Zontar the Thing from Venus

Zontar the Thing from Venus (1966); Directed by Larry Buchanan; starring John Agar, Tony Huston, Pat Delaney, Susan Bjurman Neil Fletcher, Bill Thurman, Colleen Carr & George Edgely.

John Candy as Zontar.

My first exposure to Zontar was through an SCTV sketch that was broadcast during the early 80's. Those of you not familiar with SCTV it stood for Second City Television, which was a Canadian comedy troupe that had a televised series that ran roughly between the late 70's to about the mid eighties. It was also shortly featured in their episode of Network Wars that was a parody of the Godfather.

But I'm not here to talk about that. This article is dedicated to the original Zontar which was the 1966 creature feature directed by Larry Buchanan, and starring John Agar, whom was also the lead actor in The Brain from Planet Arous, which I'll be planning to review later.

From the planet of love!!!

If Roger Corman was renown for low budget sci-fi then director Larry Buchanan should be called the king of no budget sci-fi. Buchanan stole much from the Corman library when it comes to this film in that it matches the movie It Conquered the World only with much, much less money.

State of the art technology of 1966.

Our film opens with operators at "NASA" readying the launch of a laser satellite on its way to Venus. Judging by the set designs this must be the scaled down NASA of the future as there are only four people responsible for the whole operation. Heading the project is Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) who meets with his colleague Dr Keith Ritchie (Tony Huston). Ritchie warns Taylor that the launch must be stopped because extraterrestrials are destroying our rockets to keep Earth from advancing into space (like all aliens do, damned aliens). Ritchie is a scientific statistician who predicts scenarios based on his observations and Curt is not convinced of his friend's Doomsday prediction so the launch goes as scheduled giving the audience the title card pictured above.

Plymouth Satellite,
faster than the speed of light.

Three months goes by and as the two friends are dining with their wives the discussion turns to the satellite and the planet Venus which it is in orbit around. Keith tells Kurt that he has been receiving signals from the planet and that they contain an alien voice in the background. When asked about the voice he mentions that the creature's name is Zontar and that he (it) will be hitching a ride on the satellite back to Earth to take command and usher in a new era for mankind as it's leader.

Curt (John Agar) &
Keith (Tony Huston)

Curt is skeptical and dismisses his friends musings, later he receives a call from the installation that the satellite is gone and leaves to investigate. All personnel are baffled as the returning spacecraft not only reappears but completely defies any attempt to control it's landing.

Just a random shot
that was thrown in this movie...
I'm not kidding!!!

As the craft makes its landing Zontar takes refuge in a nearby cave complete with hot spring to make it more compatible with his environment (right... he probably just wanted a convenient place to set up a hot tub). The alien then proceeds to shut down all power worldwide while hatching his injectapods, organic mind control devices that separate and attack victims on command.

The terror of the injectapods!!!

Panic ensues over the town as people flee in fear of the loss of power and Curt and his wife find themselves walking to Keith's house and are surprised when they find that his is the only residence where everything works. Turns out that being one of Zontar's buddies has it's advantages.

Behold, the face of terror!!!!

In the meantime Zontar decides to unleash his creatures on the the top people of the town of Jackson starting with the military head of satellite installation General Young. As soon as the General has been possessed he declares martial law, dismisses the troops guarding the launch site, puts everyone on the research team under protective custody and doesn't even have the decency to order them pizza!!! Not that the phones are working anyway.

What follows next is Zontar continues to unleash his injectapods on key leaders and scientific minds in the community. Curt realizes his friend is telling the truth and tries to devise a way to stop the invasion.

The problem with this movie is that while it is an updated version of It Conquered the World it's not a very good one. Where as the Roger Corman movie had such star power as Peter Graves, Lee Van Cleef, and Beverly Garland, Zontar has none of that and the even though the actors are saying the same dialogue it's just missing the sense of gravitas of the original. The monster is pretty cool though.

In the end I recommend watching It Conquered the World before watching this movie since it is in essence the same film and far superior, or better yet watch the SCTV sketch.

Zontar commands you!!!