KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954)
Article #232 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-3-2001
Posting date: 3-19-2002

When a pilot from an A-bomb test mysteriously reappears after having supposedly died in a plane crash, he has strange scars on his chest. Later, he is caught trying to hide secret military information under a rock and crashes into a tree trying to escape. Under sodium amatol, he reveals that he was captured and hypnotized by aliens.

If you’re watching this movie for serious science fiction thrills, good luck to you; this movie directed by W. Lee Wilder is sluggish, badly timed, and poorly edited. Those looking for a good laugh should fast forward to about halfway through the movie, where Peter Graves encounters the bejumpsuited ping-pong-ball-eyed aliens and their menagerie of big bugs and lizards which keep the foley artist working overtime. The highlight is, of course, Peter Graves’ run through the caves where he encounters these creatures, though you most likely will never believe he’s actually near a single one of them. The final shot of a nuclear explosion seen through venetian blinds is not only unconvincing, it’s postively surreal; you’d think someone would duck and cover. This certainly isn’t W. Lee Wilder’s best movie, but it is probably his most well known.