The Day It Came to Earth is an amazingly bad movie, showcasing amateurish acting, miserable editing, non-existent lighting, and other classic trademarks of a lower-than-low budget attempt to knock off a sci-fi film. What the movie does have is an earnest attempt to present a story which sadly makes almost no sense almost immediately.
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| "Lonesome" George Gobel - The voice of reason |
The story begins when a meteorite crashes near a local college. It smacks down right next to the dead body of a murdered gangster who had been dumped into an exceedingly shallow lake some time before, and the radiation of the meteor which shatters into various fragments reanimates that body creating a defacto slave. That undead slave then sets about terrorizing the surrounding neighborhood and meanwhile getting revenge on his murderers. Then our heroes, two hapless college sophomores ceaselessly on the make for two lovely freshmen, find the meteorite and take some it to their professor (played by George Gobel). The rest of the rock is taken to the school and the space-zombie then must retrieve it causing even more havoc. Eventually he ends up terrorizing the local sorority before the hapless cops of the small town corner him.
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| Wink Roberts, Roger Manning, Delight DeBruine, and Rita Wilson |
Like I said it's not a good movie, really. But this 1979 attempt takes the embers of sundry classic 50's movies, a dash of the zombie flick, and a smidgeon of the slasher film to make a brew which while never really tasty is nonetheless memorable.
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| What's my motivation? |
I cannot recommend anyone see this movie really, but if you should chance across it, it's hopeless and harmless fun.
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As a '74 and '76 UCLA alumni, I'm sure the film was made worthwhile to watch with one of our "song birds", Delight Slotemaker de Bruine. I hope she accepted this part in the movie for what its worth: a delight amidst the campiness... and a joy.
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