Azalea Pictures [1966] 80′
country: United States
director: LARRY BUCHANAN
cast: JOHN AGAR, SUSAN BJURMAN,
cast: TONY HUSTON, PAT DELANEY

American International Pictures was doing a number of strange things under its television branch in the 1960′s – re-cutting Soviet space films to make them appear American, then re-cutting the re-cut Soviet space films for similar purposes, for instance, and unleashing all manner of pan-and-scanned monster horrors from the great land of Japan [THE MAGIC SERPENT and the majority of the original Gamera series, as well as the first two Daimajin films]. In what is perhaps the studio’s strangest move at the time, they contracted a man to pad out their TV syndication packages by re-filming a number of their earlier cheapies at budgets that would have offended even Roger Corman, director of several of the films to be remade.

That man was a Texan, a father, and a husband – it is still arguable, however, as to whether or not he could be classified as a film-maker. He was Larry Buchanan, and his second production for the company, ZONTAR THE THING FROM VENUS [an all-but-in-name remake of the 1956 cult classic IT CONQUERED THE WORLD], first tormented the television watching masses in 1966.

The story is rather familiar – a recently launched satellite is hijacked by an intelligent Venusian creature and, with the assistance of an utterly dubious Earth scientist, attempts to take over the world by stopping all man-made devices and possessing important officials with the aid of flying mind-control devices. The dubious Earth scientist, after a great tragedy, is eventually convinced that the Venusian is up to no good – leading him to sacrifice himself to kill the beast.

Writing credit is attributed to Buchanan and Hillman Taylor, though the vast majority of material is sourced directly from Lou Rusoff and Charles B. Griffith’s screenplay for IT CONQUERED THE WORLD – indeed, many scenes play as word-for-word reiterations of that screenplay. There are some changes, of course – the alien in this version is improbably named Zontar, he is killed with a laser as opposed to a flame thrower, and the cast as well as their character names have been changed, with John Agar and Tony Huston taking on the roles originally assigned to Peter Graves and Lee Van Cleef. The monster, itself, is vastly inferior to the Blaisdell-concocted original – here looking even more improbable, appearing to be some kind of three-eyed humanoid bat creature.

None of the above is enough to render ZONTAR an awful film in and of its own right – the fatal ingredient is definitely the utterly insipid direction on the part of Buchanan [to his credit, he never claimed to be good at the job and his level of quality is a solid few notches above that on display in the completely unwatchable work of Nathan Schiff]. Lighting, blocking, camera positioning, editing – Larry Buchanan seems utterly ignorant of even the most basic film-making skills.

Case in point is a scene that takes place at the beginning of the film – Huston has come to speak to Agar about the dangers of launching the satellite. The segment begins with Agar walking from his starting spot into another room [remaining visible thanks to a conveniently placed window] where Huston is waiting – the two begin talking, but well out of range of the ears of the audience. We join the conversation already in progress after a jarring cut that takes us into the room – what makes the cut so jarring is that the camera has moved so that we are now looking at the two scientists from exactly the opposite angle as before [the one who was on the left is now on the right, and so on] with no regard for even the basest of spatial continuity.

Another example of Buchanan’s fine understanding of cinematic technique occurs later in the film, when a possessed policeman orders a local newspaper editor to evacuate – the editor refuses to leave and is shot down in cold blood. The blocking of the actors changes at several points during the shot and, more noticeably, two insert shots of the policeman’s gun appear to have been filmed at an entirely different location with no attempt made to match the footage. A similar issue arises at the time of the policeman’s possession – he is standing in the middle of a street with buildings on either side attempting to avoid the mind control device as it buzzes about him. Yet, when we see insert shots of said device, it is very obviously flying around in a wooded area.

One of the more amusing oddities of direction takes place during one of the scenes in which Agar confronts Huston about the danger of the Venusian. The conversation is depicted largely by static shots – hardly unusual. But the scene cuts a seemingly random intervals to insert shots of Huston’s radio set as it sits, doing absolutely nothing, in the corner of his living room. Brilliant! Another fun moment involves camera placement – when Agar is battling the control device let loose by his possessed wife, Buchanan seems to be unsure of whether to focus on the fluttering monster or on Agar as he swings his fire poker. The end result is a rather lengthy shot in which the monster, Agar, or both are completely absent from the frame [though we do get a lovely view of the ceiling!].

One could go on and on with examples of the sorts of issues listed above – there are enough examples of what not to do when making a film present in ZONTAR that textbook could be produced from it. Of all the issues that could be discussed, however, pacing is the one that I find the most trying. Whereas the Corman original clocked in at a brisk 71 minutes, ZONTAR lingers for a near unbearable 80 – I’m aware that the production was intended to fill a specific TV time slot, but the dialogue drags to such an extent that you feel as though you’re watching a particularly poor community theater production as opposed to a movie.

In spite of Buchanan’s complete lack of cinematic technique, he goes to great lengths to duplicate precisely a number of seemingly superfluous sequences from the first film. Case in point is Zontar’s taking control of man-made devices – the sequence of shots and what they depict here is an almost exact duplicate of what is present in IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, only less convincing. During one of a number of crowd scenes a girl is seen to drop a doll in the street, pick it up, and continue running – just like in the Corman effort. All of the alien control devices are disposed of precisely as they were in the first film as well – though the general can’t seem to find a rock to put his under this go around.

The special effects work – arguably intended as the main attraction to the film – fares about as well as the rest of it. Several shots of a spaceship [supposedly the satellite] are comparatively effective, though they are not original to the film and look to be sourced from Buchanan’s earlier A.I.P. TV production THE EYE CREATURES*. The suit for Zontar is atrocious, but could have been better utilized had it not been flooded with light for every shot in which it is seen. Worse than the rest are the mind-control devices, which look like odd lobster-bat-kite contraptions [complete with visible strings, of course] and are at least as awkward as one would imagine a living amalgamation of those characteristics would be.

Perhaps the most astounding thing about ZONTAR THE THING FROM VENUS is that, in spite of every single issue listed above [and, frankly, because of a number of them], I actually enjoyed it. Perhaps it was Margalit Fox, a writer for the New York Times covering the director’s death in 2004, who put it best: It was not so much that his films were bad; they were deeply, dazzlingly, unrepentantly bad. His work called to mind a famous line from H. L. Mencken, who, describing President Warren G. Harding’s prose, said, “It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.”

While grand ZONTAR certainly isn’t, this little nothing production deserves at least some amount of praise, as does the director, for managing to entertain as much as it did. It’s as if Larry Buchanan re-shot one of his favorite films as a home movie, complete with table top effects work and a monster patched together by that aunt everyone thinks is so talented – it certainly has the same sort of primitive appeal. ZONTAR is in the public domain, like Buchanan’s other productions for AIP TV, and readily available for free from archive.org for those interested in seeing it – this reviewer’s opinion is of the ‘why not’ variety, as you could certainly waste your time in worse ways [with C.S.I. MIAMI, for instance]. This one comes – dare I say it – recommended.