Instant Favorite.

hyped garbage

Good movie but grossly overrated

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's bad enough that everything they say and do is dumb but it's even worse that the movie is just slow moving and boring. We literally see them have tea 3 times in the first 30 minutes and that's the action. Watch the first 10 minutes and the last 10.

The Killer Tomatoes have nothing on the Terrornauts. This could very well be the worst movie ever made. I think among my favorite moments is the flimsy space fortresses appendages flopping all around during the something-less-than-epic space battle. It's also a very well known fact that any good attacking spaceship should have a flip open front end and weak red light as a weapon. Luckily, our intrepid space travelers have their custom swim caps to see them through. Particularly impressive, the aluminum funnel budget. Valuable lessons of science and space to be gleaned from The Terrornauts: Not only does fire burn in space, but the laws of temperature and gravity still apply. Smoke goes up, spaceship parts fall down. Finally, carrying incredible feminist overtones, one learns that a woman is definitely required to properly fire a defensive space missile. Good clean fun for the whole family.

I used to have a schoolfriend named Eddie Donnelly whose favourite programme was 'The Tomorrow People'. After viewing the latest episode, he, along with his sister Esther and younger brother Graham, would retreat to the spare room to continue the adventure. His 'jaunting' belts were bits of string. 'TIM' the super intelligent computer was a broken cassette player, flex twisted round the light fitting. His mother's hairdryer became a ray-gun. 'The Galactric Trig' was the ironing cupboard at the top of the stairs. Eddie would, naturally, be John, the group's leader. A typical session went as follows: "We have a new assignment!", Eddie would say: "We must go to the planet Carlgor-5!". Touching their bits of string, the trio then ran downstairs to the kitchen, and out the back door into the weed-infested garden. This was Eddie's idea of Carlgor-5. As smoke wafted over the fence from next door's bonfire, he said: "We must be careful. The natives here are savage! Come, let us search for the legendary Crystal of Kronos which has mind-bending properties! If the Thargs get to it first, the universe is theirs!". At which point, the chimes of a Mr.Whippy ice cream van could be heard, and Eddie was left to finish the quest alone while the others went to nag their mother for money for cornets.I was reminded of Eddie and his intergalactic exploits while watching 'The Terrornauts' recently. It is a cheap sci-fi movie made by Amicus, the only British studio to rival Hammer in the '60's. After enjoying success with movies based on 'Dr.Who', Milton Subotsky and Max J.Rosenberg purchased the rights to a novel called 'The Wailing Asteroid' by Murray Leinster, hiring sci-fi author John Brunner to adapt it. It opens at the headquarters of 'Project Star Talk', whose purpose is to search for extra-terrestrial beings with a radio telescope. Dr.Joe Burke ( Simon Oates ), the head of the project, is told by his frosty superior ( Max Adrian ) that the funding will soon be stopped unless results are obtained soon. Well, wouldn't you know it, suddenly signals are being picked up from the heavens. A space ship uses a tractor beam to tear the project building out of the ground and transport it through space to an an alien vessel parked on an asteroid. As well as Burke, there is also his girlfriend Sandy ( Zena Marshall, 'Miss Taro' in 'Dr.No' ), another scientist played by Stanley Meadows, and - if you can believe this - Charles Hawtrey as an accountant named Joshua Yellowlees and Patricia Hayes as tea lady Mrs.Jones! The group are subjected to intelligence tests by a robot looking like a cross between a Dalek and an upturned ice cream cone. Passing the tests, they discover the real reason for their abduction - the Earth is about to be attacked by an alien race and only they can stop them! I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. The cast helps, obviously. Oates went on to play 'Dr.John Ridge' in the B.B.C.'s sci-fi drama 'Doomwatch', and in a small role is Richard Carpenter, later to create the classic children's shows 'Catweazle' and 'The Ghosts Of Motley Hall'. The whole thing has an amateur look to it which I found endearing. The Terrornauts themselves are green-skinned creatures whose sense of gallantry is non-existent - as soon as Sandy arrives amongst them, they try and sacrifice her! The alien space fleet looks like a lot of Zoom ice lollies flying about in space. Having sat through umpteen mega-buck Hollywood bores, this unpretentious romp is the ideal antidote. It was directed by Monthgomery Tully, also responsible for another guilty sci-fi pleasure - 'Battle Beneath The Earth' ( 1967 ) in which the Red Chinese attempt to conquer America by means of underground tunnels full of atomic bombs.I don't know if Eddie ever saw this on television but I reckon he and his brother and sister could have pulled off a recreation with remarkable ease.

I was constantly surprised by where this film took me.Initially expecting the the alien spaceship to have hostile intentions against the Earth, it simply kidnaps some miscellaneous and startled astronomers and makes off with them. After that it is nothing like the usual: aliens attack earth, humans fight back but are losing, humans find a clever trick/weapon/chemical/virus and defeat evil aliens (or get soundly defeated and taken over by evil aliens).They are dumped into an alien base on an asteroid and the fun part is watching them work out where they are, and why. The ending is novel for its time, but a little tacky.I enjoyed the film very much for its novelty and surprises (not its very basic special effects). It was a "nice" film. It is probably very dated now but I haven't seen it for 30 years.