It Came From Another World! (2007)
REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long
I already discussed at length in my review of The Monster of Phantom Lake just what kind of approach is taken with these movies and what kind of angle Christopher R. Mihm hopes to achieve, so if this is your first foray into that world then I suggest going and reading the first little bit of that review before reading this one, just to get a better understanding of what exactly these movies are trying to accomplish. This time, with It Came From Another World! we move away from the mutant lake monster genre of the first movie and right toward a more Global plight – alien invasion!
Company: Saint Euphoria Pictures
Runtime: 93 mins
Format: DVD
Plot: When Professor Jackson's colleague and best friend, Dr. Frasier, doesn't return from a scientific expedition in the deep woods, the Professor is sent to find and retrieve him. While searching, the Professor and Canoe Cops Sven and Gustav stumble upon an enigmatic meteorite that may hold the answer to Dr. Frasier's disappearance — and something far more cataclysmic than they could ever imagine!
Review: I recently watched The Monster of Phantom Lake, the very first movie in the Mihmiverse – a series of micro-budget tongue-in-cheek movies made as parody homages to the classic 1950s era campy Drive-In B-Movies, where the creator Christopher R. Mihm makes a new one of every year. Even though each movie acts as kind of its own separate stand alone movie, there are recurring characters that pop in and out of them occasionally, with small dialog references to previous movies once in a while, so it's because of that fact that I've decided to watch all of them in the order that they were released, although (from my understanding) that's not a Must and you are able to view them in any order you can manage to get your hands on them in. So the next movie up for me to watch and review in the Mihmiverse is It Came From Another World!
Runtime: 93 mins
Format: DVD
Plot: When Professor Jackson's colleague and best friend, Dr. Frasier, doesn't return from a scientific expedition in the deep woods, the Professor is sent to find and retrieve him. While searching, the Professor and Canoe Cops Sven and Gustav stumble upon an enigmatic meteorite that may hold the answer to Dr. Frasier's disappearance — and something far more cataclysmic than they could ever imagine!
Review: I recently watched The Monster of Phantom Lake, the very first movie in the Mihmiverse – a series of micro-budget tongue-in-cheek movies made as parody homages to the classic 1950s era campy Drive-In B-Movies, where the creator Christopher R. Mihm makes a new one of every year. Even though each movie acts as kind of its own separate stand alone movie, there are recurring characters that pop in and out of them occasionally, with small dialog references to previous movies once in a while, so it's because of that fact that I've decided to watch all of them in the order that they were released, although (from my understanding) that's not a Must and you are able to view them in any order you can manage to get your hands on them in. So the next movie up for me to watch and review in the Mihmiverse is It Came From Another World!
I already discussed at length in my review of The Monster of Phantom Lake just what kind of approach is taken with these movies and what kind of angle Christopher R. Mihm hopes to achieve, so if this is your first foray into that world then I suggest going and reading the first little bit of that review before reading this one, just to get a better understanding of what exactly these movies are trying to accomplish. This time, with It Came From Another World! we move away from the mutant lake monster genre of the first movie and right toward a more Global plight – alien invasion!
Rock And Roll-loving,
pipe-smoking, Professor Jackson from The Monster of Phantom Lake
returns here, searching for his friend and colleague, Dr. Frank
Frasier, who has gone missing while investigating a crashed meteorite
in the forest (the same forest as The Monster of Phantom Lake, I
believe! Which being back in such a familiar location actually kind
of had me longing for a sequel to that movie at some point down the
road). Unfortunately his lovestruck student who he ended up in a
romantic relationship with by the end of the previous movie is
nowhere to be found here, and in her place we have another woman who
Professor Jackson is actually set to marry, although it's implied
that she's also a student of his so not sure why they didn't just go
with the other character from the previous movie that we're already
familiar with, since this one is essentially just a far less
interesting carbon copy. Even if they couldn't get the actress back, they could have had a different person playing that character - after all, they have the same actors playing multiple characters from movie to movie, so having two actors playing the same character isn't that much of a stretch.
In addition to Professor Jackson, we
also have the two hilarious and always-awesome cops return from the
previous movie - ya know, the ones that prefer to paddle in a canoe
to get around instead of using a squad car? With the excellent Abbott
and Costello style chemistry with one another? That totally stole the
show in the first movie despite only being in two scenes? Yeah, those
fine fellas! Although no explanation is given as to how they survived
their apparent deaths in the previous movie, especially since that
one ended with the implication that one of them had mutated into a
new algae monster, but hey – no complaints here! I love them so
much, I'm just glad they're back! In this outing they team up with
Professor Jackson to scour the remote woods for the missing Dr.
Frasier and together they all end up finding the crashed meteorite as
well as a strange-acting Dr. Frasier with some memory loss and, once
back in the city and trying to readjust to normal life, occasional
blackouts. It's not long after that, that they discover the truth –
Dr. Fraiser has been taken over by an extraterrestrial entity that
came to Earth in that meteorite and plans to first overtake Dr.
Fraiser's body, and then the world! This of course means more screen
time for the Canoe Cops then they had in the first movie, which is
always a great thing in my books! The more of these two, the better!
There's also a hilarious cameo by the surviving nerdy loner teen of the first
movie, during one of the scenes of Dr. Fraiser's alien entity-induced
blackouts.
