The Wild Wild Planet

[vanightwolf]

I was 13 when I first saw "Wild Wild Planet", and it really spooked me. Has anybody noticed that the freak-and-girl duos only seem to shrink and capture men and boys? In fact, when the granddaughter of "Dr. Delfus" [he is called "Dr. Fried" in the American dubbed version] intervenes when a Freak starts to shrink him, the Freak's female confrere rather crudely simply strangles the girl and leaves her there. Wouldn't shrinking the girl have been more convenient and left no evidence? And by the by, those odd triangular hypos are INDEED the shrinking devices used; they don't vaporize but simply SHRINK whoever is injected by them -- it's just that we aren't always shown the wee, wee bodies of the victims; usually only their still full-sized clothes. Interestingly, in the scene where Nurmi has just shrunk one of his ladyfriends, and Halsted is trying to convince his superior Maitland as to what Nurmi is up to, Halsted suddenly desperately cries out: "Search him!" [After all, there was obviously a teeny, naked woman in one of Nurmi's pockets.] But when you think about it, if all of Nurmi's chosen specimens who wound up shrunken and inside suitcases were male, how does that explain the various normal-sized gals in the "preparation-tubes" at Nurmi's lab-complex? Sex-change operations?

[vanightwolf]

And here's a newsflash: "Wild Wild Planet" is technically an informal sequel to a movie which was actually shot back to back with in Rome. The English-language title of this film is "War Of The Planets"; both films take place in the same future civilization and feature the same main cast playing the same roles in both films and shooting off the same propane-powered laser-guns -- sort of like two overlong episodes of the same cheesy teevee series. Both films were directed by "Anthony Dawson" [Antonio Margharetti], and written by Ivan Reiner and Renato Moretti. Both movies were often seen on 1970s teevee. "War" lacks most of the startling sexual frissons, over-campy horror elements, and bad-guy corporate input of "Wild", but it's still fun in its own dopey way -- especially since Commander Halsted, Jake, Charles, and the ever lovably hateful Connie are all there yet again. If I have enough room on this forum, I'll try to relate the plot.

[vanightwolf]

OK -- "War Of The Planets".

On Space Station Gamma One, they're celebrating New Year's Day. Dozens of astronauts form the letters of the words HAPPY NEW YEAR  with their bodies -- and one them gets "drunker than a miner on Mars." A lady from one of the other space stations asks Cmdr. Halsted via vidphone when Connie Gomez is going to come over and teach their women karate, while Jake verifies how he recently saw "negative readings" on station radiation meters. Meanwhile at Earth's space headquarters, Halsted's fellow officer Captain DuBois is physically and mentally taken over by strange energy beings called Diafanoids who keep telling his struggling mind: "You WILL do this. You WILL do this. You WILL do this. For the Good of the Whole, you WILL do this." Well, to be brief, DuBois engages in certain sabotage and mutinous activities ("He's gone Galaxy!") as various space stations are suddenly attacked by the Diafanoids ("billions of lights traveling at fantastic speeds") who envelope the stations in thick fog and cause them to be transported to Mars. More Diafanoids possess other space-personnel -- and naturally they want to possess "perfect specimen" Connie. DuBois voices the Diafanoids' demands -- which include having the still mysteriously unpossessed Halsted, Jake, Ken, and General Maitland fly all the possessed and pre-possessed to a nuclear fuel-station on Mars. Halsted is initially worried ("Soon our names will all be up in LIGHTS -- millions and millions of LIGHTS."), but he and Jake and the others take time out to unwind in a holding-area in the station which houses a food-dispenser which serves gourmet-meals and "Martian nectar". But they soon loose their appetites when they find the vast refuse bin at the bottom of their garbage-chute is full of the bodies of hundreds of space-station personnel who were deemed unacceptable. Well, any old how, Halsted rescues Connie and Charles, they breach the fuel-station's wall, and run back to their rocket (did you know Mars has Earth-type gravity, and that you can actually survive in its atmosphere for a few minutes, although it makes you choke?). Well, they fly off, and along comes a space-fleet led by none other than Halsted's dear old General of a dad -- and they blast the Martian station and all those nasty Diafanoids which were just beginning to escape. And in gratitude for saving her, Connie slaps Halsted on the face, haughtily saying it's for "The Good of the Whole". Ain't future love just grand?

[Vincent]

If you love sci-fi, this movie will be fun for you. It`s ridiculous.