"He came from the Stars, Lobster Man from Mars...
Earthman beware, he's after your air!!!
No place to hide, Lobster's right outside!!!"
The theme song suggests we are about to see a bad, bad movie. Not so.
This is a hilarious and great movie about a bad, bad movie (which turns out to be better than expected), and is probably the funniest science fiction movie since Dark Star. (It's a bit like a small-scale version of Mars Attacks with a smaller budget and more(!) jokes.)
I was quite surprised to see such a low score here for it. I suspect a few people who rated it poorly are just unfamiliar with the style of films it is parodying (think "Robot Monster"), or see only the surface "badness" of the movie in the movie without realising it is deliberately "awful" and does not take itself seriously.
In other words, the low quality of this film is only a translucent veneer; one sufficient to fool a surprising number of people, apparently.
Mild, small-scale, incidental spoilers:
There's a lot to like about this movie. The earnest over-the-top melodrama, the in-film narrator, the deliberately wonky effects, the range of stereotype characters from multiple genres added to the mix (how many sf movies have a hardboiled gumshoe as a supporting character?) all contribute. The music is especially perfect: the theme song, the spooky warbling electronic chase music, and the use of Siegfried's Funeral March could not be bettered.
But these are all touches of finesse to a great parody. The quality and caricatured accuracy of the parody is what makes this film so entertainingly amusing. This affectionate and good-humoured homage to low-budget science-fiction monster flicks is probably the funniest such since at least The Rocky Horror Picture Show (while being considerably different in tone!), and possibly since Dark Star.
The sheer ludicrous excess and exaggeration of the evil of the Lobster Man, the goodness of the heroes and the stakes of peril are all almost operatic, and would not seem out of place on the stage of Victorian melodrama (science-fictional trappings aside).
Many, many images, plot points and lines are delicious: the Lobster Man's entire character design, the way we see that most of the characters are sexist but the movie makers (at both levels) aren't, phrases like "smoking bales of Big Monk"...
If you've a passing familiarity with drive-in science fiction, and a sense of the ludicrous, I think you'll enjoy this little film; if your idea of visual science fiction starts with Star Wars and finishes with the X-Files, or you think humour and sf shouldn't mix, you may not.
Earthman beware, he's after your air!!!
No place to hide, Lobster's right outside!!!"
The theme song suggests we are about to see a bad, bad movie. Not so.
This is a hilarious and great movie about a bad, bad movie (which turns out to be better than expected), and is probably the funniest science fiction movie since Dark Star. (It's a bit like a small-scale version of Mars Attacks with a smaller budget and more(!) jokes.)
I was quite surprised to see such a low score here for it. I suspect a few people who rated it poorly are just unfamiliar with the style of films it is parodying (think "Robot Monster"), or see only the surface "badness" of the movie in the movie without realising it is deliberately "awful" and does not take itself seriously.
In other words, the low quality of this film is only a translucent veneer; one sufficient to fool a surprising number of people, apparently.
Mild, small-scale, incidental spoilers:
There's a lot to like about this movie. The earnest over-the-top melodrama, the in-film narrator, the deliberately wonky effects, the range of stereotype characters from multiple genres added to the mix (how many sf movies have a hardboiled gumshoe as a supporting character?) all contribute. The music is especially perfect: the theme song, the spooky warbling electronic chase music, and the use of Siegfried's Funeral March could not be bettered.
But these are all touches of finesse to a great parody. The quality and caricatured accuracy of the parody is what makes this film so entertainingly amusing. This affectionate and good-humoured homage to low-budget science-fiction monster flicks is probably the funniest such since at least The Rocky Horror Picture Show (while being considerably different in tone!), and possibly since Dark Star.
The sheer ludicrous excess and exaggeration of the evil of the Lobster Man, the goodness of the heroes and the stakes of peril are all almost operatic, and would not seem out of place on the stage of Victorian melodrama (science-fictional trappings aside).
Many, many images, plot points and lines are delicious: the Lobster Man's entire character design, the way we see that most of the characters are sexist but the movie makers (at both levels) aren't, phrases like "smoking bales of Big Monk"...
If you've a passing familiarity with drive-in science fiction, and a sense of the ludicrous, I think you'll enjoy this little film; if your idea of visual science fiction starts with Star Wars and finishes with the X-Files, or you think humour and sf shouldn't mix, you may not.