Ruptured Review: Frankenstein meets the Space Monster (aka Duel of the Space Monsters)

Country of origin- USA  
Year of release- 1965 
Director-  Robert Gaffney  
Stars- Marilyn Hanold, James Karen, Lou Cutell


 

So, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, or as it should more accurately be called, stock footage: the movie. After a rather peculiar opening credit sequence, we see an alien space craft hovering outside the earth’s atmosphere. In the control room of the ship we meet are villains, Princess Marcuzan and the pasty faced pointy eared Doctor Nadir. It seems they have been monitoring earth for some time, and are getting ready to enact some kind of sinister plan. Suddenly a blip on the alien radar makes them think that we humans have fired a missile at them, when in fact it is a NASA rocket. The Princess and Doctor Nadir decide to blow it out of the sky, and then do so, using stock footage of course.

The film then cuts to the most overcrowded car I have ever seen. Sitting in the back is; a General, two NASA scientists and a blank faced astronaut called Frank. This scene looks ridicules, especially as it looks like the General is sitting in the lap of one of the scientists, who looks very un-happy about the whole thing. We then get a real time sequence in which we see them driving into the NASA headquarters and parking. Why did we need to see this in real time? Well let me tell. This film is 50 minutes stretched to nearly 80 by extended use of real time driving put to music, and grainy stock footage that the film will cut to at random points for apparently no reason. This stretched out run time is almost painful to watch. When the group eventually get into the NASA headquarters they go to the world’s smallest press conference. It is in fact so small that it looks like they are announcing a new kind of Sellotape, instead of what they are actually announcing which is a manned mission to Mars. I am pretty sure more than four journalists would turn up for that, but apparently no. During the press conference Frank has some kind of wired seizure that leaves a huge creepy smile frozen on his face. We then discover that Frank is in fact a cyborg, who was created especially for this very dangerous mission. At least that explains the terrible acting.  

We then cut to stock footage of a NASA rocket getting ready to take off. But we all know how this launch will go because we watched the Aliens blow it apart 20 minutes ago. So of cause the rocket is destroyed but Frank manages to bail out just in time, and lands safely, with the help of some stock footage. But the aliens are not happy about leaving survivors, so they land and begin to hunt down Frank, who during a fight with one of the alien soldiers is badly burned and driven into a crazed rampage due to damage to his cyborg brain. This means he then begins to wander around killing people for no reason. It is soon after this that we find out what the aliens evil plan is. They want to kidnap are earth women and bring them back for ‘breeding’, I can’t take the unoriginality, it’s too much!  

We then get a montage of some of the most hilarious kidnappings I have ever seen, most of the women don’t even bother to resist, they just have zero shits to give. As the women are brought back onto the alien ship (which by the way is far too small for all these people) we are introduced to the ‘Space Monster’ of the title. He is called Mull, and looks a bit like the inbred nephew of the creature from The Robot Monster.

 

 From here on in the film spirals around in a haze of stock footage and B-movie tropes that eventually leads to the inevitable battle between Frank and Mull. This battle however is rubbish; it is over in just a few seconds and has one of the most anti-climactic endings of all time. This film didn’t finish, it just gave up the will to live.

For all this films MANY problems I did find myself to be entertained throughout some of the runtime, although nearly all of this came from unintentionally funny things. But the big problem for this film is that it doesn’t deliver on what the title promises, in fact we barely even see ‘the Space Monster’ and Frankenstein as you or I would know him isn’t in it. Instead Frank assumes the roll of the Frankenstein’s monster character, and is even referred to in this way at one point in the film. At the end of the day this film has nothing new to offer, but it has plenty of unintentional humour and is a decent enough watch if you skip through the stock footage and long winded driving scenes. This one gets a 4.5/10 from me; it is perhaps worth a watch.