Undescribable Perfection

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

After the launch of Sputnik by the Russians in 1957 there were many attempts to launch American satellites that for a while were all ending in failure. I remember as a kid seeing the launches and seeing them fail every couple of months or so. By 1960 however we seemed to be getting it right and the following year we were sending men in space for the Mercury project. So in 1960 The Cape Canaveral Monsters was already a dated film on release. This dud of a science fiction film is as big a dud as some of those early launches from Cape Canaveral. This would have you believe that aliens who when not taking over dead human bodies are just dots of light are worried about our progress in space flight and are sabotaging our space program. Has to figure, if not aliens then its those Communists on orders from Moscow.A cast where you never heard of anybody performs their parts on the level of grade school drama. Some newsreel footage of our failure satellite launches integrated into some bad special effects and worse acting characterizes this film made by klutzes.

When a couple are killed in an auto accident their bodies are immediately inhabited by extraterrestrial beings. Taking refuge in an underground cave, the aliens attempt to sabotage the United States space program.Probably the most interesting thing about this film is the story of the director, Phil Tucker. Tucker pumped out six films in two years, including "Robot Monster" and a Lenny Bruce film. Then, after a failed suicide attempt, he made this little-known film. From there he went on to become an editor and worked on such films as "King Kong". So, the story here is more about Tucker than the movie itself.That being said, the story here is not bad... ignoring the sabotage aspect, we have here a story that may have more to do with vampires than zombies -- the need to use human "life forces" to stay alive. Others have drawn parallels with Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", but I think that is uncalled for.

This is a lesser-known effort than the same director's notoriously awful ROBOT MONSTER (1953) but it actually proves somewhat better, if still in no way a good film. It may well be the first zombie picture to receive a sci-fi slant (thus predating George A. Romero's regrettably landmark NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD by 8 years!}), but the monsters' use here is really no different than the various 'alien takeover' ploys we had seen and would continue to see until that particular fad burnt itself out! What is different is that the zombies were rendered so in a car crash, so that the victims are all scarred, bloody and literally torn to pieces (one of them keeps losing an arm throughout)!; their real form, then, is nothing more than a glowing speck which enters the human body through the brain.The titular site, of course, is the U.S. rocket-launching base and the aliens are here to sabotage their every effort to breach outer space...which they do by shooting an unwieldy bazooka straight at the shuttle (at one point, the man does it while one-armed and hits the bull's-eye regardless – so much for his partner's whining that he should restore his other limb, of course by finding another human donor)! By the way, one of the film's main founts of amusement is the aliens' evident contempt for one another! – incidentally, they occasionally report to their intergalactic superior, who appears on their monitor in the form of a floating pancake!! At the base, we have the usual motley crew of military brass, rookie scientists and the obligatory German expert, who comes with a geeky-but-cute niece who throws the Doc into a fit by flirting with the young man on his time! The two lovers have to cut loose in order to enjoy some quality time together, meeting with another couple to have themselves a picnic-by-moonlight; however, the hero is too immersed in his work not to notice the static on his pal's radio, which means that a transmitter is being illegally operated in the vicinity (and which, he reasons, may have something to do with the rockets going haywire)! While he and his girl go snooping around, the other two are abducted by the aliens to their cave hide-out and placed half-dangling into what appears to be a sink while the girl is undressed to then be wrapped in a plastic sheet (in preparation for her being transmitted into space), while the boy's body makes for a plastic surgeon's dream as the bruised-up alien pilfers whatever takes his fancy from him – assuming that, if he looks good, he should be less conspicuous when roaming outside! Hero and heroine are soon in the aliens' clutches themselves, but he manages to escape simply by passing his watch in front of the controls: I have to wonder, at this stage, what would have happened had the leading man not been Physics-savvy! He lands in the home of a hillbilly (who appears before long toting a gun in his pyjamas) and calls the authorities – again, since he is who he is, we do not get the usual wasting-of-time with the hero attempting to make the cops believe his story! Even so, the pace of the 68-minute film is rather slow, being even stopped dead in its tracks at the climax so as to allow most of the cast (including the eminent scientist, who is actually present in some group-shots but not others!) – captured by the aliens by means of a paralyzing gun! – to methodically work out, via mathematical equations, what would cause an explosion from the materials at their disposal inside the cave! Again, the film is nothing to write home about and yet it does contrive a circular twist ending which was totally unexpected and downright cynical for such a low-brow offering! For the record, this viewing came by way of an old and quite hazy TV transmission that is continually interrupted for ad-breaks (though these were somewhat haphazardly eliminated afterwards).

How can any horror fan growing up with horror flicks of the late 50's through mid 60's ever deny films like The Cape Canaveral Monsters, Attack of the 50ft Woman, Amazing Colossal Man, etc.? Excellent drive-in horror! We start with a seemingly innocent couple who are driving to a rocket lauch. BUT... A spaceship lands while they're enroute. And this radioactive alien (who's just a hairy white man made to look big) contaminates them and turns them into The Cape Canaveral Monsters. Then, they go on this mission with a laser shooting missiles and satellites when they are launched from Cape Canaveral. It's really quite fun.