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Zontar, the Thing from Venus
By Marc | September 13, 2007
I like good movies. I like bad movies just as much. I am also a bargain hunter. So, one day last year as I’m wandering the aisles of my local Shopko, deciding what to spend my birthday money on, I spy the holy grail of movie value. The SciFi Classics Collection 50 Movie Pack Collection
Our story begins in a place all to familiar in the realm of bad sci-fi: A control room of a rocket launch at a “military intallation”. They are launching a “laser satellite” which has something to do with interstellar communication. To accomplish this, the team of scientists need large wooden boxes with knobs and an old arcade love tester. Our main character, Dr. Curt, is in charge when his good friend, Dr. Keith, shows up to tell them to stop the launch.
Keith is a respected scientist who has turned crackpot tells them that the other planets want to keep us in our place until we’re further advanced, so they don’t want us knowing about other life forms. Launching the laser satellite can only be bad.
A few months later, Curt and his wife are at Keith’s house for dinner. We find that Keith has been communicating with Venus, more specifically, with Zontar, our title character. He talks to him using a closet full of stereo components.
Curt then gets a phone call: the satellite is missing! Keith gets a message: Zontar is coming! Curt drives to the “military installation” where the small team of lab coats tells him: the satellite is back, so they are going to bring it down for analysis. Keith needs to get ready for when Zontar arrives, who will be residing in some underground hot springs. His behavior really creeps me out, almost like he’s been talking to some new “friend” on instant messenger because “nobody else understands him”.
Then we are treated to what seems like five minutes of industrial stock footage before we learn that the satellite is gone again! Curt and his wife are driving around somewhere when they have car trouble. Keith gives Zontar a list of important people in the area, from the sheriff and mayor to Dr. Curt.
The power is out! Nothing mechanical works! Not even plumbing or watches. Panic in the streets! People are running around everywhere. Wait, no. They are panicking in an orderly manner, everyone running in the same direction with total regard for the law.
As Dr. Curt and his wife are walking back to civilization, they spot what appears to be a black plastic garbage bag bird bug thing flying over them on a wire.
Keith and his wife, Martha, are able to drive home in style because Zontar allows their things to work because he’s a special friend of Zontar. Meanwhile, the general in charge of all the military stuff gets attacked by the bag bird bug as he’s walking somewhere in the woods.
General (who now has a little twig in the back of his collar to show he’s under the control of the aliens) goes to the “installation” and informs the “scientists” that a Communist uprising in the area is to blame for the power outage.
More organized panic in the streets. Another bag bird bug thing attacks the sheriff. The sheriff kills some old guy who turns out to be the mayor, as Curt witnesses the whole thing. Back at home, Keith explains to Martha that the bag bird bug things deliver an electro biological essence which is controlled by a host, Zontar, as a living extension of it.
Meanwhile, Curt finds General, who wants to take him to a different “installation” so that he will be safe. Our hero then notices a twig on the collar of the general. Somehow knowing what it is, he delivers a karate chop the officer’s neck and gets away to Keith’s house. Unstable wacko then tells the hero everything and realizes that Curt must be controlled!
Curt goes home and is given a present of a bag bird bug thing by his possessed wife, who then leaves. A few minutes of swinging at shadows and things on wires, and the thing is dead. Since he’s killed the bug bird thing, it is decided that he must die and Keith will kill him. Curt’s wife returns, believing that he has been transformed, and gets shot by him. Evidently, since he’s such a brilliant scientist, he knew automatically that there was no hope of getting her back.
Martha decides that her husband is too far gone, so she’ll take on the responsibility of killing Zontar herself. Needless to say, she doesn’t succeed in this venture. Dr. Hero confronts Dr. Loony, telling him that he’s been duped. The following line is then eventually uttered: “For the first time, I’m confused.” Uhhh. You’ve invited an alien to earth and helped him take over the city, and NOW you’re confused? Yeah. I buy it. Curt’s gun won’t harm Zontar, but Keith’s fancy ray gun with a plutonium ruby crystal will.
Kurt travels to the “installation” and shoots the general and the scientists, who are now also possessed, with well-aimed bullets. I don’t mean to be stereotyping, but for a rocket scientist, he sure is handy with a gun and proficient with martial arts moves to knock someone out. As this is going on, Keith has gone to take care of Zontar, killing both of them at the same time.
That’s the end of the movie.
I was expecting a bad movie, but not this bad. It was made for television, so I can cut it a little slack. Zontar, who appears to be made up of a pile of latex gloves in the vague shape of a man with wings, only shows up in the last 10 or 12 minutes of the movie. The weird bag bug bird things get more screen time. The acting was so over the top, Master Thespian would tell them to tone it down a little.
It was okay, and tried to invoke topics like reason and intelligence, but it just failed miserably at that. There was more sitting around and discussing ethics than I expect in my average cheesy alien invasion movie. It was overall a bad experience, but if you’ve got 81 minutes to spare, there are worse things you could be doing.
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