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 ith "Lobster Man From Mars", the Royal Theater, long noted for its distinguished programming, this weekend launches
a new Saturday midnight-movie policy with a winner.
Director Stanley Sheff and the late writer Bob Greenberg have lovingly sent up the tacky 50's sci-fi/horror drive-in flick
with the help of a good cast that gets into the spirit of the occasion.
It seems that Mars is fast running out of air, and the hideous Lobster Man (S.D. Nemeth) is dispatched by the King of
Mars (Bobby [Boris] Pickett of "Monster Mash" fame) to Earth to steal its air. (Never mind how he's supposed to
manage it). In any event, the Lobster Man menaces a nice young couple (Deborah Foreman, Anthony Hickox), and
Hickox's scientist uncle (ever-stalwart Patrick Macnee) gets into the act. So does a weird psychic, played by Billy
Barty, and Tommy Sledge, who as a vintage private eye wrote his own dialogue, a veritable dictionary of dated, hard-
boiled detective slang. (He even carries his around own taped film noir theme music). Dr. Demento narrates the film.
Bargain-basment monster is typical of the props in "Lobster Man From Mars,"
the midnight movie at the Royal Theater.
Making a virtue of the presumed necessity of a miniscule budget, Sheff and Greenberg have no end of fun with cheap
special effects and familiar outdoor locales (e.g. Malibu Canyon, much used by Roger Corman). Carrying off such a
picture is not as easy as it seems: A good parody of bad genre pictures requires more than a passing acquaintance with
such films, which are already self-parodies. It is also a challenge to sustain and control such spoofery, and Sheff uses a
film-within-a-film device that masks both budget limitations and allows a breather from the tongue-in-cheek stuff.
This framing story has a nerdy fledgling director (Dean Jacobson) who looks to be still in his teens, showing his
magnum opus "Lobster Man From Mars," to a slick Hollywood producer (Tony Curtis in top form) in desperate need of
a terrible picture to release for tax reasons. From time to time Sheff cuts to Curtis who ad-libs a series of amusing
reactions to the film. "Lobster Man From Mars" (rated PG) is an instance where cornball antics has required
considerable sophistication.
Patrick Macnee portrays a scientist in the spoof of 50's low budget sci-fi films.
Sheff has set off his film with the perfect curtain raiser "Kimbar," which is Chapter 1 of an old serial so bad that
Chapter 2 was never made! A hilariously tacky rip-off of Tarzan, it stars body builder Steve Reeves as the loin-clothed
King of the Jungle. To complete the program, Sheff has a couple of laughable vintage house trailers, one a severe
admonition -- i.e. banishment for life -- against talking during the movie and the other the offer of a six-month pass to
anyone who reports vandalism of theater seats.
Copyright Los Angeles Times
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