‘World panic as UFOs approach Earth…’
The Eye Creatures is a 1965 sci-fi horror film about an invasion by a flying saucer and its alien occupants. While the military ineptly attempts to stop the invasion, a group of young people, whose reports to the local police are dismissed as pranks or wild imagination, struggle to defend themselves against the menacing monsters. Also released as Attack of the Eye Creatures
The film was produced and directed by Larry Buchanan (Zontar: The Thing from Venus; It’s Alive; The Loch Ness Horror) from a screenplay written by Paul W. Fairman, Robert J. Gurney Jr and Al Martin. It is a colour remake of the 1957 black and white AIP film Invasion of the Saucer Men intended to fill out a package of AIP films released to television. It was edited by future director S.F. Brownrigg (Don’t Look in the Basement).
The movie stars John Ashley, Cynthia Hull and Warren Hammack.
Buy with Zontar: The Thing from Venus – Amazon.co.uk
Review:
The Eye Creatures is an odd little movie. It begins, as so many bad sci-fi movies do, with Peter Graves narrating about how the government has been keeping an eye on a flying saucer that’s been hovering over the Earth for quite some time. However, a quick visit to Project Visitor reveals that the soldiers assigned to protect us are more interested in using their monitoring equipment to spy on teenagers making out in their cars! Agck! Total invasion of privacy!
Of course, what’s particularly sad about the whole thing is that you know that’s totally what would happen in real life as well. Give a group of people the power to spy on anyone in the world? Of course, they’re going to end up spying on people fooling around in cars! That’s one reason why Earth is just as doomed today as it was in 1965.
Anyway, the flying saucer does eventually land. Unfortunately, our government is too incompetent to do anything about it. The aliens inside turn out to be …. well, not that impressive. For one thing, they don’t speak. There are none of the grandiose threats to conquer the world that we’ve come to expect from aliens. At the same time, we also don’t have to hear about how the rest of the universe is disappointed in us for polluting our planet and blowing each other up so that’s a good thing. So often, intergalactic visitors can be so judgmental! Anyway, these aliens are lumpy and grey and they’ve got several eyes. They don’t really look that impressive.
So, the government turns out to be pretty useless when it comes to battling the aliens and the local police are sceptical that any intergalactic visitors would bother to land in their crappy little town. Fortunately, as always happens whenever the controlling legal authorities fail to do their job, there are teenagers and they’re willing to do what needs to be done to protect the world!
Of course, if Stan (John Ashley) and Susan (Cynthia Hull) are going to rally the troops against the aliens, they’re going to have to borrow someone’s phone. That’s going to mean convincing the local old man to let them use his phone. The old man, who has had enough of those crazy kids with all their kissing and the jazzy lingo, is more interested in using his shotgun to keep people off his lawn.
Meanwhile, two drunks decide that they want to get in on all this alien business. They both later die and no one in the movie seems to care. That’s just the type of movie that this is….
…and if it sounds familiar, that’s probably because you’ve seen the 1957 drive-in classic, Invasion of the Saucer Men! Basically, in the mid-60s, American International Pictures commissioned Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan to remake some of their most successful drive-in films. The plan was to sell them to television. So, Buchanan took the script for Saucer Men, tossed in some scenes of the government spying on people (Buchanan was a noted conspiracy theorist who previously directed The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald), and called his film The Eye Creatures!
Yet, while Invasion of the Saucer Men was a genuinely clever sci-fi satire, The Eye Creatures is done in by Buchanan’s inability to keep his story moving at a steady pace and it doesn’t help that the iconic Saucer Men have been replaced by men who appear to be wearing trash bags.
The Eye Creatures is an unfortunate remake and one that should be viewed only after you’ve watched Invasion of the Saucer Men and maybe every other public-domain sci-fi film that’s currently on YouTube.
Lisa Marie Bowman, MOVIES & MANIA Read more of Lisa’s reviews at Through the Shattered Lens
“When Buchanan tries to be serious he is hilarious. But when he tries to be funny he is boring. The bumbling soldiers… the cranky old man… the wisecracking teens… nothing works.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers book
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Production:
The movie was shot in 16mm over several weeks in Dallas, Texas, on a budget of $40,000. Ashley was imported from Hollywood, but the rest of the cast were locals. Ashley has stated that his salary took up more than half the budget.
Most of the film was shot at the ranch of wealthy businessman Gordon McLendon. Ashley claimed that the film ranks “with some of the worst all-time horror films ever made”, but said it was a professional operation and that Buchanan treated him very well.
The film’s title screen contained a notable error. In keeping with a frequent practice of B-movie re-release retitling, the phrase “Attack of the” was superimposed on top of the original title, which already included “the”, producing the redundant title Attack of the The Eye Creatures.
Further reading:
“The studio suggested (read demanded) John Ashley as the lead. John had wet his feet often in AIP beach party pictures. As we raced through the tight schedule, it became apparent to me that this was no bimbo. Good looker, good voice, no Mickey Mouse beach bum. The worst I gave him merged absolutely believable. He was driven. By the end of the first week, we were ahead of schedule.” Larry Buchanan, It Came from Hunger! Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister – Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
The Films of Larry Buchanan by Rob Craig, McFarland, 2007
Film Facts:
One of the creature costumes was recycled for Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966)
Technical specs:
1 hour 20 minutes
Audio: Mono
Aspect ratio: 1.33: 1
Full film – free to watch online on YouTube [1440p 2K HD]:
Full film – free to watch online on YouTube [1080p] HD:
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