Cape Canaveral Monsters, The (1960)
* (out of 4)
A couple aliens from an unknown planet come to Earth where they cause a young couple to crash their car. The aliens then take over their bodies with plans to destroy a place where they are setting off missiles. The aliens are against the missiles so they begin to shoot them out of the sky so it's up to a couple other teens to try and save the day. Rumor, myth or truth, it's said that director Phil Tucker attempted suicide after the horrible reviews of his film ROBOT MONSTER. Who knows how much of that is actually true but this thing here is just about as bad. Those art house crowds would be best to stay away from this thing but if you enjoy bad movies then this one here is about as bad and as stupid as you can get. For starters, the plot makes very little to no sense because the screenplay, also by Tucker, never takes any time to explain what the missiles are being used for and we never really get to know why the aliens want to destroy them. The movie runs 68-minutes and the entire story just jumps around without too much logic. One minute a couple teens will get kidnapped and then the very next scene we have their friends, somehow, knowing the aliens took them so they go to find them. There's never any reasoning as to what's going on and this includes some rather silly devices used by the aliens to control the teens. One of the dumbest things is a running joke about the male alien constantly having his arm ripped off. I'm not sure if this was meant as comedy but it does separate this film from countless other sci-fi flicks from this era because the sight of a severed arm wasn't too common in 1960. The car crash at the start of the film was actually filmed fairly well as the camera was placed in the back seat as the "wreck" happened. That's about the best thing that can be said about this film. I wouldn't say this movie is as enjoyable as ROBOT MONSTER but it would certainly make a decent double-feature with that film.
