A bargain boxed set collecting three of its schlock flick DVD collections, Retromedia's Mad Monster Rally advertises that it contains "8 Huge Hits" within its three-disc set. Only three things wrong with that particular statement: a) none of the low-budget entries contained in this set could be described as "huge" in any way; b) none of 'em were hits and c) the set contains nine movies, not eight!
I know: details, details. To begin, all three discs in the package were originally released singly as Sci-Fi Trash-O-Rama, Morella's All-Nite Spooktacular, and Morella's Blood Vision. That last was reviewed by yours truly when it originally came out in 2008, so let's take a gander at the other two discs. To be sure, the movies are all of a piece. When the big name directors in the set include the likes of Larry (Mars Needs Women) Buchanan and Del (Horror of Party Beach) Tenney, psychotronic movie buffs already know what they're in for.
Earliest disc in the set is the honestly titled Trash-O-Rama, which features two full-length films along with an engagingly dated newsreel from the early '50s examining The Flying Saucer Mystery (lots of stiff scientists and self-proclaimed abductees staring into the camera with this 'un). The first feature, Creature of Destruction, is one of a series of made-for-teevee remakes of earlier American International Pictures flicks that Larry Buchanan foisted on televiewers back in the late '60s. A remake of 1956's The She Creature, the movie stars ubiquitous drive-in actor Les Tremayne as a worn-out Svengali named John Basso who uses past life regression to conjure up a bug-eyed, rubber-suited monster to kill the rich and stupid in a California coastal community. It's not entirely certain how this works: though it supposedly involves Basso hypnotizing his lovely girl assistant (Pat Delaney) so she regresses into some sort of prehistoric sea beast, the girl never leaves her chair while the creature wreaks havoc on unwary beachgoers.
Ineptly shot, with a guest appearance by barely remembered '60s rocker Scotty McKay (who gets killed by the creature), the movie nonetheless shines when placed alongside the set's second sci-fi non-thriller, 1974's UFO: Target Earth. Written and directed by Michael A. de Gaetono, UFO looks like it was shot around a Georgia campus by first-timers really freaked-out by the far-out finale to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its ploddingly paced non-plot involves a college prof's (Nick Plakias) investigations into UFO sightings by an isolated Georgia lake, concluding in a psychedelic computer graphics sequence that looks like a badly lensed screensaver. All the elements of a truly lame no-budget entry are in this 'un: voiceover narration to fill in for the unfilmed dialog, hatchet-style editing, an extended scene where the boom mic floats prominently above the seated characters' heads. The moviemakers may not've been on hallucinogens while making it, but you'll wanna be, watching it.
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