While the first movie was already a
pretty damn good parody of the campy 1950s Drive-In B-Movies, this
one does so even more successfully, right from the in-your-face
eye-catchy title all the way to some of the hilarious scenes that
could have easily been lifted from any straight-faced movie of that
era but done to comedic perfection here, such as when Dr. Frasier is writing in his journal when he
witnesses the meteorite crash and insists on writing about it
excitably before actually getting up to go investigate, or Professor
Jackson's basement laboratory that I'm sure would have looked
high-tech for the time but was purposely made to look cheap and bad
here, complete with all the dials, nodes, cardboard, tinfoil, and antennas you would
expect. Oh, and of course the deep-voiced, Joker-smiling, eye-bulging evil alter ego
of Dr. Frasier when the alien entity is in command of his body –
you seriously can't get any campier then that, even if you tried!
Well, except for maybe the final climatic fight between Professor
Jackson, with the help of the Canoe Cops, and Alien Warlord Dr.
Fraiser, complete with some awesomely-placed famous Star Trek dialog
at the end.
I also felt this movie improved on the
first in the area of its runtime. Sure, it's still a tad bit too long
for its own good (only a couple minutes shorter then the first and
still longer then the average Drive-In B-Movie of the era), but
unlike The Monster of Phantom Lake where the algae monster didn't
even show up until an hour into it, with very little before that
having anything to even do with it, this movie uses each and every
scene to intelligently keep moving the main plot forward so there
wasn't really any place for unneeded filler scenes that would just
drag the movie down, and thus even though the movie is only a couple minutes shorter then the first, it feels like it goes by at a much quicker pace.
Where this movie didn't improve though,
is with the character of Doctor Jackson himself and his very grating
purposely-bad William Shatner impersonation. I get it was meant to be
part of the joke, especially with his jerking head movements factored
in, but it only came across as annoying and I was pretty much done
with it before the first scene of him was over. Now, it was present
in the first movie as well, but it wasn't done nearly to the level
that it is here, making what was bearable and even kind of funny when
done in moderation there, just annoying and headache-induing when
cranked to the max this go-around. Also missing was his hilarious awkward
chemistry with his female companion. As mentioned above, the presence
of the main female character from Monster of Phantom Lake was greatly
missed here, and having her replacement character just be bland and
boring only added to the effect of her absence.
As mentioned in my review of the first movie, these self-produced DVD discs are stacked right up with tons of excellent bonus content, which is quite surprising seeing as how these are not only micro-budget, largely fan-funded titles, but the overall price for each DVD is so cheap that it blows my mind we get so much with them! This go-around we have the usual introduction to the film by Horror Host Dr. Ivan Cryptosis (which I personally could do without, but I know there are lots of people out there that love that sort of thing), two Blooper Reels (one of which is just about 15 minutes long and the other, while shorter, deals strictly with just all the issues they had with the props for the bulging eyeballs), two Deleted Scenes, a Photo Gallery of tons of Behind-the-Scenes photos, and of course the full length Audio Commentary by Christopher R. Mihm and lead actor Josh Craig. You certainly get a good amount of bang for your buck with this, although it would have also been nice to have the actor who played Dr. Fraiser on the commentary as well, only because he did such a phenomenal job in this movie with playing duel characters, it would have been great to have some of his input as well. That's of course in noway a detractor to the set though, just a personal wish is all.
As mentioned in my review of the first movie, these self-produced DVD discs are stacked right up with tons of excellent bonus content, which is quite surprising seeing as how these are not only micro-budget, largely fan-funded titles, but the overall price for each DVD is so cheap that it blows my mind we get so much with them! This go-around we have the usual introduction to the film by Horror Host Dr. Ivan Cryptosis (which I personally could do without, but I know there are lots of people out there that love that sort of thing), two Blooper Reels (one of which is just about 15 minutes long and the other, while shorter, deals strictly with just all the issues they had with the props for the bulging eyeballs), two Deleted Scenes, a Photo Gallery of tons of Behind-the-Scenes photos, and of course the full length Audio Commentary by Christopher R. Mihm and lead actor Josh Craig. You certainly get a good amount of bang for your buck with this, although it would have also been nice to have the actor who played Dr. Fraiser on the commentary as well, only because he did such a phenomenal job in this movie with playing duel characters, it would have been great to have some of his input as well. That's of course in noway a detractor to the set though, just a personal wish is all.
There are a few personal quirks in this
entry that annoyed me greatly, but the amount that it does right
vastly outnumbers those, and it even manages to improve over the
first movie in a couple key areas, making this the...logical...next
step of evolution for the Mihmiverse movies. If they continue this
trend, then the next movie, Cave Women of Mars, should totally blow
me away and get a perfect score. Add to that even slightly more bonus
features then The Monster of Phantom Lake had, and it's a pretty safe
assumption to make that It Came From Another World! was a nice step up
for me from the already-good package that was the first movie.
Seeing as how 99% of the advertising
for this guy and his movies come from simple word of mouth from the
fans, then be sure to get the word out there on these movies and
hopefully we can snag in a few other fans that may not even realize
these exist. You can order these on DVD (and even BluRay for the
latest couple!) over at his
official site which is filled with all sorts of other goodies as
well (including a monthly newsletter in addition to a very laid back,
yet informative, podcast). Hell, there's even an excellent deal on
right now – Buy Three Movies, Get One Free, which seeing as how
there's currently eight of these titles, if you do that twice then
that is the perfect way to catch up with all of them and in the end
save some dough – that's how I did it!
8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
Thank you for the pimp of the Mihmiverse Podcast...did you see there's one with Mike Mason as the guest? I hope he answered some of your questions and gave you more insight into the double character...
ReplyDelete--rhuby
No prob! While not *perfect*, I'm still heavily enjoying these as I'm going along. I've also got Cave Women on Mars and Terror From Beneath the Earth watched now, just need to wait for enough free time to get reviews for them written. As for the podcast, I've only so far listened to the first two episodes as I wanna wait till I get all the movies watched before I continue on with the podcast, to avoid the spoilers and all that, but I'm looking forward to coming across that one :)
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