' 1960 sci-fi novel The Wailing Asteroid written by pulp novelist and inventor of the front projection special effects process (no, really) Murray Leinster, directed (in the loosest possible sense) by Montgomery Tully and produced by Milton Subotsky's Amicus films, The Terrornauts is an end of the pier, low/no-budget oddity that comes across like a community centre production of Quatermass ghostwritten by Rentaghost's Bob Block.

Yes, it's that good.

With upper lips stiffer than the cardboard sets, The Terrornauts is a terribly British tale of space ships and strange shit obviously influenced by Subotsky's earlier Doctor Who adaptations but with a budget closer to the original BBC source material rather than big screen versions that takes itself just seriously enough to cover the fact that most of the hi-tech sci-fi stuff has been hastily thrown together out of the canteen drawers and the fact that everything seems to be shot in either a spare bedroom or someones garden.

Tho' there's no excuse for the sub-Tony Hart gallery submission matte work on show, seriously it looks like a dogs stole some crayons, ate them then vomited.

"My name's Joe....Joe Skywalker!"

As for the cast, they do an admirable job with what they're given - which in Stanley Meadows case is they keys to the local greengrocers - Oates obviously used this as his audition piece for Doomwatch whilst Marshall is obviously thinking about how much money she'll make as a sewing pattern model**

But the films greatest performances are from the comedic powerhouses that are Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes - Hawtrey's prissy accountant appears to have stumbled in from a late 70s Douglas Adams script-edited Doctor Who episode whilst Hayes (slightly) saucy tea lady provides the perfect foil not only to Hawtrey but to the rest of the cast too.

It's just a pity it's not her that gets to beam down to the alien planet to slaughter the bad guys.

Now that would be magnificent.

Seriously The Terrornauts is an under-rated classic.

Even if the title makes fuck-all sense.