Now here's a great example of not only how NOT to make a movie, but the perfect "Mystery Science Theater 3000" movie. It's horrible but fun, features scenes and situations you need to see to believe, and feature laughable monsters. But I need to address something that you probably noticed right away: The title.
The film was originally titled "The Eye Creatures" but sometime later it went through a weird re-distribution process where someone decided to retitle the movie "Attack of The Eye Creatures". The problem was they weren't paying attention and ended up adding "Attack of The" before the title card. Good job, Gomer.
Anyway, the movie itself. During the credit sequence, some military guy is locked up in a classroom and he's showing a film to some other military guy. The film is suppose to be PROOF that aliens have arrived! The film (narrated by Peter Graves) just shows a toy on a string flying over a plant. This is suppose to represent a UFO landing in a town.
Then we meet the most loathsome characters I've ever seen in my life, and I just recently seen "A Serbian Film". They're two military guys sitting in some room watching some top secret satellite camera thing, which they have aimed at a bunch of teenagers making out. The two guys just make jokes, and mugs at the camera about watching this. It's pretty weird.
We finally meet our central characters. First up is Carl and Mike. They're friends who drifted into town a month ago and they're trying to find jobs and/or women to hook up with. Well, Carl is anyway. Mike just wants to go home and sleep. Killjoy.
Then we meet Stan and Susan. They are young lovers who plan on running away and eloping. Susan's father, who is some bigwig in this small town, doesn't like Stan a whole hell of a lot. But you know how that goes. And finally, we meet the best character in this movie: Old Man Bailey.
Old Man Bailey literally spends his days and nights standing on his porch with a loaded shotgun, chasing "damn smoochers off his property!" That's all he does throughout the whole movie, stand there, yell about smoochers, and shoots a shotgun. And speaking of day and night, the main flaw this movie has (out of a billion other flaws) is the day-to-night shots. Everybody says that it's too dark outside or it's nighttime, but it's clearly 1 PM. They didn't even try to hide this fact by tinting the film, or having people stand in shadows, or anything. Just bam! It's "night".
Ok so in the forest, the aliens, the Eye Creatures, are roaming around. Stan and Susan are driving when they hit one, killing it. Killing it caused the alien's hand to break off (I don't know) and the hand tears a hole in the tire. They walk to Old Man Bailey's house to call the police, but because they're "kids", the cops don't listen to them.
Then here comes Carl. He spots the dead monster, rushes to a phone (I think it was Old Man Bailey's phone as well) and calls Mike, telling him they're gonna be rich! Mike doesn't believe him either and just wants to go back to sleep. Carl goes back to the body to put it in his car when another alien shows up and kills Carl.
The police show up (because Old Man Bailey told them to cause of all the people coming in and out of his house) and spot Carl's body. The cops think it's what Stan and Susan hit and arrest them for manslaughter. They prove their innocence by saying they hit an alien, but no one will listen. Then it turns into "The Fugitive".
Stan and Susan are left alone in the police station by a unlocked door, so of course they run out, steal a car, and go to Mike's house. They think if they get Mike on their side, the cops will listen to them. Mike at first doesn't believe them, but once he learns about Carl's death, he slowly gives in.
All three drive back to the first, where they spot the disembodied hand locked in a car. Mike sees it, believes them finally, and goes to take a picture of it. The flash from the bulb causes the hand to blow up. Armed with this knowledge, they now know how to kill the aliens: by shining bright lights on them. So they're the original "Gremlins"?
Like I said, this is a really bad monster movie but it's a lot of fun. It's so bad and cheesy that you'll find plenty to laugh about. Especially when we see Mike and his choice of sleepwear. Even if you watch this movie without the guys of MST3K, I think you'll enjoy the experience. Just don't take it seriously, lord knows the people who made it didn't.
-Jason
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