The Planet of Beautiful Women and Vegetative Men Every movie has its own background. She also has this painting... Jonathan Hayes was working at a gas station in California for his carefree 25 years when he was spotted by Roger Corman and offered a role in a producing film. Corman was impressed with Hayes’ talents, and for 10 years he shot him in his paintings. The 50s were a golden era of fantastic horrors, and often terrible fiction. His natural observation allowed Hayes to outgrow his acting role, and in 1957 he sold his first script to Arrarat Productions. "Monster of the Nicholson Plateau" was a frank parody of horror films in which Jonathan Hayes had to star. When Bruno VeSota began filming in 1962, the script had a different title: Invasion of Space Beings. In the film, one of the main roles was to be played by the author of the script - Jonathan Hayes, but for some reason he never appeared on the set. Perhaps, if he appeared in the frame, the film would have turned out a little different.
The film was shot in a real “movie paradise”: scenes of the cave and desert were filmed in Bronson Canyon, part of Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. The budget of the film was like an elementary particle - "vanishingly small", so Bruno VeSota after the failure of his previous work "Brain Eaters" (1958) had to somehow twist. Perhaps this is the reason why an extraterrestrial ship does not come to our long-suffering Earth, and has been here for more than 10 years. All these years, a close-knit crew engaged in... overhaul of the starship! How the long-awaited completion of the work coincided with the fact that “the United States government detonated the most powerful type of atomic bomb on the Nicholson Plateau” will not tell the viewer. Why in sunny California need a nuclear-powered crater 5 miles in diameter and almost half a mile deep! However, all these questions can be safely omitted if you keep in mind that Jonathan Hayes wrote SATYRA! By the early 60s, the world was filming so much about “these terrible aliens”, that it was not a sin to make a little ironic on such a “sweet” topic.
Screenwriter Jonathan Hayes emphasized the absurdity of what is happening on screen with a series of verbal pearls: We waited two weeks to determine the extent of nuclear devastation. Gentlemen, now we can start cleaning up radioactive dust and sediment! Of course you don’t hear that in the army! The viewer is much more interested in why aliens appeared on our planet. Here, the screenwriter does not get into his pocket for a word: We are from the planet Chelar from the Belfar star system, which is about 600 million light years from Earth. This "about" kills in the air, because the Andromeda Nebula, according to the latest data, is 2,537,000 light years! The declared incredible figure is not stupid, as in many films of those years, it is outright banter. As is the name of a super-duper device that "transforms the knowledge of one brain into appropriate symbols for explanation with another brain" - 'electrophoffilagralocomatic'! This is not the name of the device - it is a balm on the heart! So go through all the pseudoscientific nonsense in many science fiction films!
The writer’s fantasy does not run out on this, and he brings to the audience a civilization from the “small and overpopulated” planet Chelar, where 4 “phases of society” safely coexist: men – warriors, women – technicians, people – plants and, in fact, two “extraterrestrial creatures” who for 10 years worked tirelessly on the “repair of the starship”: Professor Tangi (Dolores Reed) and Dr. Poon (Joan Arnold in the credits – Gloria Victor). The duet of aliens is the unconditional decoration of the film. Considering the fact that, apparently, half of the budget of the film went to their “frankly extraterrestrial” costumes, it was a pleasure to watch them. What can not be said about the tandem of earthlings - Private Philbrick and Penn. The writer did not forget about these frankly uneasy warriors, putting in their mouths a lot of “delicious” phrases: “I do not mind being conquered by people like you!” (Many male viewers, too!) “Hey, baby, you’re really not of this world!” "Not Sput-U-U-Nick, but Sputnik!" With “verbal humor” in the picture is complete order, but the characters that Tangi and Poon grow in their greenhouse, do not withstand any criticism. Ironically over such visually cheap films, Jonathan Hayes (if he really came up with such a type) fell into his own trap. It is people-carrots, people-salad that make the film so ... "invisible."
Old films, regardless of their inner content, carry the main thing - the imprint of the Age. They will never be removed or removed. And that’s good – every time has its own movies. But still, how nice to plunge into the atmosphere of that time! And sad to learn the fate of the people who created this black and white tape. Bruno VeSota will no longer direct, star in another 30 films as an actor, and will live only 54 years. For Professor Tanga – Dolores Reed – this film will also be the last in her short career as a film actress: in 1963, at the age of 30, she will die – just as Marilyn Monroe died of a barbiturate overdose exactly a year before her. And the creator of this interesting, but extremely controversial story, Jonathan Hayes will live on. 94 years (!), continuing to try himself in different roles beloved by all of us deity called Cinema. . .