FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

trimbolicelia Very good mid-60's British-made sci-fi film. Scientists and the military recover a small beach-ball sized sphere that comes from "OUT THERE". Weird happenings occur at the facility where it's being examined, then the sphere disappears along with whatever came out of it. After a few weeks the cops call in the scientists because young women are disappearing under strange circumstances and it's believed that the sphere traveler is responsible. Turns out that the space creep is from Ganymede, one of Jupiter's giant moons. It seems that "Ganymede Needs Women". A long time back Ganymede had an atomic war and it is only now that the inhabitants are starting to recover. But it seems that they need fresh, pure female genes to clean up their physiology. Someone should tell them they would need clean male genes as well. We never see the Ganymedian, named Medra, until the end. He has a claw hand, one side of his face is classically handsome, the other side all messed up. Poor captive girls, having to wake up to that in the morning. I don't think these E.T.'s have learned their lesson yet. Medra is incredibly snooty, thinking his people are infinitely superior. Well they nearly wiped themselves out with nukes, so how are they better than us? Anyway Medra achieves his mission and escapes with his captive women. One of the better British sci-fi flicks, crisp black-and-white photography, and a non-camp story. The opening title song is good but doesn't seem to fit the genre. The Image Entertainment DVD is excellent quality and is the one to get, though it has very little in the way of extras. Hard to find now. Highly recommended.

zardoz-13 "The Mummy's Shroud" director John Gilling helmed this low-key,black & white, science fiction horror chiller about an alien invasion of Earth epic that displays enough subtlety to win it points. Scenarist Jim O'Connolly of "Horror on Snape Island" adapted Frank Crisp's novel. O'Connolly and Gilling win points for emphasizing subtlety in what constitutes a latter day "X-Files" outing. The only audacious departure from the norm is a huge claw of a hand that metaphorically implies the alien's savage barbarism. The surprise ending is what sets this tale of terror aside. An all British cast headed by John Saxon never let on that a monster lurks in the closet. Indeed, the restraint that all display in his above-average, 84-minute epic is admirable.Scientists Jack Costain, Ann Barlow, and Professor Morley monitor what they initially believe is a meteor traveling at 10-thousand miles-per-hour until it penetrates the Earth's atmosphere, doesn't burn up and lands outside London. The military are waiting for our protagonists at the UFO landing site when they arrive to investigate. They present their clearance passes and find what appears to be a harmless sphere about the size of a kick-ball. Professor Morley (Maurice Denham of "Countess Dracula") and company have the army transport the sphere to their Falsley Park, Government Radio & Electronic Research Establishment laboratory. The Major-in-Charge (Jack Carson of "Doomsday") deploys his soldiers around the laboratory, with the help of Sergeant Hawkins (Jack Watson of "The Wild Geese") delivering their orders with his usual gruff pugnacity. After Professor Morley and Dr. Costain (John Saxon of "The Unforgiven") leave for the evening, Ann (Patricia Haines of "Virgin Witch") sticks around to type up her notes. She notices a light in the room where the sphere is stored. Indeed, the sphere is glowering. She opens the door and is shocked when a huge scaly-clawed hand seizes her wrist. Not surprisingly, the Major refuses to believe that a monster could have frightened Ann. Costain spots a suspicious looking foot-print from the window in the ground outside the store room. Not even an plaster model of the foot-print can jar the Major's belief that his men played a practical joke on Ann. Meanwhile, Morley suggests that the sphere acts as a receiver for the transmission of matter from another planet. Cue Dr. Who. When he tries to observe this phenomenon, Morley meets his fate. The sphere vanishes, and the Major tries to stop the automobile barreling out of the complex with an intruder at the wheel. He fires several shots at the car but is struck and dies."Blood Beast from Outer Space" lurches off into another genre with news that some twenty-one young women have disappeared in three weeks without a trace. Costain approaches the newspapers with his space creature story, much to the chagrin of Scotland Yard. Initially, they suspect Costain is vainly trying to drum up publicity for himself. Superintendent Hartley of Scotland Yard (Alfred Burke of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets") discovers all the women responded to a classified magazine advertisement in a publication called Bikini Girl. They contacted a tall, mysterious, imposing figure named Medra at a Soho bookshop. Ann decides to offer herself as a guinea pig against Costain's protests. At this point, the heroes know that the alien is named Medra. The sordid bookseller Thorburn (Aubrey Morris of "A Clockwork Orange") fronting for the beast is murdered before Ann enters his shop. When Ann confronts the being, it wastes no time and murders her moments before Costain and Hartley burst with a squad of policemen fast on their heels. The alien literally saw the fear in Ann's eyes and realized she had not come to him with any intention of fulfilling the advertisement. The alien kills her without a qualm.Hartley clutches a straw of hope when a woman tells him about her encounter with Medra. She explains that Medra behaved in a nice manner when he interviewed her and she felt no fear in his presence. Scotland Yard stakes out her apartment. The alien pulls up in the car that it used to escape from the research laboratory and Scotland Yard chases it to a remote urban location where the monster--a tall fellow who appears to be half-human and half-beast reveals that it came--as the scientists suspected--from Jupiter's third moon, Ganymede. Basically, it He put in plain words that he arrived on Earth to assemble women for genetic experiments to help Ganymede's population, a mutant race of mutants that survived atomic warfare long ago. As our heroes watch, the tall, mysterious thing leaves Earth in the sphere and heads home to Ganymede."Blood Beast from Outer Space" is pretty gripping stuff. Not even the ridiculous looking claw straight out of a really bad drive-in B-movie makes the film look phony. The business-like performances contribute an air of credibility that bolsters the suspense and tension in this minute thriller. The most interesting and offbeat character is the low-life magazine dealer that Audrey Morris plays with obvious gay proclivities. The plot about aliens abducting women to procreate with them seems a bit outlandish. However, in 1965, this plot was still fairly new for science fiction. Interestingly, the Image DVD release comes with the British Board of Censors certificate. "Night Caller from Outer Space" could not be exhibited to children under age sixteen! Presumably, this rating arose from the scene where Saxon makes a pass at Haines and the cloaked allusions to sex as the reason for kidnapping the women. Nevertheless, the ending with the alien getting away with its abductions makes this an atmospheric and above-average sci-fi film.

