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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Love Slaves of the She-Mummy – Embracing the Chaos, Part 2


{PART 2 – Morbid Mort’s Midnight Mausoleum Matinee}
By Sherman Hirsh

{Previously, I wrote about how the movie LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY came to be. I expounded on the origins of the Late Night Horror Host phenomenon, and how I used that to synthesize my own version. With the movie part finished, I was now able to develop the show itself and come up with a horror host.}

But who was my Horror Host? Should I rip off one of the originals, or try to create my own, i.e., the one I would do if I had the opportunity? Drawing on my own experience, I invoked the spirit of Ghoulardi, who has an imitator called The Ghoul, who in turn has an imitator called Son of Ghoul. My host would be a small town no-talent hack who was the imitator of an imitator of an imitator times 10.
Most of these shows were called “Shock Theater”, after the standard package of AIP, ALLIED ARTISTS, HAMMER & UNIVERSAL films licensed to the stations. I would avoid trademark turmoil by giving my show an original name. I wanted something new but sort of inept. I settled on MORBID MORT’S MIDNIGHT MAUSOLEUM MATINEE. It’s clear, yet excessively redundant too much.
Being a local show, I had to throw in a lot of obscure references only a regular viewer would find familiar. If you have ever had the experience of watching TV in a town other than the one in which you live, you’ll know the feeling. It all looks so different, yet so normal. Imagine viewing LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY as if you were stuck in a motel on a Friday night with nothing to do except watch TV. You endure commercials for local firms and products, different news and weather personalities, etc., and then you decide to watch an old movie you had not seen for years. Plus, you were curious about this Morbid Mort. Would he be as great (or lame) as the horror host in your hometown? Who, or what, was this “Zombina” Mort keeps attacking? Was there really a disease the local adolescents feared called FEJI, Flesh Eating Jock Itch?
And what does Mort’s catch phrase “EMBRACE THE CHAOS” really mean? Remember, I’m riffing off Ghouldardi. My dilemma was doing Ghoulardi without actually doing Ghoulardi. Morbid Mort theoretically is doing Ghouldardi without ever having seen Ghoulardi. Ghoulardi’s catch phrase, one of many, was “STAY SICK”. EMBRACE THE CHAOS is a reference to the anarchy and unrestrained lunacy that appeal to so many adolescent males, the core audience of Horror Host shows.
I wanted to know more about the Horror Host genre. I knew there were others working the Monster Movie beat, but since I don’t have access to the TV stations of other cities, I needed information one was not likely to find in a library. Was there any repository of the annals of Late Night Horror Host lore? YES! MONSTER MAGAZINES! FILMFAX, CULT MOVIES, PSYCHOTRONIC, and all the others, some of which are still on the stands. However, the greatest advocate of Horror Hosts was SCARY MONSTERS. I found a load of articles, a veritable cornucopia of Horror Host data. I don’t know about you, but there are some magazines I never throw away. SCARY MONSTERS, despite a somewhat juvenile tone, was never short on facts. Putting what I got from Scary Monsters together with my own experiences, and what I made up, I was able to conceptualize a reasonable replica of a “typical” small time Late Night Horror Host.
However, there was another factor most people have overlooked. Almost every standard gag a Horror Host does, e.g., crashing the movie, weird visuals, creative use of music and sound effects, etc., has its genesis in the work of pioneering TV surrealist, Ernie Kovacs. A Horror Host goes on the air and plays with the station and the medium itself. Nobody did this before Ernie Kovacs. Zacherly was the first Kovacs imitator, and every Horror Host after Zacherly imitated Zacherly. This is why I acknowledge the two Ernies, Ernie Kovacs and Ernie Anderson in the credits for Love Slaves of the She-Mummy. Just as a footnote, it should be noted that one of Ernie Kovacs’ co-workers was Richard Lester, the director of all the early Beatles films, and a worthy surrealist in his own right.
Ghoulardi did most of his shows in Limbo, just a black, setless studio with a single underlight, as did other hosts. Some hosts had sets. I like sets. I like the opportunities sets offer for improvisation through the decorations and props. My guy, Morbid Mort, got a set.
