Wednesday 26 August 2009

DVD: TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1958)/INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE (1962), Something Weird Video 2001

What follows is copied directly from the back cover of the DVD because I simply could not do a better job of describing this movie. It begins with the movie's Swedish title (in English, in Swedish it's Rymd Invasion i Lappland).


SPACE INVASION OF LAPLAND
A glowing white spaceship lands under the snow above the Arctic Circle in the Lapland region of Northern Sweden. Believing it to be an unusual meteor, a team of geologist race to the site just in time to be menaced by a giant, furry, monster-faced something or other that looks like a drunken Chewbacca. The creature waddles around, wrecks a Lapp village, and makes like a puppy dog in heat for American figure skating champion Barbara Wilson. Carrying the gal in its hairy arms, the beast takes Wilson to the spacecraft where she has a close encounters with the spacecraft's alien inhabitants.

A Swedish-American co-production from the director of The Mole People and Sweden's first and so far only science fiction giant-monster movie, TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN was shot in English, features a surprise peek-a-boo nude scene and is presented in its original uncut version for the very first time in the U.S.

Plus INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE, the much different, much altered U.S. version from schlockmeister supreme Jerry Warren (Teenage Zombies), who cut and re-edited the original, changed the plot, and added new shot-in-LA footage featuring John Carradine as host and narrator, in addition to lots of utterly pointless scenes including an unbilled bit by Warren regular Katherine Victor (The Wild World Of The Batwoman) that will positively make your head spin.

Coming from cult company Something Weird, the DVD is packed with an hour's worth of extras: a 6-fingered handful of surprisingly explicit Swedish sexploitation trailers, a couple of shorts, and an unshown tv horror series episode, plus a photogallery and a director's commentary.

I've just watched the main feature which, while no means a good film, remains watchable (plus it's only 70mins long). This is helped by a sparky performance from the vivacious Barbara Wilson (see above), a 1950's Megan Fox lookalike. Inevitably, this being the 50's, when confronted with something strange like a monster, she screams and faints. The external shots look remarkably real, probably because they really were filmed on location in Lapland with what look like genuine Lapps as extras.

Don't you want to rush out and buy this DVD?

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