Alien Terror (1971) (AKA) Sinister Invasion is one of the oddest of Boris Karloffs final six movies, but it is hardly the most exciting. It begins with typical Sixties screen credit font and pseudo jazz that sounds like it was composed for period porn.
Boris is Professor Mayer, and he and his scarred (Ygor-like) assistant Isabel (Maura Monti) are playing around with some power ray thingamajig. It shoots through the roof and hits a spaceship which just happens to be flying by and looks like one of those rocket invader ships from the old Atari arcade games. One half expects a lost Adventures of Superman episode and that at any moment some green Martian is going to show up. Alas, all that shows up is Laura (Christa Linder), the professor’s niece; she is having a fit because her uncle has just blown another hole in the roof.
The guys in the fly-by UFO are not so forgiving. They realize that those Earthers possess a mighty power that could annihilate the universe. So, of course they must do something in order to stop us. Their solution is something akin to a Plan 8 from Outer Space, which makes about as much sense as Plan 9 did. One of the E.T.s, a foppy Buck Rogers type (Sergio Kleiner), steps out of a psychedelic spaceship (complete with lava lamp things inside) and possesses serial sex murderer Thomas ( Yerye Beirute). Why would he do that? Obviously it’s the only way for an alien to stop Earthers from using their molecular power ray thingamajig (!)
The only problem is that Thomas still has half of his own mind and he kills a few too many girls, arousing the anger of the villagers (one of the villager is even named Frankenstein.) There are some odd touches amidst an entirely nonsensical film. One of Thomas’ victims actually loves her serial killer hero, fully knowing of his psychopathic tendencies. The alien, when it’s not looking like Barry Manilow in aluminum foil, takes on the shape of a floating transparent tribble that possesses both the professor and his niece.
Karloff has a bit of screen time in this, his last released film (he died two years before). He looks slightly better here and is the only decent actor in the entire cast, although Beirute is an amusingly quirky non-actor. He is known–if you call it that—for this and for his briefer role in Face Of The Screaming Werewolf (1966) where he was victim to Lon Chaney Jr‘s rotund lycanthrope.
After it ends badly for half the cast, the professor destroys this power machine, which we on earth are to too stupid to harness (you can practically hear Ed Wood yelling: “stupid! stupid! stupid!”) Alien Terror is no Invisible Ray (which wasn’t that good to begin with) but there is a certain amount of dumb fun to be found here. Just don’t ask me to tell you where exactly—the “magic” is in its overall peculiar flavor. It lacks the blatant drive-in antics of Fear Chamber (1968) and it could have used Ed Wood’s stamp of branded lunacy (!?!).
Still, there is a certain iconic aptness in Boris, like Bela Lugosi, ending his career with some of the weirdest bad move extravaganzas imaginable (or unimaginable). Poelzig and Werdegast would have appreciated the perverse irony.
Alfred Eaker 