I work alone. I can’t afford an assistant, at least not one who wouldn’t steal my camera. I had to do all of the behind-the-scenes work on the movie myself. As Dirty Harry says, “A MAN’S GOT TO KNOW HIS LIMITATIONS.” I knew I needed a lot of time to prepare the set. I started building Mort’s set in April of 1998. 4’x8’ sheets of corrugated cardboard, with a cheesey magic marker “stone” pattern formed the walls of Mort’s pseudo-Gothic lair. It was set up in the corner of my apartment where once had stood the throne room of the palace of “Vulnaviana, The Demon Queen of Lemuria”!
The walls were textured with a variety of oddments and found objects. The same store where I bought the costumes supplied a skeleton candelabra and an inflatable Egyptian sarcophagus. If you look closely, you will also see the poster for LORDS OF MAGICK. The fireplace is adorned with an inscription of Mort’s EMBRACE THE CHAOS, written in runes. The actors brought additional unsolicited props and decorations, all of which added to the illusion that the set had been there a long time and had accumulated a realistic quantum of clutter. When actors like what you are doing, they will contribute!
MORBID MORTIMER McCOBB – Morbid Mort – The Morbid part is obvious. Mortimer is a funny name and the MORT part suggests the Latin word for Death. McCobb? Just a play on the French word MACABRE, which most Americans pronounce as “macobb”, swallowing the R, unless you are a fan of the William Castle film of the same name which people had referred to as “MACK-A-BREE”.
Two interesting little anecdotes came out of that. I looked up the origin of the word MACABRE, and my unabridged dictionary had none. Then, I forget where, but I read that the word actually has a Scriptural origin. There is the Biblical story of Judah Maccabee, an Old Testament war hero responsible for a particularly bloody campaign, inspiring the French to coin a slang word for a bloody corpse: MACABEE’. MACABRE describes something in the manner of, or which resembles a mangled stiff. One of the buyers of Love Slaves of the She-Mummy bought it because his name WAS McCobb and he collected anything bearing his family name. Hey, a sale’s a sale!
Mort was played by Mitchell Gordon, a full time improv comic and part-time waiter. He was an enthusiastic performer, but his improv background sometimes got in the way. In improv, one milks a concept for everything it has. I was constantly at odds with him because I wanted him to make a point and move on. Instead, he would grab my idea and run with it. He was at times brilliantly funny, and at other times he bogged me down in superfluous dialog. He did, however, nail the personality of an obnoxious semi-pro TV Late Night Horror Host.
I gave Morbid Mort a few stooges. The obligatory Hunchbacked Henchman was played by Robert Grindlinger, a talented make up artist and long time actor. He had appeared as a child actor on DARK SHADOWS!
Rob’s wife, Briony James, was Circe, Mort’s girlfriend. If you get to see LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY, you’ll notice that in the first segment, there is no Circe. The actor I originally cast as Circe decided at the last minute of the first shooting day, that she “didn’t need This for her resume” and declined to participate. We improvised some compensatory dialog and hoped we could find a Circe later.
Briony showed up the next day and asked to just watch the shooting, but I offered her the part and she graciously accepted. Historical note: I took her name, Circe, (Greek for Hawk), from the Homeric legend of the witch who turned men into pigs. There was a very good Horror anthology in the late ‘50’s called Thriller (hosted by Boris Karloff) and it ran a story about a modern version of Circe I saw and never forgot.
The Girl was played by a brilliant performer, Daria I. Dunall. She had played the Lemurian Priestess, Zenobel in the movie section, and when she saw my casting ad for the TV Show shoot, she called me and asked for a part. I told her to dress anyway she wanted and create her own character. I can’t praise her talent enough. She’s cute, creative, and a joy to work with. She did exactly what I wanted her to, and I rarely had to tell her what that was. She is a total professional and I wish I could use her again.
