Mystery Science Theater 3000: ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES
February 25, 2016 10:32 AM - Season 4, Episode 18 - Subscribe

Badly-designed aliens invade a small town, and the adults won't believe the smoocher teens who seen 'em! It's up to them to save the world with the timely application of their car headlights. This movie is below-average in quality even by MST standards. The title, by the way, is not a typo, or at least it's not my typo. YouTube (1h32m) Premiered December 5, 1992. This movie is largely a shot-by-shot remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men!

Note, this is one of a dwindling number of episodes still not available on DVD.

Episode 418 ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES
Satellite News - MST3K Wikia - Mighty Jack's MST3K Episode Review - War of the Colossal Fan Guide - Annotated MST3K

Movie THE EYE CREATURES/ATTACK OF THE EYE CREATURES
Daddy-O's Drive-in Dirt
IMDB (2.0 stars)
"Alien 'eye' creatures invade a small town."
Directed by Larry Buchanan. Starring John Ashley, Cynthia Hull and Warren Hammack. The film is a close remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men, written by Edward L. Cahn, Robert J. Gurney Jr., Al Martin and Paul W. Fairman.

Additional notes:
  • This is the first seriously bad MST movie we've been hit with in quite a while.
  • Daddy-O informs us that director Larry Buchanan was friends and worked with a very early-career Stanley Kubrick! They had a falling out soon after making Buchanan's first movie, Apache Gold, which is apparently listed in IMDB as Grubstake (?), where it doesn't have a credit for Kubrick, but does note is Jack Klugman's film debut.
  • As mentioned above, this is a thinly-disguised remake of the AIP motion picture Invasion of the Saucer Men, remade for television by Buchanan. Buchanan would hit two other familiar AIP movies for TV remake: 311 IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, as "Zontar, the Thing from Venus" (which would itself become the name of a notable badfilm newsletter and a pretty snazzy blog!) and 808 THE SHE-CREATURE, as the boringly-named "Creature of Destruction." Both of those remakes, however, MST would get the originals; this is the only one where we get the remake.
  • According to the MST3K Wikia, shots in this were borrowed from Buchanan's earlier The Hypnotic Eye and Invaders From Mars, and the Eye Creature costume would return in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.
  • And finally, that title. The movie's original release was "The Eye Creatures." Simple! But then this remake of an earlier film was itself re-released and given a slightly new title in which someone clumsily added "Attack of the" to the title card. Satellite News has a policy of naming films accoring to the movie's internal title, and so here we are. IMDB uses "Attack of the the Eye Creatures" to refer to the MST3K episode.
posted by JHarris (15 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Every week we in the MST3K Club watch the episode featured in the post. This week's episode will be shown in our cytube room, at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub, Thursday (today) at 9 PM US Eastern Time. Details are in the Club FAQ, although note that the address given there is incorrect.
posted by JHarris at 10:35 AM on February 25, 2016


Watch out in this episode for a primordial rickroll, from Tom Servo, and also the classic line regarding Earl Holliman: "who would have been Shatner had there not already been one."
posted by JHarris at 10:38 AM on February 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Also: "You see folks, they just didn't care."
posted by JHarris at 10:38 AM on February 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


This is the first seriously bad MST movie we've been hit with in quite a while.
Two weeks ago we had "Fire Maidens of Outer Space", which was deeply lacking in fire AND outer space, and three weeks ago "The Beatniks", which caused a major strain on my worship of the legendary voice actor Paul Frees. It kinda scares me that you're preparing us for an even WORSE movie...
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:57 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


You may want to brace yourself for six weeks from today, oneswellfoop.
posted by stevis23 at 12:22 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


This was one of the first episodes I ever saw start to finish, and as such I have an enduring soft spot for it even though it really is a dreadful movie. (When Rickrolling was a thing I always thought back to Servo's riff here.)

"I'm Hand Christian Andersen!"
posted by usonian at 1:01 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


You may want to brace yourself for six weeks from today
Episode 424, Manos: The Hands of Fate?
I've already subjected myself to the RiffTrax version (with the MST3K 2.0 guys) and I'm just looking forward to comparing the way the original "Joel and the Bots" handle this slow (and it WAS slow) motion trainwreck.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:23 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is the one with the guy in the sweater-dress, no?
posted by Chrysostom at 7:04 PM on February 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wrap-up.
posted by valkane at 8:14 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Indeed it is, Chrysostom.
posted by JHarris at 12:24 AM on February 26, 2016


Nice wrap-up valkane!
posted by JHarris at 12:25 AM on February 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Amazing that this made its way across my timeline today of all days.
posted by hobgadling at 11:23 AM on February 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have watched Manos so many times - both the MST3K version and the Rifftrax version - that I know it better than a lot of actually GOOD movies.
posted by wittgenstein at 5:15 PM on February 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


"In fact, you couldn't have picked a nicer day to film a night sequence."

This is one of my comfort episodes.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:57 PM on March 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also:

"Do you think her head's an egg sac? Or maybe it's for water storage?"

"Uh, when do I turn my lights on? When do I blow my horn?"

"Here's the movie's message, let's listen… [silence] …there."
posted by ob1quixote at 4:27 PM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older Survivor: Kindergarten Camp...   |  Broad City: Co-Op... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments