Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 22: Journey to the Seventh Planet

Horny spacemen probe Uranus.

No really. That’s the plot. They find things on Uranus that defy science. And then they come home. Well most of them.

Okay one of the films quirks is that everybody pronounces Uranus as something like Your – Ron- Us – rather than the standard and snicker producing for those of us with adolescent minds you-anus. Which is fine except it jars whenever they do name the planet and why the hell did they need this to be on Uranus? Nothing other than the film title Journey to the seventh planet seems to call for it. They could have used another planet so that every time one of the actors say probe or penetrate the inner beavis and butt head in all of us doesn’t snicker.

Okay –okay – this 1962 film is brought to you by the same folks who brought us the insanely bad 1961 Reptilicus – you’d think folks would have learned but it seems they had a two film contract so…

The story is set in, as Crow T. Robot once said, our old future. It’s 2001, all wars and poverty and nastiness has been abolished and the UN is running everything (pause for a scream of I told you so by the crazy guy who always forwards you those e-mails about how Obama is going to run for a third term and is going to herd white people into camps) the planets are being probed (no they said that not me). And this crew is going off to Uranus.

(snicker)

I’m sorry . I have a cold and this sort of thing amuses me no end when I’m not feeling well. What can I say I’m a immature clod at heart.

Apparently they decided to spring the mission on the crew as they all a bitching about having had plans for the weekend or something- except for the Commander who was a dour General in Reptilicus and here plays Eric the dour Commander of the ship. John Agar plays Don the second in command and the crews horn dog. There is the Virginal Karl, An Irish guy and a man named Sven (here on Gilligan’s island – sorry sorry it’s the cold). And off to Uranus they go – after Don puts a pin up on his locker and then embarrasses the Virgin Karl with his heavy talk about biology.

The journey unlike every single other space flight movie in this era does not end up dealing with meteors which is fine by me. Once in orbit , the Irish guy breaks out his last fresh apple but after only one bit a voice, a rather insulting one, foolish humans sort of voice starts up with an overlay of something that One assumes represents mental power and freezes the crew –

When they wake up the don’t know how long they’ve been frozen but judging by the apple which is now a withered remnant – it had to be at least a week.

Then showing what stuff they are made off, the shrug this off and go ahead and land. (of course on the real Uranus, they would end up deep inside the plant itself before they got enough support to hold the space ship – but hey it’s a movie).

Then as they land they find the Uranus is not a land of cold methane gas and ice but a dense forest in the summer. Upon seeing the unexpected paradise before they first want to test the air before they go out but the air lock opens by itself and out they go.

Turns out what’s happening is that something is reading their minds and bringing those thoughts into reality – In maybe the best example of this Commander Eric talks about a small farmhouse with a windmill that he knew as a youth and the girl he left behind Ingrid – as he talks behind him the farmhouse with windmill comes into view – Eric has his back to this but the rest of the crew see it and start pointing.

Sure enough inside the farmhouse is Ingrid but Eric has to do his job. Don meantime dreams up about three women in less than five minutes and the Irishman dreams up an apple tree (wait? What? well at least he’s not a complete cliché dreaming of a river of whiskey).

They find a barrier – some sort of force field that surrounds the greenery – and it seems that it can be penetrated, Eric pokes a stick through the barrier it comes back  with that end white. The Virgin Karl – proving that in addition to being the Virgin Karl he is also the film’s idiot, pushes his hand trough and get’s it frozen solid for his trouble.

As I said idiot.

The commander decides to  suit up and probe the barrier (probe! Uranus! Snicker snicker) with the horn dog Don and the Virgin Karl  - beyond the barrier is a frozen world of bad star trek looking props and this brain with an eye which is trying to mess with the crew’s minds – there is also a giant one eyed rat that attacks the crew at which the Virgin Karl freezes in terror – in addition to being a idiot it seems Karl has issues about Rats.

On the way back Eric tears his suit but he is saved by his blood freezing and sealing the suit again. The next thing Eric knows is that it is three days later and the boys, especially Don have been busy. (I have to assume somebody made a porn of this using the basic plot – if not well a rare failure of the porn business I guess)

Eric pushing away from Ingrid demands that the beast be killed (it wants to take over the Earth – just how it plans to do this or even just how it ended up on Uranus are not really explained. ) and pulls the crew from its whoring or something –

They devise a torch using stuff found around the space ship and then take a nap. No really they all go to sleep leaving the Virgin Karl on guard duty – the dream woman from his past shows up and sabotages the torch.

There is also a fight with a giant spider ( of course there is) and then the virgin Karl is absorbed by the alien – just prior to them figuring out a way to kill the alien. I won’t talk about it as it’s stupid.

The battle over the alien defeated the crew heads for the ship but Eric brings Ingrid along (why not there is an extra seat – formerly that of the Virgin Karl) but as the ship leaves Uranus (last snicker) Ingrid fades away which if you get that the alien was creating it should come as a lot less of shock than it does come to Eric.

We fade away from the crew and as the credits roll a bizarre lounge song sung one assumes judging from the inflection and phrasing  by someone who learned the song phonetically. They were in Denmark making this picture. It’s a bizarre send off as the song really has zip to do with the film.

Interesting idea – what if someone could make what you think about real – done by Bradbury and Star Trek and others  -

Enjoy with Lute fish – no don’t eat lute fish there is no earthly reason to eat lute fish.