“They don’t make them like they used to.”
How many times have we heard this? The movies of yesteryear were so much better, unlike the drek of today. The truth is, they do make them like they used to. We just let the garbage of yesteryear be forgotten and only remember the good ones.
I’m going to help fix that with tonight’s movie: MISSION STARDUST (1967).
A little more than a year ago, AlienMotives did a Night Owl on Perry Rhodan, one of the most long-running science fiction book series of all time. It seems strange that a character that inspired so many books never spawned a movie adaptation. It turns out someone did–MISSION STARDUST. However the movie was so infamously bad that many Perry Rhodan fans refuse to admit the movie exists.
Perry Rhodan, our hero, is sent with his crew to the moon to find a mysterious element. While there their ship falls out of communication, their land vehicle is vaporized before their eyes, and they come upon a crashed alien spaceship. None of these events register any emotion with Rhodan and his assistant. However, when they meet the big breasted female pilot of said spaceship, he has a blast of emotion.
The reason for the aliens landing on earth seem to change depending on what the story needs to happen. Sometimes it’s an invasion to strip the Earth of valuable unnamed resources and minerals. Sometimes it’s to cure the leukemia of a beloved alien leader. Sometimes it’s to get their stagnant DNA an injection of fresh Earthman DNA (yes, that’s exactly what it means). They take the mini spaceship from the big spaceship and travel to Africa to find the one doctor in the world who has a leukemia antidote. There they clash with the local African Federation Army and corrupt mafia. The alien leader fights them all off effortlessly…which appears to be a bad thing because females of any species aren’t supposed to be aggressive leaders. I’m not sure. It’s all so convoluted.
The design is bad. Like, straight out of the THUNDERBIRDS bad. There are more plot holes than plot points. The characters have almost no distinguishing features to their personalities, if the personalities even exist. As AlienMotives and I watched this we kept wondering how this was never turned into a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. It’s just bad. Like, really bad.
Here you go if you want to watch it. I don’t blame you if you don’t:
Question of the night–what movie would you recommend people avoid at all costs?