"Space Thing" is bad, very bad and not so bad it's good. It's just bad, starting with the fully unimaginative title. This was the Golden Age of written scifi, but of course the first sci-fi movies were invariably made by those who knew nothing about it.
Okay, how is this more bad? Wellm the set up has no link to the rest of the movie: A man reads about the Many-Worlds or Many-Universe theory, aka the Multiverse for short, but then he DREAMS he's an alien? That's a wrong use of the Multiverse Theory, which is about subtle variations which lead to big differences and outcomes, like, what if Jesus got killed at birth, or Napoleon, or Djenghis Khan. Or what if the Native Americans colonized Europe.
Just looking at the episode in space on it's own: Of course the production values are atrocious, the budget was under 30K? But they seem especially bad, the crew sits on glorified BAR STOOLS, the special effects featuring space ships all show them wobbly on their strings, they are the worst ever. Asteroids are cotton balls, but clearly so. The costumes are equally bad, the men wear standard issue medieval shiny things, and the women some sort of bathing suits, which leaves NOTHING to the imagination, a leeeettle subtlety would have been nice.
When one the men goes out explore the "asteroid" they landed on, he wears a fully closed space suit, but he talks to the ship via a walkie talkie ..... OUTSIDE his space suit!?? Just gluing on the antenna onto the helmet would have been an easy and cheap fix, which would have save the scene from ridicule.
And subsequently the women go outside in .... beach wear, so no space suit, without anyone saying "the atmosphere is non-toxic, there's breathable air here"??
The sex scenes are not very appealing, the women are half decent, especially Merci Montello, but the men are all ugly, hairy and fat, they have pot bellies. It's where the movie is at it's most immoral because they are very gender unequal: the women all undress fully, but the men never ever drop their pants, so the love scenes are always with nekkid women and half or fully dressed men.
Also, the alien comes to the ship and immediately views the crew through a repressed Midwestern-values lens? In the end, he can't deal with all the sex, so he blows the ship up.
It also promotes a rapist trope, the captain starts out as a proud lesbian, eager to claim that men are both evil AND terrible lovers, but at the end, just a few slimy remarks of the male alien about how pretty she is, are enough to get her in his bed? WHAT!?!?
This suggests the myth which non-gay en told themselves in that era: the only thing a good man needs to "cure" lesbianism is flattery. Or whatever.
The gender inequality is further underlined by how the actresses all had to be bare footed in the outdoor scenes in the desert, while the men all wore shoes. Was this some sort of a "we can run faster, while the women can't" thing? Perhaps. But it shows that the women in 1968 had no power, no say in how to do their jobs whatsoever.
The only redeeming thing this movie has is that it has a scene where 3 women play 3 dimensional checkers. And how they did the credits, which is exploitative but also creative and a bit fun.
2 oth 10 (added 1 for 3D checkers) The Melancholic Alcoholic.
Okay, how is this more bad? Wellm the set up has no link to the rest of the movie: A man reads about the Many-Worlds or Many-Universe theory, aka the Multiverse for short, but then he DREAMS he's an alien? That's a wrong use of the Multiverse Theory, which is about subtle variations which lead to big differences and outcomes, like, what if Jesus got killed at birth, or Napoleon, or Djenghis Khan. Or what if the Native Americans colonized Europe.
Just looking at the episode in space on it's own: Of course the production values are atrocious, the budget was under 30K? But they seem especially bad, the crew sits on glorified BAR STOOLS, the special effects featuring space ships all show them wobbly on their strings, they are the worst ever. Asteroids are cotton balls, but clearly so. The costumes are equally bad, the men wear standard issue medieval shiny things, and the women some sort of bathing suits, which leaves NOTHING to the imagination, a leeeettle subtlety would have been nice.
When one the men goes out explore the "asteroid" they landed on, he wears a fully closed space suit, but he talks to the ship via a walkie talkie ..... OUTSIDE his space suit!?? Just gluing on the antenna onto the helmet would have been an easy and cheap fix, which would have save the scene from ridicule.
And subsequently the women go outside in .... beach wear, so no space suit, without anyone saying "the atmosphere is non-toxic, there's breathable air here"??
The sex scenes are not very appealing, the women are half decent, especially Merci Montello, but the men are all ugly, hairy and fat, they have pot bellies. It's where the movie is at it's most immoral because they are very gender unequal: the women all undress fully, but the men never ever drop their pants, so the love scenes are always with nekkid women and half or fully dressed men.
Also, the alien comes to the ship and immediately views the crew through a repressed Midwestern-values lens? In the end, he can't deal with all the sex, so he blows the ship up.
It also promotes a rapist trope, the captain starts out as a proud lesbian, eager to claim that men are both evil AND terrible lovers, but at the end, just a few slimy remarks of the male alien about how pretty she is, are enough to get her in his bed? WHAT!?!?
This suggests the myth which non-gay en told themselves in that era: the only thing a good man needs to "cure" lesbianism is flattery. Or whatever.
The gender inequality is further underlined by how the actresses all had to be bare footed in the outdoor scenes in the desert, while the men all wore shoes. Was this some sort of a "we can run faster, while the women can't" thing? Perhaps. But it shows that the women in 1968 had no power, no say in how to do their jobs whatsoever.
The only redeeming thing this movie has is that it has a scene where 3 women play 3 dimensional checkers. And how they did the credits, which is exploitative but also creative and a bit fun.
2 oth 10 (added 1 for 3D checkers) The Melancholic Alcoholic.
Tell Your Friends