Ah, some solid goofy fun from this movie poster.
I’d never heard of this movie until watching it on one of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs that I’m endlessly renting from Netflix. It’s a MST3K movie for crying out loud, so that should tell you it’s not very good, but it’s actually one of the better movies they’ve shown (Leonard Maltin gave it two and a half stars!). Of course, that’s not much consolation with movies like Red Zone Cuba and The Killer Shrews in the show’s arsenal.
There’s an obvious Star Wars influence/cash-in vibe going on here, albeit with nothing but a few stop-motion aliens and bunch of stupid teenagers. Kim Milford, who starred in stage productions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and at one point played Jesus in the touring version of Jesus Christ Superstar (quite a gig, if you can get it) is a serviceable Luke Skywalker stand-in as Billy Duncan.
He isn’t the only actor of note though, Roddy McDowall makes an extremely brief cameo and longtime movie “nerd” Eddie Deezen appears as a bully, of all stereotypes.
The actual, er, “laser blasts” were pretty nice for such a low-budget late 70s movie. I really enjoyed the stop-motion sequences involving the aliens and their ship too. Stop-motion animation was done by a young David Allen, who would later go on to use stop-motion/special effects for movies like Q, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Howling and Twilight Zone: The Movie.
Even this movie’s trailer is half-way decent:
Tags: 1970s, 1978, Eddie Deezen, Kim Milford, Laserblast, Movie Trailers, Movies, MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Roddy McDowall
“There’s an obvious Star Wars influence/cash-in vibe going on here”
Not to mention Billy (on the poster) looks like Mark Hamil on meth
Zombie Hamill! Oh, wait… that’s the real Hamill.