Cult Movie Vault #28: The Terrornauts (1967)

Total Sci-Fi’s Guide to the Incredibly Strange and Obscure in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Movies

The Facts

Written by John Brunner, based on The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster
Directed by Montgomery Tully
Produced by Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky
Music: Elisabeth Lutyens
Cast: Simon Oates, Zena Marshall, Charles Hawtrey, Patricia Hayes
Running time: 75 minutes
Also Known As: N/A

The Plot

Radio astronomers are kidnapped by aliens, accompanied by the tea lady and a camp accountant…

The Lowdown

If you’ve ever come across The Terrornauts it is unlikely you’ll ever forget it. That’s not because it will instill fear in you (it won’t) or that it is a prime example of excellence in moviemaking (it’s not). Nope, what you won’t forget is the sight of Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes fighting off space aliens while Simon Oates dons a shower cap to control an alien computer! All this comes after their house is abducted by a flying saucer! And to think Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was only two years away…

This bizarre long-forgotten little flick came from Amicus, home of the anthology horror movie and the Doctor Who versus the Daleks feature films of the 1960s. Certainly, it has some of the Doctor Who colour and exuberance. The film would be utterly forgettable — even with its awful model work and dodgy robots — if it were not for the presence of Hawtrey as a camp accountant and Hayes as a gossiping tea lady, both whisked off into space by aliens without so much as a by-your-leave…

Full of nonsense science and containing make-you-giggle lines like “It’s a kind of vibrator!” (as one of the scientists describes a piece of alien technology), nonetheless The Terrornauts displays some (deeply buried) influence from Japanese alien invasion cinema of the 1960s. It also anticipates Close Encounters by featuring alien technology that communicates through the use of musical tones, and, as the alien base unexpectedly lifts off, even recalls Stargate Atlantis when that show suddenly decided their city base could fly through space!

This seems to have been the only movie script written by science fiction novelist John Brunner, although a couple of his stories were adapted for the BBC’s 1960s SF anthology series Out of This World.

A promisingly realistic opening featuring the search for extra terrestrial intelligence is quickly squandered on camp nonsense and silly alien rubbish. The movie is full of mad ideas, most poorly realised, and bizarre characters doing weird, outlandish things —although if you are in the right mood (maybe after a light libation or two) The Terrornauts can be a laugh-out-loud hoot.

Cult Cast

Simon Oates is best known for his starring role as Dr. John Ridge in 1970s scientific troubleshooters TV series Doomwatch. He was a serial guest star in many 1960s TV shows, including The Avengers, Department S, Jason King, and the 1970s The New Avengers. He even played John Steed on stage in the 1971 The Avengers play. He was long rumoured to have been one of the choices for the role of James Bond during the gap between Sean Connery and Roger Moore. He also pursued a career as a stand-up comic and a musical theatre star. He died in 2009, aged 77.

Patricia Hayes has more fantasy and SF credits to her name than you might imagine. She featured in Catweazle (1970); was a witch in The Goodies (1973); turned up in a 1985 episode of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1985); and had film appearances in The Never-Ending Story (1984) and the George Lucas-produced Willow (1988). She even featured in the 1995 ITV revival of The Tomorrow People. She died in 1998, aged 88.

Director’s Cut

Montgomery Tully was an Irish-born director and writer who began his career making low-budget British crime dramas in the 1940s and 1950s, including two Hammer film noir entries, Five Days (1954) and The Glass Cage (1955). He made the Alfie Bass army comedy I Only Arsked! in 1958, featuring Charles Hawtrey. He followed The Terrornauts with Battle Beneath the Earth in 1967, a low-budget thriller about the Chinese nuclear threat. He died in 1988, aged 83.

WTF? Moment

Where to begin? Hawtrey and Hayes in space is pretty ludicrous, as is the first sight of the alien robot which looks like a crashed satellite merged with a supermarket trolley. The moment when the alien spaceship abducts an entire house (apparently the base for the radio astronomers) is pretty surprising, as is the sight of the even-Doctor-Who-would-reject-it monster that confronts our heroes at one point.

Behind-the-Scenes

The money for Amicus to make The Terrornauts came from a two-picture deal with distributor Joseph E. Levine. Subotsky used the £200,000 offered to adapt two novels, one of which was Murray Leinster’s The Wailing Asteroid.

“What I liked about Leinster’s book was that it dealt with an ordinary group of people who save the Earth,” said Subotsky. The entire budget for the movie was just £80,000. BBC Dalek and Zarbi operator Robert Jewell was hired to operate the robot featured in the movie.

Creators Talk

“I was interested in making science fiction pictures that children could see, films that weren’t violent, gruesome or nasty. [Unfortunately] we had an 80-minute picture that dragged. It was boring because we only had a few sets and there was nowhere to take the story. I cut it down to 62 minutes so it could go out as a supporting feature to They Came From Beyond Space. That didn’t happen. But what really ruined the picture were the special affects — they were ludicrous!” — The Terrornauts Producer Milton Subotsky, quoted in Little Shoppe of Horrors #20.