War Of The Planets (1977) What would you think if I told you that this movie featured astronauts in red
swimming caps and silver ear pieces? And what if you knew that whenever
someone took a spacewalk you could either see the shadow of the apparatus that
was holding them up or that their feet were conveniently out of the shot all
together? And what would you say if you saw the menacing robot that had taken
over a planet and thought to yourself that this was a clunky, boxy-looking
thing that your learning disabled eight year old child could have constructed
(if they were in a rush and didn't really care about craftsmanship)? Well,
you'd probably guess that for some reason the Italians had taken a breather
from slasher and zombie movies in order to break into the science fiction
genre. And unfortunately you would be dead on in that assessment.
The only explanation for the existence of War Of The Planets is that it came out in 1977. I can only assume that in an effort to ride the
popularity of Star Wars that there were never any coming attractions for this, never any pre-release
screenings for critics and that anyone who actually was sentenced to go see
this had to sign some sort of nondisclosure agreement prohibiting them from
ever revealing the fact that the best part of the movie was the barely mediocre
poster art. There really aren't enough negative adjectives to describe the experience this
movie puts the viewer through. Sure, I could give my good buddy Roget a call
and he could probably rattle off words such as insipid, vapid, inane,
etiolated, poky, ponderous, trite, banal, bromidic, musty and fusty, and stank
(that was my own addition) in an effort to communicate the level of
incompetence this thing fails to reach, but that would be too easy and if you
learn nothing else about this movie, it should be that there isn't anything
easy about it.  Part of the problem with this movie (aside from the acting, set design, special
effects, editing, music, dubbing, and makeup) is that I was never entirely sure
when our actual story started. At first, we are on this spaceship and everyone
is pooping their silver leggings about a space rock floating near them. I
think they were worried that they were going to get wiped out by it which was
an interesting take on the situation since as soon I saw them in their
unflattering silver outfits and red bathing cap, I was worried that they weren't going to get wiped out by the rock.
If the fact that these people are all dressed up like they belong in a bargain
basement Italian science fiction movie doesn't tip you off that this movie
isn't exactly going to be Star Wars (or even Thumb Wars), once they all decide to get in their seats and belt themselves before
heading out to have a look at the space rock and their safety devices are
actually just regular over the shoulder seat belts attached to the backs of
their spray painted office chairs, you'll probably smarten up in a hurry. The meteor passes and everyone survives prompting a rather fake-sounding dubbed
celebration by the crew and then you get your spacewalk. This is where you get
to see shadows on the screen (I mean "deep space") behind the astronaut of the
thing that was holding this guy up. Usually, if you're either too inept or too
poor to execute these special effects properly, you want to try and keep these
segments brief and leave a lot to our imagination so that we aren't imagining
how your family probably saw this movie and reminded you that still had that
teaching degree to fall back on since filmmaking wasn't going to work out. But movies like this tend to exacerbate their shortcomings by displaying an
almost masochist desire to drag out these types of sequences. War Of The Planets is no exception and thus when we flash back to the ship we see the captain
bellowing about how you aren't supposed to go on a really cruddy-looking
spacewalk all by yourself because if this guy doesn't do the repairs correctly,
he's liable to get battery acid all over his spacesuit and you know what
happens when a battery leaks all over a spacesuit designed to keep you safe
from the hazards of alien planets and deep space.  As soon as the captain warns all of us that this guy needs to be careful about
causing a battery leak (I'm guessing that this spaceship runs out about six D
cell batteries since that's about what a nice boom box would take) we know
instantaneously that two things are going to happen: Luigi is going to be
eating a face full of battery acid in about ten seconds and someone (probably
the captain) is going to go out and save him. Guess what happens next? Battery
acid spews into space and onto Luigi's Salvation Army spacesuit and someone
(probably the captain, but I never figured out who was who since they all wore
the same red shower caps) suits up and goes out to get him. Did I also mention
that before this happened, the captain announced that Luigi only had three
minutes to make it back to the ship? Can't recall why, but I suppose it
prevents people from dilly-dallying on spacewalks.
After the spacewalk issues gets resolved, our crew of intrepidly anonymous
actors and actresses have some more space crises. There's a couple of
spaceships that try to shoot them down and Earth calls up and demands that they
go on a suicide mission. The guys on Earth tell the captain that if they
survive their suicide mission, they'll get extra vacation and promotions, but
Captain Ragu tells them that they like the two weeks vacation they already got
and that he's exercising his rights under the "new rules" to refuse to follow
orders. I wasn't entirely sure what these "new rules" were all about, but maybe
that was just Ragu's way of being the "hothead captain" the movie so
strenuously tried to portray him as. (They had him punching a superior out
earlier on and also had other superiors talk about how he was hotheaded.) I was never sure if Captain Ragu ever accepted that suicide mission or not, but
I think he ended up taking care of Earth's business anyway because he lands on
a planet to repair his ship after a fender bender with some alien ships and it
just so happens to be the planet that this big robot that looks like he was
built in the forties or fifties (can you say Tobor The Great?) is in charge of. Actually there might have been two robots because you had
the one that was lurching around the surface near Ragu's ship and there was one
in the old abandoned and bombed out city that actually kept all the
pointy-eared people in metallic body paint enslaved. The enslaved people want that robot destroyed and Ragu decides to get in his
spacesuit and trudge into the city to see what can be done about it. The
computer on his ship advises him that there's fifty-fifty chance that the robot
can be destroyed by punching a red button on it. When I first heard that, I
thought I must have not been paying attention again since that sounded pretty
stupid, but then when we met the robot and Ragu's buddy excitedly pointed out
the red button and shouted "there's the red button!" and Ragu said "not so loud
- the robot might hear you" I realized that this movie was in fact that stupid.  You would think (actually, you would hope and plead with every fiber in your
being) that the destruction of the robot with the red self-destruct button
would signal the end of this futuristic fiasco, but then it decides to steal a
page from Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires. And by the way, if there's any doubt that Mario Bava is one the great
directors, all you have to do is note that he somehow managed to make a very
good Hercules movie (Hercules In The Haunted World) and a very good Italian sci-fi movie (the aforementioned Planet of the Vampires) a feat that thousands of other Italians have tried, but have failed
stunningly at.
Irredeemable in every sense of the word, this is the kind of bad Italian
science fiction movie that gives bad Italian science fiction movies a bad name.
The movie has no personality and none of the characters are distinguishable
from one another (you can tell the females apart from the males, thanks to the
ugly-ass clingy costumes they wear, but that's about it). These astronauts
don't really do much and mixing it up with that robot whose feet looked like
something from a middle ages suit of armor isn't really enough to hinge an hour
and half space movie on. This is part of Retromedia's "The Italian Science Fiction Collection". I think
you know all you need to know when you discover that the "collection" consists
of this movie and one other movie called War Of The Robots - a movie directed by the same guy that did this one! And to think, I watched
this one first, because it looked better than War Of The Robots! It's almost as if I can hear the robot's maniacal laugh echoing throughout
the room as I gaze over to the other half of this "collection" realizing that
the worst is yet to come.
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