Dhawley-2 Just having watched this film for the first time in many years (and not really recalling much of it) was an exercise in frustration. No need to cover the premise, as other reviewers have done so in detail. As a long-time sci-fi fan with a fondness for British made films, I expected a lot more from this than it delivered. As other reviewers note, the film does offer great atmosphere, reminiscent of the Quatermass films and other British sci-fi greats. Beyond that, it is a true mystery how others' can call this a 'gem'. More like a lump of coal.There is some interesting camera work in this black & white effort, and the acting is generally pretty good (although John Saxon was pretty dull, turning in a perfunctory performance at best). In spite of these positives, it doesn't take long to see that this film is very, very lame. Crummy special effects (the alien's 'claw hand' looks like it came from a Halloween shop), the makeup of the 'night caller' at the end was inconsistent with his appearance during the rest of the film (and lousy makeup at that), the premise of having an alien from Ganymede transporting to earth with money, a refined British accent and the ability to drive a car, rent an office, etc. is never explained, nor is the fate of the '200 plus' girls abducted. The 'visitor' assures that they 'won't be harmed' but that's it. This could have been a very good film. It certainly started out well enough, but as noted by others, the further into the film one got the worse it got. I felt cheated out of the 84 minutes I spent watching it. As a big fan of 50s and 60s sci-fi films, I'm not too picky. There are many low-budget films of those eras and of that genre that are immensely entertaining. This is not one of them. And one final note: it would hardly be possible to find a more inappropriate title song for a science fiction film than the one used in this film. It was like something that might be used in a 'B' romance film, lyrics excepting. Awful. It nearly caused me to stop the film before it started. Regrettably, I sat through it all. Yawn.

ace-150 Almost intelligent British sci-fi with a Mod theme. The black and white cinematography is stylish and some of the sets and clothes have a nice Mod feel, but it never turns into a full style fest. There is one quite odd scene with two distraught parents doing a sort of Stiller and Meara routine for the police and scientist. John Saxon is as hot as can be, but alas, never gets around to removing his shirt or even unbuttoning his collar. What a waste of his greatest talent. The one thing that makes this worth watching is the gay character. Aubrey Morris, best known as the long-suffering but sadistic quasi-pedophile caseworker from "A Clockwork Orange", plays Mr. Thorburn, a purveyor of used books, and, I suspect, naughty magazines, perhaps even male physique pictorials. When the police superintendent comes to question him, he gives the cop hell. The subtext makes it obvious that he has been harassed and probably jailed for his proclivities, but he doesn't let that stop him. Commenting on the unearthly green eyes of the alien, he says "I love men with fine eyes, don't you superintendent?" then blows him a kiss when he leaves. Four years before Stonewall, he's still getting busted, but he's very much in control of his interaction with the cop. The ending of the movie is utterly cheesy but what did you expect from a movie called Night Caller from Outer Space?