Funeral Home and Zontar, Thing from Venus

[Derf]

I watched these two movies this week.

Zontar, Thing from Venus is painful in a reasonably entertaining way. The dialog is horrible (example: "You don't understand it? Of course you don't understand it! Nobody understands it! It's the greatest scientific discovery of the century!"). The premise is that Earth is launching a laser communication satellite. One scientist, Keith Ritchie, predicts it will be destroyed because other galactic civilizations won't stand for violent humans entering space. How does he know? He's in contact with Zontar, a Venusian who offers to come to Earth and "save" us from ourselves. Ritchie accepts the offer on behalf of humanity, so Zontar hijacks the satellite for an hour and arrives on Earth. He has to live in a cave with a hot springs since it is "close" to the atmosphere on Venus. He controls humans through bats that he grows under his wings; the bats inject a receiver into the back of the victim's neck and then die. The victim then loses all emotions and carries out the will of Zontar. Ritchie insists this is the only way humans can be saved and that Zontar is good. Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar!), Ritchie's best friend, opposes Ritchie, as does Ritchie's wife, an annoying Southern whiner. Taylor kills his own wife (she's been taken over by Zontar) rather than give in to the evil (he apparently never thinks of simply taking out the receiver--it sticks out of the back of a victim's neck by a good half-inch). Eventually, Taylor convinces Ritchie that Zontar is evil, and they go to the cave to destroy the stiff, slow-moving, three-eyed bat critter. Since Zontar is bulletproof, Ritchie has to use a powerful laser that only he possesses (it was how he contacted Zontar in the first place). The laser doesn't actually shoot a beam; it turns the entire landscape into a negative image and the victim collapses.

Funeral Home can be summed up easily: Psycho with grandmas. A young woman goes to visit her grandmother, who is turning their home (a funeral home) into a tourist home after the disappearance of her grandfather. The grandmother is super nice, so you know she's gotta be crazy. There's the obligatory half-retarded handyman and the immoral salesman and his girlfriend who come to stay at the tourist home. People start disappearing, and only the new cop in town (actually, he's a townie looking for respect as a police officer) notices. The young woman hears strange voices coming from the cellar, but the grandmother won't let her go down there. We are supposed to believe that the grandmother is hiding the grandfather in the basement. I never bought that story. It turns out that the grandfather ran away with another woman, the grandmother had a nervous breakdown, killed the grandfather and the woman and hid them in the cellar and then split her personality into her own and her husband's. "He" kills those who are immoral, while "she" is more forgiving. Think Edie McClurg as a serial killer and you get reasonably close to the grandmother's character. The movie is kind of entertaining, but it drags terribly as it tries to build suspense even though we already know how it is going to end.

[Andrew]

I am not sure if, in "Zontar," I would call the little flyers "bats."  If I remember correctly, they look like a madman used a stapler to attach rubber wings to plastic lobsters.  They do look a lot like bats in "It Conquered the World."  

Interesting, I even like the main creature in "It Conquered the World" better than "Zontar" (I have ran into a few people who sort of like the weird design from the latter film.

[Scott]

The best part of the film is when the wife walks out into the living room and tells John Agar she's going out for a walk and will be right back releasing this stupid looking flying needle bat thing.

[Flangepart]

Andrew Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am not sure if, in "Zontar," I would call the
> little flyers "bats."  If I remember correctly,
> they look like a madman used a stapler to attach
> rubber wings to plastic lobsters.  They do look a
> lot like bats in "It Conquered the World."  
>
> Interesting, I even like the main creature in "It
> Conquered the World" better than "Zontar" (I have
> ran into a few people who sort of like the weird
> design from the latter film.

E-yup. Its the same story, just lesser actors and FX. Gotta agree, Beulah the space cuecumber is a bit more fun to view then the Zontar "Bat thingy".