If Peter Graves' character, nuclear physicist Doug Martin, seems disoriented and confused throughout the 1954 sci-fi shlocker "Killers From Space," I suppose he has a good excuse. Killed in a plane crash while taking readings after an A-bomb test, Martin is brought back to life by bug-eyed aliens from the planet Astron Delta and forced by them into performing an impossible mission (whether he decides to accept it or not!): stealing the plans for the next A test. Perhaps adding to Graves' personal disorientation is the fact that, just the year before, he'd costarred in "Stalag 17," a product of one of the finest filmmakers of all time, Billy Wilder, and was now starring in a film directed by Billy's brother, W. Lee Wilder...and it's pretty clear who received the genes for talent in this family! Anyway, "Killers From Space" has been filmed on the supercheap, but somehow the lousy FX are strangely endearing. The film feels padded despite its 71-minute running time, with many stock shots of Air Force jets, nuke tests and "giant" animals, but nevertheless moves along fairly quickly and never commits the cardinal sin of cinema by being boring. The memorable aliens, with their pingpong ball eyes and hooded jumpsuits, do impress, and Martin's method of ultimately handling their menace is clever, in a suspenseful conclusion. Yes, the film is shlocky, but I didn't laff at it once, and really enjoyed seeing Graves and that giant grasshopper; in retrospect, a warm-up for 1957's "Beginning of the End." Fans of '50s sci-fi should probably give "Killers" a bonus star. One warning, though: The DVD that I just watched is from Alpha Video, an outfit notorious for lousy prints of countless treasures, and the print here is pretty badly damaged indeed, but still, fortunately, watchable.
Review of Killers from Space
