Zontar, the Thing from Venus
| Zontar, the Thing from Venus | |
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| File:Zontar, The Thing from Venus(1956 film) poster.jpg | |
| Directed by | Larry Buchanan |
| Written by | Lou Rusoff Larry Buchanan Hillman Taylor |
| Starring | John Agar Susan Bjurman |
| Music by | Ronald Stein (uncredited) |
| Cinematography | Robert B. Alcott |
| Distributed by | American International Television |
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Release dates
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Running time
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80 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $22,000 |
Zontar, the Thing from Venus also known as Zontar: The Invader from Venus is a 1966, made for television, science fiction film, directed by Larry Buchanan and based on the teleplay by Hillman Taylor and Buchanan. It is a low budget color 16mm remake of Roger Corman's It Conquered the World (1956) which also featured an alien invader from Venus.
The movie is arguably Buchanan's best known.[1]
Contents
Plot
At a dinner party with their wives, NASA scientist Dr. Keith Ritchie (Tony Huston) reveals to his colleague Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) that he has secretly been in communication with a three-eyed, bat-winged alien from Venus named Zontar who he claims is coming to Earth to solve all of the world's problems. However, as soon as Zontar arrives on Earth via a fallen laser satellite it quickly becomes obvious that the skeletal black creature has a hidden agenda as it begins causing local power outages that stop telephones, automobiles and even running water from working and it starts taking control of people's minds using flying lobster-like "injecto-pods" that sprout from its wings. Only after his wife is killed does Ritchie finally realize that Zontar has come not as a savior but as a conqueror, and he goes to confront the hideous alien in the sulfur spring-heated cave that it has made its secret base.
Legacy
The movie was satirized in a sketch on the October 30, 1981 episode of SCTV that guest starred Bonar Bain (brother of Conrad Bain) as a human agent helping the planet Zontar take over Earth.
It was also the inspiration for Zontar the Magazine from Venus published in Boston from 1981 to 1992.
See also
References
- ↑ Goodsell, Greg, "The Weird and Wacky World of Larry Buchanan", Filmfax, No. 38 April/May 1993 p 64
External links
- Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Zontar, the Thing from Venus at IMDb
- Zontar, the Thing from Venus is available for free download at the Internet Archive
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