Character #5 was Malocchio, a repulsively ugly puppet I created after the basic TV shoot to be in quick segments I used to fill in gaps in the TV Show I couldn’t fix with the humans. If Mort blew a line, I could have Malocchio (Italian:“Evil Eye”) not only say the right line, but give Mort a hard time about it. There was no Malocchio when I conceived the movie, but I needed something to mend the tears.
We shot the TV segments over three weekends in October of 1999. We started with a sketch in which Mort flashes people in a silent movie. Then we shot the opening of the show, followed by other sketches and the little inserts Mort and the gang threw in to corrupt the movie.
Mitch had only committed to three weekends, so when his time ran out, we stopped. However, the cast members were so clever and productive, by the time we wrapped, I had more than I needed to finish the movie.
When the cast wasn’t there, I also shot a variety of commercials, bumpers, and all the other crap TV stations stick in between slivers of entertainment. Not all of it made it to the DVD.
I had originally wanted to burn and blow up things like Ghouldardi did, but alas, it was not to be. I wanted to use more blood than I did. Again, there was my security deposit to consider, as well as my neighbors. I had already disturbed their peace and tranquility with several weekends rife with screams, gun shots and weird chanting. No one complained. Maybe those things aren’t abnormal in North Hollywood.
Recently, I changed my mind about how simplistic I wanted the TV show and the feature to be, and went back and added new sound effects, music and a few visual doodads. I also cut 10 minutes from the original 95 minute running time. “They” declared that little movies should always run 87 minutes. SURGIKILL runs 87 minutes. LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY now runs 85 minutes.
However, I hate to waste good material and I decided to put the excluded material worth saving on its own DVD. I will be including some of this neglected material in the Extras disc included with a new version. While preparing the EXTRAS disc for the new version, I had to, I mean I had the opportunity to revisit all the original footage. While searching for deleted scenes and the most embarrassing blown takes, I discovered that I could have made it better. I got a powerful urge to re-edit the whole movie, an impulse I had to resist. I realized that if I cut the thing using all the angles I shot, it would get “good”. Shoot it right, edit it wrong – that’s not how they taught it at Film School!
The project ground to a halt and languished for a spell. I tried to edit it using old fashioned tape to tape methods. It was so totally slow and frustrating, I gave up frequently. In four years, I managed to edit only the first 38 minutes. That, coupled with the demands of work and a crisis in my physical health kept LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY on hold for 7 years.
Then, my fortunes reversed and I was able to acquire a gutsier computer and enter the world of digital Non-Linear Editing. I was able to edit the whole project from scratch in a matter of weeks. Once finished, I had to find a way to get it to my soon-to-be adoring public. I offered it to Troma. Troma declined. Filmbaby.com did not. The original release version is available there. The pimped out version will probably end up on eBay, along with all the obsolete editing equipment I bought and abandoned. Or at a yard sale.
While all of the people who were friends of mine got their copies, the majority of the cast members have never seen it. As soon as the original version was completed, I wrote to all of the cast members I could not contact in person. Every letter came back – Address Unknown. They had all moved. Of course, that had nothing to do with their association with the movie.
So that’s the saga of LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY. Although the film is still largely unknown, it did get a favorable review in David Oakes’ ZMDB, the Zombie Movie Data Base. And Filmbaby recently sold its last copy and ordered more, so get yours now before they run out! But wait, there’s more! I’m older now, but little wiser. I’m still trying to get SCREAM, ZOMBIE, SCREAM!, a new film, together. Wanna be a Zombie? I can’t promise you raw brains, but there will be pizza.
By this weekend, read a review of the DVD of Love Slaves of the She-Mummy!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Love Slaves of the She-Mummy – Embracing the Chaos

