Killers From Space (1954)

Bad film aficionados constantly (and tediously) debate as to what the 'worst film ever made' actually was, with anything directed by Ed Wood featuring prominently.  But, by my reckoning, Killers From Space (1954) has to be up there as a strong contender. Featuring a rag bag of scrappy looking stock footage of nuclear tests, some truly atrocious process work, woeful special effects and aliens with ping pong balls for eyes, it truly encapsulates the whole concept of 'poverty road' in a single seventy minute package.  It is also, undoubtedly, hugely enjoyable in its ludicrous, ramshackle way.  Killers From Space is the work of director W. Lee Wilder, the younger, less talented, brother of Billy Wilder.  Really, he was.  The purse-maker turned producer and director turned out a number of poverty row movies, many of which can stand toe-to-toe with the output of Ed Wood or Andy Milligan for sheer awfulness.  In particular, his trio of science fiction films made in 1953 and 1954, are grindingly poor.  The first, Phantom From Space (1953), features an alien that remains conveniently (for the budget) invisible for most of the film, while The Snow Creature (1954) turns into an hilariously no budget King Kong imitation, as a captured Yeti (basically a guy in a pair of furry trousers a fur jacket and furry hat), goes on a 'rampage' in LA's drains.

But Killers From Space remains the worst of the trio with its desert-based tale of a top US nuclear scientist being kidnapped by aliens, brainwashed into helping them, but finally rebelling and nuking them.  The whole thing is lacklustre, lacking any kind of suspense or tension. The script is so thin that it has trouble filling even seventy minutes of running time, padded out with lots of back projected footage of 'giant' spiders, lizards and assorted insects, supposedly created by the aliens to help them invade the earth and wipe out humanity.  Peter Graves, as the scientist, manages to get through the whole thing with a straight face - but he had plenty of practice, seemingly being a permanent feature in low budget science fiction movies in the fifties.  Before his excursion into low budget science fiction, Wilder had specialised in low budget films noir.  He later came to the UK, where he directed a number of low budget films, including The Man Without a Body (1957), a poverty stricken science fiction film possibly even worse than Killers From Space, but he only co-directed it, so he can't be held entirely responsible for its awfulness.  He wound his directorial career up with a Philippines shot low budget science fiction film, The Omegans (1968).