Killers From Space

My wife has observed more than once that I am the "other demographic" that people talk about but she never believed those people actually existed. Saint Austin's Pub is the place to be for the "other demographic" - including the types of movies that we watch. This is why we will never be highlighted on Google's "Blogs of Note". But the "other demographic" (OD) would never openly care about such a thing - all the while secretly wishing to find itself there.

Even as a child, I was a member of the OD. I am not sure if it was because I already was a member of the OD, or the situation that I am about to describe was part of my formation into the OD; you decide since actually I really don't care. When I was about 11 or 12 years old in the early '70s, a new UHF TV station came on the air that clearly had no money to pay for programming. They had no commercials; just old movies and very old re-run TV shows and public service announcements from time to time. All of the movies were in black and white and fell into the lower than "B-movie" category. Many of the movies were westerns, old Saturday morning movie serials, silent movies, Sherlock Holmes, horror movies of such as might be named, "The Bride of the Second-Cousin of Frankenstein's Podiatrist", and all of the Godzilla movies. This is the age at which I graduated from Saturday morning cartoons to the Saturday afternoon matinee triple-feature. My parents ought to have said, "Enough is enough. Go outside and play!" But who knew? TV was still a relatively new concept. We still had a B&W TV and everyone still thought Benjamin Spock knew what he was talking about. Speaking of Dr Spock, my favorite of these less-than-B-movies were the science fictions. Wow! Giant tarantulas. A giant woman. A giant man-eating bird. The end of the world. Man-eating plants, and scores of invaders from space. What could be better?

So, it was with great delight, as I was standing in line at Walmart a few weeks ago, that my eye fell upon a DVD titled, "The Sci-Fi Invasion!" - "4 science fiction classics" for a dollar! It was too good to be true and of course I bought it. Later at home, I presented the incredible cultural and entertainment value of these movies to my wife with such enthusiasm that I actually talked her into watching the first one with me. I will admit that the first movie was not that great and so without giving it a second chance, my wife dismissed this entire entertainment genre as one that belonged solely to the OD. I however, was not put off by this one minor set-back and continued to watch the other three movies - alone.

I am pleased to tell you that I was not disappointed. The second movie on the DVD was "Killers from Space" starring none other than Peter Graves of Mission Impossible fame. I would have paid THREE dollars, for that movie all by itself. It was great! It had everything: mind control, bug-eyed alien invaders, USAF planes, pilots and generals, a nuclear explosion, a psycho-ward, giant lizards, giant spiders, giant cockroaches, old cars like my grandparents drove, weird desert scenes, an underground alien HQ. What more could anyone want from a movie?

By the way, if this guy shows up on your TV screen, watch out!