This rather low budget horror film appeared on the cult television riffing show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Kind of does the same thing as others movies have done over the years as it has a person turning into a monster as the night time darkens the day. It also does the whole thing from space turning a person into a monster too as the catalyst for the transformation is a meteor fragment lodged in a young man's head. That being said it is a bit different in that if features a beautiful romance that is born in less time than it takes to do a load of laundry, it has a strange musical interlude featuring a very bad and kind of whiny band and it features a sheriff who has to have his thumbs tucked into his belt at all times. The film has some kills, but a lot of the scenes that feature killings are too brief and the monster itself is not the best looking creature ever put to film so all in all it is a rather bad film. Still, it is one of those bad films that make for a good episode of Mystery Science Theater so it does have that going for it.
The story has a guy digging up some stuff in the middle of nowhere when he hears a couple of screams before his old friend Johnny Longbow, two of his students and a woman who seems to want to immediately date the guy who was doing the digging. Seriously, she just sees him there and gets him to go eat dinner at Johnny's and then they are driving to the middle of nowhere so they can see the meteors in private. Well, poor Paul gets hit with a chunk of meteor before they head back to his place. Everything is fine at first, but when the new couple make their way into a museum the meteor in Paul's head reacts to the meteor on display and now Paul begins to exhibit strange symptoms such as nausea, illness and general sickness. Of course, that could be from hearing the song California Lady; however, he also turns into a big lizard and kills a guy who was bowling. Soon he is causing terror across the town, though not really all that much and NASA is called in and may be able to help him and soon we have a really stretched out ending!
This made for a very humorous episode of MST3K as it is one of those films that is just perfect for the show. The strange prank that opened the film is perfectly parodied by the show during the first bump and the whole California Lady moment is also ridiculed by them perfectly. The end section begins to drag a bit as you can tell the filmmakers were just trying to extend the film's run time as watching Paul climb rocks got to be a bit boring, but it livens up again once it finally turns to night again and he once again becomes Super Paul!
So this film is not very good at all. It may have worked with some tweaks here and there though. Well, maybe a whole lot of tweaks to it. Some better actors and actresses would have helped, a slightly better looking monster would also have helped and some more kills too. The one where the monster killed the old guys was just too comedic to be very good as the monster rips off one of the old guys' arm and proceeds to hold it while the guy who got his arm ripped off does not react at all! The whole relationship angle was a bit too over the top as well. The two who got together did not know each other long and they were already madly in love by movie's end in what had to be the span of three or four days. All in all it was just a bit of a bad movie, but it did make for a great episode of MST3K.
The story has a guy digging up some stuff in the middle of nowhere when he hears a couple of screams before his old friend Johnny Longbow, two of his students and a woman who seems to want to immediately date the guy who was doing the digging. Seriously, she just sees him there and gets him to go eat dinner at Johnny's and then they are driving to the middle of nowhere so they can see the meteors in private. Well, poor Paul gets hit with a chunk of meteor before they head back to his place. Everything is fine at first, but when the new couple make their way into a museum the meteor in Paul's head reacts to the meteor on display and now Paul begins to exhibit strange symptoms such as nausea, illness and general sickness. Of course, that could be from hearing the song California Lady; however, he also turns into a big lizard and kills a guy who was bowling. Soon he is causing terror across the town, though not really all that much and NASA is called in and may be able to help him and soon we have a really stretched out ending!
This made for a very humorous episode of MST3K as it is one of those films that is just perfect for the show. The strange prank that opened the film is perfectly parodied by the show during the first bump and the whole California Lady moment is also ridiculed by them perfectly. The end section begins to drag a bit as you can tell the filmmakers were just trying to extend the film's run time as watching Paul climb rocks got to be a bit boring, but it livens up again once it finally turns to night again and he once again becomes Super Paul!
So this film is not very good at all. It may have worked with some tweaks here and there though. Well, maybe a whole lot of tweaks to it. Some better actors and actresses would have helped, a slightly better looking monster would also have helped and some more kills too. The one where the monster killed the old guys was just too comedic to be very good as the monster rips off one of the old guys' arm and proceeds to hold it while the guy who got his arm ripped off does not react at all! The whole relationship angle was a bit too over the top as well. The two who got together did not know each other long and they were already madly in love by movie's end in what had to be the span of three or four days. All in all it was just a bit of a bad movie, but it did make for a great episode of MST3K.