Welcome, Plan9Crunch Fans, you may recall a pair of very interesting essays from screenwriter Sherman Hirsh, where he recounts his part in the production of cult director Andy Milligan's final film, and where he recounts the making of the the low-budget medieval time traveling adventure Lords of Magik, both penned by Sherman. In the following three-part essay/review, Sherman provides readers a fascinating glimpse into the world of micro-budget feature filmmaking. Earlier in the decade he wrote an directed "Love Slaves of the She-Mummy, a feature within a mythical horror host's world, Morbif Mort. This witty film cost only several thousand dollars, and was shot on weekends in the filmmaker's home. Its genesis, and how it was made, is as fascinating as the film. Enjoy Part 1 of "Love Slaves of the She Mummy -- Embracing the Chaos, by Sherman Hirsh!
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“…Once upon a Friday Night, a Long, Long Time Ago…”

{PART 1 – The Movie in the Movie}
Being welcomed back to Plan 9 Crunch, a Cult Film’s best friend, for the third time is a singular honor. My little $6000 farce, LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY is not a cult film in the usual sense, in that there is no small hardcore group of aficionados for the film, i.e. a “CULT”. Rather, this movie is for the cult, that cult being the hardcore group of aficionados of Late Night Horror Hosts. I recently ran HORROR HOST through Google, and registered 606,000 listings! Somebody out there cares about Horror Hosts. Must be that “Cult”.
They don’t make Horror Hosts like they used to. Almost every major TV market in the U.S. had one. The most famous one, of course is New York’s “ZACHERLY, THE COOL GHOUL”, who set the standard for all the others. He was imitated on the West Coast by the late, lamented Maila Murmi as “VAMPIRA” and “SEYMOUR”. In Cleveland, my home town, we had Ernie Anderson’s “GHOULARDI”.
There was a nationwide proliferation of wacky weirdos who trashed old exploitation films. They all did funny little sketches, electronically insinuated themselves into the movie, made nasty comments about the competition and picked up a little extra cash doing personal appearances all over their market areas. Some worked alone, while some accomplices, usually co-workers at the station.
In the early ‘50’s, the major studios released a large portion of their pre-1950 movies to TV stations. In the beginning, the stations didn’t just run the movie. Instead, they would have a local personality sit in a big easy chair and introduce and seriously explain the film. Zacherly was lampooning this when he sat on his throne and conspired to assassinate his movie. Every Horror Host after that did some permutation of Zacherly’s model.
The success of these shows was based on the concept that after 5 days of scholastic regimentation and homework, a kid could kick back with a Coke and a bag of Fritos and watch this weird jerk do vicariously all the loud dumb stuff Mom won’t allow in the house.
Audience participation was a huge factor in the success of these programs. Fans could send in pictures and letters and the host would show the pictures and read the letters if they weren’t too dumb. The host was the real show. The movie was just a target.
The heyday of the Horror Host is over. Outside of a few cable access amateurs doing grossly derivative material wrapped around whatever Public Domain movies they can scrounge, there are few left of any importance. The reasons for this are purely mercenary. In the beginning, the movies were relatively inexpensive, the shows were cheap to produce and their popularity made them profitable. Then, the studios pulled the films and put them out on Home Video. However, the Number One reason the various Shock Theater shows had their final fade outs was Infomercials, which cost nothing and paid better. Your local Horror Host was a victim of Ron Popeil and his peers.
Another reason was that, at the time, no one took these performances seriously, including the Hosts, themselves. For some hosts, it was just another chore to be done around the station. In most cases, the Horror Host gig was just a sideline. Ernie Anderson only made $64 a show. He did Ghouldardi for roughly 3 years and split Cleveland for LA, where he became a major announcer at ABC. Until his death in the mid-‘90’s, you could hear his voice between shows, as well his stint as the announcer on AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS in its early years.
This was typical of the job. Most of the Horror Hosts only did their shows a couple of years and them quit when it got too demanding or stopped being fun. In later years, Anderson had little regard for Ghoulardi, and didn’t understand how the character still had fans so long after this minor entry on his resume was ancient history.
Remember GREMLINS II, JACK THE BEAR, and FRIGHT NIGHT? Remember what they had in common, besides being relegated to ‘80’s nostalgia? They all had Horror Hosts as characters. I couldn’t find any movie actually about a Horror Host, so I made one.
The ‘90’s - I was Jonesing to make another movie. I formulated several concepts which got cut for various reasons, mostly monetary. I settled on doing a Horror Host based movie because it would use a single main set for the show itself and a few improvised sets where an imitation “cheapie” would be staged.
