The years 1965 and '66 were busy times for Italian director Antonio Margheriti, working, as he was, on no less than three shlock classics in the spaghetti sci-fi genre (amongst other projects!). Those three films were "The Wild, Wild Planet," "The War of the Planets" and "War Between the Planets," and for those who prefer their spaghetti covered with loads of grated cheese, these films will surely fit the bill. "War Between the Planets" (1966) is fairly representative of the lot. In this one, a 25-mile-wide rogue asteroid (hardly a planet at all) approaches Earth and causes widespread catastrophes due to its gravitational fluctuations, so a United Democracies space team, under the command of granite-jawed Rod Jackson, sets out from the Gamma 1 spacewheel to destroy the darn thing. Typical for these rigatoni space operas, the FX on display are cheaply realized and often laffable, but that is not the problem here; tacky FX can often be endearing. More problematic is the lackluster script and the often confusing, often boring "action" sequences. Half the dialogue of the film seems to be comprised of technobabble (such as "Checker feed is a constant 100 propulsion," "Recon Gamma, keep your flight course on 0800," "Come in on gyro," "Correct our position by 22 degrees on your quadrant 6"), and that sort of gobbledygook gets old pretty quickly. Even worse, many of the film's plot points (such as a love triangle of sorts that Jackson is involved in, and that switched-helmet confusion at the picture's end) fizzle out to nothingness, and the matter of the rogue asteroid being, apparently, a living thing, a la Solaris, with a breathing, jellylike surface and cablelike arteries that bleed when cut, is never even discussed! In the lead role, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart is thoroughly unlikable as the butt-clenched Jackson, a factor that might have torpedoed this film all on its ownsome; the actor would be much more sympathetic that same year in the Mario Bava masterpiece "Kill, Baby, Kill." So is there ANYTHING that I did enjoy about this deep-space pasta? Well, I suppose some of the background music was kinda freaky, and Ombretta Colli (as Gamma 1's resident redheaded space babe, Terry Sanchez) was sorta hot, and that antimatter explosion at the end, all two seconds of it, looked pretty cool. And that's really about it! Basically, "War Between the Planets" is as stultifying as sci-fi gets, and is best observed by those under the influence of some ergot-based concoction....
Review of War Between the Planets
