- Directed by David Kramarsky, Roger Corman, Lou Place
- Written by Tom Filer
- Stars Paul Birch, Lorna Thayer, Dona Cole, Dick Sargent
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 15 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miDAMQ_JWDM
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It was pretty influential, but it’s not very interesting. The alien spaceship is just a fancy teapot, and the monster revealed at the end is a double-exposed puppet. It’s not worth your time unless you’re a completist like we are.
Synopsis
The Beast explains that he is approaching our world, and soon we will all be under his control. He will take over the birds, animals, and the simple-minded of the Earth, giving him a million eyes here on Earth. Credits roll.
Allan Kelley explains how his day ranch is going broke. The loneliness of the job has gotten to him, and he sounds a little crazy. He describes the desert, “It’s the perfect place to hatch a brood of horror or hate.” His wife Carol is jealous of the opportunities her daughter Sandra has that she missed out on.
Carol is freaked out by Carl, who is always watching from his window. When Carl’s not staring out the window, he’s inside, reading girlie magazines. Sandra goes for a swim, and creepy Carl follows to watch. She catches Carl, but he can’t speak at all. He’s pretty simple, so she’s not too mad.
They all hear a high-pitched whine, but it soon goes away. The glass coffee pot, all the windows, and everything else that’s glass in the house shatters at the sound. A bunch of birds dive-bomb Allan’s car, and Sandra’s dog, Duke, runs off.
Carol throws a tantrum and won’t let Carl inside the house any more, and she refuses to feed him too. Duke the dog finds a machine that makes the high-pitched noise.
The deputy comes by to check on the damage, but he’s more interested in checking out Sandy. Allen and Sandy go to town with the deputy, and Duke the dog attacks Carol, and she has to run to Carl for help. He won’t let her in, and Duke chases her. Carl then wanders off into the desert.
When Allan and Sandra return home, they wonder why the lights aren’t on. Carol is inside, she’s not dead, but she locked Duke in the woodshed and killed him with an ax. Sandy doesn’t believe Carol’s story, since Carol always hated the dog.
Sandy runs out, and she hears the noise coming from the desert. She also wanders off after the sound. She catches up with Carl and leads him back home. Sandy tells Allan about hearing the noise. He thinks that being together made them both stronger.
An older neighbor, Ben, goes out to milk his cows, but his cow tramples him to death. The chickens attack Carol the next morning. Allen writes to the VA Psychiatric Division. Does he think Carol is insane, or does it have something to do with Carl? Allen never talks about the war.
Carl wanders back into the desert when he hears the sound again. Meanwhile, Allan finds Ben’s body in his yard. Carl eventually finds the little glowing teapot from space that has been emitting the sound. Carol finally makes biscuits successfully, after uncounted failures, so she finally smiles. Ben’s cow chases Sandy and Carol, but Allan arrives in time to shoot it.
The family gets in the car; Allan says something is closing in on them, so it’s time to get out of there. They don’t get far before birds start suicide bombing the car, and they all end up back at the house. It’s almost as if… they were organized! Allan wonders if maybe that “plane” they heard yesterday might have been from another world. They all get trapped inside the house, ala “The Birds.”
Carl comes back to the house, and he lets all the air out of the tires. He also knocks out the deputy, who was on his way to the rescue. Sandy is distraught over Deputy Larry, who should have been there by now. Larry tracks Carl to the whining teapot and the two men fight. Sandy gets involved and carried off by Carl.
Allan and Larry follow Carl’s footprints toward the alien device. He talks Carl into bringing Sandy back to him. Then Carl falls down, dead. They carry Sandy to safety, and Larry goes back to kill the evil mind-controlling teapot.
They hear the Beast, telepathically. “I have some secrets too,” he says. “It seems we must part. I offer you life, yours and the woman’s for the girl. We have no material form of our own, we live on brains. Hate and madness are the keys to power in my world.”
He wants to take Sandy home to his world to experiment to find out why humans seem to be able to resist him. Allen and Carol explain that the secret to beating the Beast is Love. His spaceship is programmed to leave at first light, and dawn is approaching.
The family goes to the pit where the spaceship is still radiating control waves, but it doesn’t affect them anymore. An eye comes out of the ship, and it has a puppet-like monster inside it. It dies for no particular reason, and then the ship launches back into space. Deputy Larry reappears from somewhere, and everyone is going to be happy.
Commentary
The vicious dog, Duke looks like a happy pet; not the least bit mean. That’s one dog that can’t act.
Kevin noticed some similarities with “The Color Out of Space,” which was published in 1927, so they certainly had every opportunity to be aware of that. Although it’s not quite that “cosmic,” it’s still a strange thing from space that lures people into its mind-controlling field.
There are a zillion films with a family or group trapped in a house while the forces of nature surround them and pick them off, one-by-one. Whether it be birds, tarantulas, ants, zombies, or clowns, this film inspired a lot of those kinds of films.