Monthly Archives: May 2024

Target Earth (1954) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for Target Earth (1954)Target Earth (1954) by #ShermanARose
w/#RichardDenning #KathleenCrowley #VirginiaGrey

Giant robots from Venus invade Chicago.
“Raw Panic The Screen Never Dared Reveal!”

“You’ll be paralyzed with fear!”

“You don’t need a reason to die, Frank. Just one to live.”

#Horror #SciFi #Robots
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

Target Earth (1954) opens with a sweeping shot of a big city; Chicago, in fact.  It’s 1:30 AM and a woman lies unconscious with a bottle of spilled sleeping tablets near her hand. We get the feeling that maybe she has attempted suicide.

Her eyes open and she seems confused. Perhaps she is wondering why is she still alive. She sits up holding her head.

After getting dressed and leaving her building, she wanders around trying to find other people, but the entire city seems to be deserted. Is she the last woman alive? Continue reading →

The Crawling Eye (1958) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for The Crawling Eye (1958)

The Crawling Eye (1958) by #QuentinLawrence
w/#JenniferJayne #JanetMunro #ForrestTucker

A series of decapitations on a Swiss mountainside appear to be connected to a mysterious radioactive cloud.

“The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonizing horror on a screaming world!” “It’s looking for you!”

“WARNING: If you’ve ever been hypnotized, do not come alone!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

The Crawling Eye (1958) opens on a mountain range. Two guys are on a ledge near the top of a mountain, talking to a third guy who’s up above them – but off screen. They ask him why he’s taking so long. He tells them that somebody’s coming. Next thing we know he’s screaming, and then his body falls past the two men on the ledge. It’s hooked up to a climbing rope, so they catch him and try to pull him back up. But one of the men suddenly screams and lets go of the rope.

“You idiot!” the other man says. “We nearly had him. Why did you let him go?”

“Didn’t you see?” his buddy asks.

“What are you talking about?”

“His head! It was torn off!”

Nearby, a train is racing along the tracks, and as it enters a dark tunnel, the title of the movie appears on the screen…
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The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

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Poster for The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) by #ValGuest
w/#BrianDonlevy #JackWarner

After an experimental space flight, two astronauts are missing, and the third has an unidentifiable illness.

“Beware THE CREEPING UNKNOWN!”

“There’s no room for personal feelings in science, Judith!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

A giggling couple in a farmer’s field – they hear a sound like an airplane approaching – and suddenly realize that something might be about to crash down on top of them, so they run into the house. The noise gets worse and something does crash, causing earthquake like effects inside the house. Then all goes quiet…

The girl’s father goes outside to investigate and discovers that a spacecraft has crashed in his field.

And so goes the opening to The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) by Val Guest, and it’s certainly an intriguing one. This was enough to confirm for me that I had never seen this movie before. I’d certainly heard of it, and perhaps others with the name Quatermass attached. I’m not sure why I never watched it. Perhaps because it didn’t have an obvious monster in the title, and I wasn’t sure if it would deliver the kind of 1950s sci-fi goodness that I like. Or maybe it was just random chance that kept it off my home drive-in screen. Who knows? Needless to say, I was long overdue to take a look… Continue reading →