Terrornauts, The (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Mar 25, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
-
Director
Montgomery TullyRelease Date(s)
1967 (February 25, 2025)Studio(s)
Amicus Productions/Embassy Pictures (Vinegar Syndrome Labs)- Film/Program Grade: D
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Staggeringly awful, Amicus’s production of The Terrornauts (1967) was originally released on a double-bill with the equally terrible They Came from Beyond Space. Amicus historian Allan Bryce, in his Amicus: The Studio That Dripped Blood, called them “the two worst films the company ever produced.” Too ambitious for its tiny budget, this cheap film is undone by terrible special effects, a dreadful screenplay, glacial pacing, poor direction, one-dimensional characters, and some truly bizarre casting choices.
The success of Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957), low-budget but exciting and highly intelligent films adapted from teleplays by Nigel Kneale, led to other Kneale-esque British films of varying quality over the next dozen years. Even the cheapest ones sometimes weren’t bad (e.g., The Night Caller, 1965) or were at least entertaining (Invasion, also 1965). Amicus themselves demonstrated with their earlier Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966) that it was possible to produce low-budget science fiction films with imaginative production design and special effects on a small budget. But, in every respect, The Terrornauts is hopeless.
The film is just 77 minutes but seems a good hour longer. The opening credits are also unusually protracted, suggesting the filmmakers struggled to get the film up to a releasable length. It was later reissued, presumably to children’s matinees, at 57 minutes. I doubt shedding two full reels did it any harm.
Dr. Joe Burke (Simon Oates) heads “Project Star Talk,” a so-far fruitless attempt to discover radio signals from intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, assisted by electronics expert Ben Keller (Stanley Meadows) and office manager Sandy Lund (Zena Marshall). Dr. Howard Shore (Max Adrian) is unhappy that Project Star Talk has spent so much money while yielding zero results after four years, to say nothing of tying up the million-pound telescope at all hours. Shore dispatches an accountant, Joshua Yellowlees (Charles Hawtrey), to inspect the books. The first third of the picture consists of static, lifeless scenes of Burke and Shore arguing about the project’s worth. Shore gives Burke three months to come up with something—or else.
These threats prove meaningless, as providentially a strange signal is discovered immediately after, emanating from a small asteroid at the rim of the solar system, and soon after that a spaceship from that asteroid turns up, lifting the entire transmitter shed into its hull, with Joe, Ben, Sandy, Yellowlees, and cockney tea trolley canteen worker Mrs. Jones (Patricia Hayes) trapped inside. Arriving on the asteroid, a Dalek-like robot (operated by Robert Jewell) puts them through a series of intelligence tests (reminiscent of the “build-your -own interocitor” scenes from This Island Earth) before its programming determines the party has the Right Stuff to fend off an impending alien invasion of Earth.
The first 25 minutes of The Terrornauts are excruciatingly dull and talky, static scenes limited to just two interior sets, unimaginatively staged by director Montgomery Tully. The business with Dr. Shore is pointless, seemingly included to add running time. Once the main story finally gets underway and the party is taken to the asteroid, the film is overrun with cheap sets and laughably poor if plentiful special effects that are completely inadequate, the poor miniatures and their photography comparable to a 1930s Flash Gordon serial, or maybe an 8mm home movie. Even the Doctor Who television series concurrently did more with less.
But even with better special effects and production design, The Terrornauts would still be terrible. The screenplay, closely if badly adapted from Hugo Award-winner Murray Leinster’s 1960 novel The Wailing Asteroid, has peculiar attitudes about human behavior. The characters are surprised but never overly concerned—certainly not fearful—at the notion of being whisked off into space by a strange, alien race, encountering strange beings and technology, and then charged with saving the Earth from a mass invasion.
The casting only underscores this. Patricia Hayes’s stereotyped cockney tea trolley pusher is a bizarre addition not in the novel. Her bemused reactions to everything border on the surreal. Looking at the alien robot, for instance, she exclaims, “Look at all them spiky bits!” Charles Hawtrey was, at the time, an anchor in the long-running “Carry On” comedy film series, but makes no adjustment to the material here, mincing about and gesturing broadly as if playing panto. Max Adrian was a highly-regarded Irish actor belying his overwrought, hammy performance in this, in the same league as Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness (who both spoke at his funeral). His film work typically consisted of substantial efforts like Henry V and Uncle Vanya; what he’s doing in the likes of The Terrornauts is anyone’s guess. Maybe he needed the money.
The rest of the cast is competent, but at sea stuck with characters less substantial than cardboard. This was the last work of exotic, wall-eyed beauty Zena Marshall, best remembered for her ‘60s TV work and as sinister Miss Taro, in the first 007 film, Dr. No (1962). Not long before this she had a small but memorable role in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), a lavish Todd-AO production. No wonder she retired after making a film as cheap and profoundly dumb as The Terrornauts.
Conversely, Vinegar Syndrome’s new Blu-ray of The Terrornauts, a 4K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative, looks astounding. I last watched the film on a PAL DVD which looked fine for the time, but this is light years ahead of that. Shot for 1.66:1 widescreen projection, the image is razor-sharp and the color really pops. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is also excellent for what it is, supported by optional English subtitles. The disc is Region “A” encoded.
The plentiful extras consist of an audio commentary track by film historian Brian Hannan; a conversation with the ubiquitous film critic Kim Newman (22 minutes); and archival interviews with editor Peter Musgrave (8 minutes) and production manager Ted Wallis (7 minutes). The sleeve artwork is also reversible.
The Terrornauts has been described as a British Plan 9 from Outer Space, but though similarly inept, it’s much too boring to qualify for that title. However, the video transfer is undeniably superb, and fans of low-budget sci-fi pictures may want to seek this out.
- Stuart Galbraith IV