Like most filmmakers, I maintain a file of assorted ideas, titles and half-baked, half finished scripts. I raided it, looking for inspiration. I love blatant, nasty titles. Low budget movies need loud titles, because with no stars, the promise of cheap thrills is the best way to get attention.
From my list of lurid titles, I chose LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY. I had already written ZOMBIE MARINES WASTE VEGAS, I PUKE ON DRACULA’S GRAVE, and a few others, so I needed a virgin title. LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY would be the feature film my host was presenting.
I could just as easily have gone with “NIGHT OF THE GUTSTOMPER”, “WOLF WOMEN OF HOLLYWOOD”, or “VISCERA:ATTACK OF THE KILLER GUTS FROM THE HAUNTED MORGUE”. I did a little research to find out if there was a film already using my proposed title and the closest I could find was a listing on IMDB for “LOVE BRIDES OF THE BLOOD MUMMY”(’73). I never heard of it either.
I had to write a “bad” movie. I had to violate all the principles I had learned from writing 20+ scripts, and commit all the mistakes on purpose I had unlearned. I set about writing a bad script. Awkward, unnatural dialog, a hackneyed, improbable plot, supernatural claptrap and wall to wall movie clichés; all would be employed to create a movie a Horror Host could trash mouth with impunity. However, for the sake of the viewing audience, this bad movie could absolutely not be boring!
SYNOPSIS - LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY: Kyle Lyle, (Gregg Stickeler)a researcher, is contacted by police Detective Dali (Erica Cohen)regarding the arrest of his brother, Desmond,(Michael Enright)a reporter. Desmond has gone crazy, ranting about someone in his head. Kyle visits Desmond in jail and Desmond tells him about Vulnaviana, (think Vulnavia, stolen from Dr. Phibes) a dangerous cursed mummy. As soon as Kyle gets home from Desmond’s apartment with the mummy, he receives a mysterious phone call, and is goaded into meeting the caller. Mr. Minneapolis, (ME!)a rich diseased swindler, wants Vulnaviana, and tries to buy her from Kyle, who of course, refuses. Not that it matters, since Minneapolis has dispatched Blurt,(Gary Levinson) his staff mental case, to steal Vulnaviana anyway, just in case Kyle won’t cooperate, which he didn’t. However, Blurt blunders and allows himself to touch Vulnaviana, allowing her to enter his mind and take over, obviously what happened to Des. Kyle comes home and is confronted by Det. Dali, who wants to know what the corpse of a mental patient is doing dead on his floor, not that it matters, since Blurt gets up and leaves, announcing cryptically that it’s not the right time. Kyle returns to jail to consult with Desmond who tells him he must allow a priestess, Zenobel (Daria I. Dunall) to dispose of the Demon Queen. Meanwhile, Blurt, under Vulnaviana’s control, has killed Minneapolis and returns to Kyle’s place to kill Kyle and get the mummy so Dr. Sam Brancsisco (Sterling Von Radcliffe) can restore her flesh and she can rule, etc. The mad doctor has kidnapped an innocent girl (Pauline Lang, who did double duty as the living incarnation of the Demon Queen)whose body he will raid to restore Vulnaviana. THEN IT GETS WEIRD!
Principle photography of the pseudo-movie called LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY commenced in November of 1997, with a cast comprised of friends, co-workers, and total strangers who volunteered to sacrifice a few weekends to appear in non-paying roles in a weird little nano-budget hobby movie shot in the living room of my North Hollywood apartment. Actors will work for free if they like the part and you feed them. The cast of LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY was paid in Pizza, and as is customary, would receive copies of the finished movie.
The Lead and the Mad Doctor were people I worked with at my day job. A homicidal looney was played by “Vladek Blut”, actually old friend Gary Levinson, the creator of HELLROLLER, the first movie about a serial killer in a wheelchair. The rest of the cast members were pros and semi-pros who answered my ad in an LA casting paper.
We shot on weekends, which allowed me to use the rest of a week to build each of the seven sets. I built them from cardboard, paper drop cloths, found objects, and whatever else I could find. If you can’t scrounge, you can’t make these movies. The sets were decorated with stuff I already had as well as stuff I literally found in the street.
I had to buy a few props. In the course of shooting this movie, I learned the location of every Salvation Army, Goodwill and other thrift store in North Hollywood, as well as the location and contents of a slew of 99 cent stores. The exotic wardrobe was off-the-shelf costumes I scored in Hollywood. I rented a gorilla suit from a friend for a cripplingly exorbitant $20.
Production was relatively easy. My cast was totally professional, with no attacks of temperament, no refusal to comply with my requests and no shortage of actual creative contributions. For the seven weekends we shot, I filled 9 Hi8 tapes with action, drama, conflict, paranormal phenomena and pathos, all of it deliberately crappy. It was the Cinematic equivalent of SPINAL TAP. The whole “movie” was finally done and the Horror Host part was next.

