Given the popularity of
disaster films in the ’70s, it was inevitable that some enterprising producer
would make a movie about the apocalypse, and it was probably just as inevitable
that the resulting film would be awful. Produced by grade-Z horror/sci-fi
purveyor Charles Band, End of the World
contains so many colorful elements that it should be a crap-cinema jamboree—the
plot involves conspiracies, natural disasters, religion, and space aliens. Yet
Band clearly held the purses strings tightly closed throughout production, so
what viewers actually see are lots of interminable scenes featuring people
talking about interesting things that are happening elsewhere. The opening
scene includes a few weak pyrotechnic effects, and the finale showcases tacky
sci-fi transportation effects that wouldn’t have passed muster on an episode of
Star Trek. In between is an ocean of
nothing. The plot, such as it is, concerns NASA scientist Andrew Boran (Kirk
Scott), who detects weird signals beaming from somewhere on Earth into outer
space. Meanwhile, news reports indicate a surge in natural disasters. Andrew
and his wife, Sylvia (Sue Lyon), track the signal to a remote convent. Soon,
Andrew and Sylvia discover that a priest named Father Pergado (Christopher Lee)
is actually an alien in human disguise, and that he’s been sent to annihilate
Earth lest the “disease” of humankind spread throughout the universe. All of
the actors in the film (including the aforementioned plus big-screen veterans
Lew Ayres, Macdonald Carey, and Dean Jagger) look bored, which is understandable,
and not even the persistent bleeps and bloops of the tacky electronic score are
enough to enliven the lethargic footage. Worst of all, End of the World isn’t so aggressively stupid that it achieves camp
value. Instead, it’s just lazily stupid, raising the unanswerable question of
why Band and his people bothered to waste time making this drivel.
End of the World: SQUARE
No comments:
Post a Comment