{In the next installment, to be released late Tuesday night, Sherman recounts the making of the TV Show, itself. You’ll meet Morbid Mort and his gang, and experience the process of pretending to do TV.}

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Have Rocket Will Travel: -- Stooges fall down!

By Doug Gibson

If you want to watch the Three Stooges in a movie, watch the unknown oater gem Gold Raiders but don't watch Have Rocket Will Travel, a pathetic 1959 mess that even the most dedicated Teletubbies watcher will not stomach.

It's a dreadful hodgepodge of unfunniness. The boys, Moe, Larry and Curly Joe, are dimwitted janitors who befriend a sexy scientist. They blunder into a space ship and head off to a planet. There they encounter a talking unicorn and match wits with an even stupider master computer that HAL would have drowned in a river.

Once the doofuses return home, an additional party scene is tacked on and then this tired mess, directed by David Lowell Rich, finally ends. It's a very long 76 B&W minutes.

I have nothing against the Stooges. I like their shorts. If you want to see the trio at their best, catch any number of the Columbia one-reeler. But avid this horrendous mess.

Here's a clip from this mess:

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

THE CREMATORS: Giant Fireballs Invade The Earth!


By Steve D. Stones

Harry Essex, director of the 1971 classic Octaman, brings us this low-budget gem. Essex is also credited as a co-writer responsible for the 1953 classic Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. The DVD of this film is distributed by Retromedia, and has a “Bikini Drive-In” introduction by Fred Olen Ray and his sidekick Miss Kim. The film stars Maria De Aragon, who went on to star in Star Wars episode IV in the costume of Greedo the bounty hunter. As an added bonus, the DVD contains an interview with De Aragon.

The film opens with a local native Indian being chased by a giant fireball, which apparently has come from outer space. The fireball rolls over the Indian and burns him to the ground, reducing him to ashes. The opening narration sounds like the voice of Arch Hall Sr. from Eegah. Later sequences in the film show the same stock shot of human ashes being blown into the air after the fireball attacks victims.

Meanwhile, Ian Thorn, a local scientist, is studying the waters off the local shoreline. It is never clear throughout the entire film where it takes place, but we have to assume it is Florida or any small coastal town, since many of the shots show an ocean shoreline. Director Essex shot Octaman in Florida, so this is why I also suspect The Cremators was also shot there.

Thorn finds strange, small glowing crystals in the local waters. He takes some of them back to his lab to be studied and places one in a package to be mailed to a colleague in Michigan for further investigation.

While delivering the package to a local post office, Thorn gets the feeling he is being chased by something. He gets out of his truck, but finds nothing. He delivers the package to a postal carrier. The carrier is later chased in his vehicle by a giant fireball and burned to death. Ian and the local sheriff later investigate the burned remains of the postal carrier’s vehicle. Ian’s package is found but not completely destroyed in the remains.

Later, a local native brings his dead cat to Thorn to try and discover what killed the cat. Thorn conducts an autopsy and discovers a fragment of one of the glowing crystals inside the belly of the cat. He also discovers another crystal fragment inside the belly of a dog he finds by the side of the road. Somehow local animals are eating the glowing crystals found in the local waters of the town.

Although I greatly enjoyed viewing this film, I find some of the plot points a bit confusing. For example, what does the glowing crystals being eaten by local animals have to do with the giant fireballs attacking local citizens? I suppose the connection is that many of the victims find a glowing crystal just before they are attacked and burned by the giant fireballs.

However, this still adds some confusion. Are the giant fireballs attracted to the glowing crystals, or are they a result of the glowing crystals? Plus, why don’t the giant fireballs attack the animals who eat the crystals, and why do they only attack when someone picks up a crystal? These are all questions that enter into my mind as I view the film.

The film certainly leaves more questions to the viewer than it answers. At the end of the film, Thorn arranges a small circle of crystals on the ground in an attempt to attract the giant fireball. Like a hen looking for her newborn hatchlings, the fireball comes for the circle of crystals. Thorn is able to destroy the fireball with an explosion.

If you are familiar with It Came From Outer Space, it is easy to see some similarities to this film. However, It Came From Outer Space is a much better scripted and well-produced film. Fans of Octaman are encouraged to see The Cremators, if only to see what director Essex made after Octaman. Enjoy!