Kronos
        
Director: Kurt Newman
Year: 1957
Rating: 5.0
When there were video stores that you could browse in, I would always see this film sitting reluctantly in the bargain bin calling out "I used to be somebody". I guess at some point I must have picked it up because here it is. There was such an explosion of low-budget sci-fi films in the 1950s that I have trouble keeping them straight. Either we were exploring other planets or alien forces were coming to ours. In either case, the interactions rarely went well. Earth with its blue oceans must have looked like a jewel to be plucked from outer space. Aliens of all different shapes and sizes came to earth to plunder. Almost all of the films were part of the second end of a double feature with miniscule budgets but often with a lot of creativity to make up for it. I wonder what it felt like to sit in a theater back then and see these - without the knowledge of what special effects and large budgets came to look like. It is hard now to give these films the benefit of the doubt. They look cheesy and cheap but did they when viewed back then? At a minimum we have to give them credit for exciting a few boys in the audience who a few decades later created the great sci-fi films of the 1970s. They all track back to these films.

 

Kronos has apparently gained some cult status over the years with the advent of video. It has some good ideas for sure and the special effects are not bad for the time. The special effects were the work of Irving Block and Jack Rabin who had a company that provided them to films - a few of the other films being World Without End, War of the Satellites, Flight to Mars and Invaders from Mars. The dialogue is dreadful, and the details make little sense, but the overall plot is different from most other sci-fi films of the time. This is directed by Kurt Neumann who did a bunch of Tarzan films but also The Fly.

 
A very large space research institution that has floors that go far down only seem to have about four people in it. Or that is all they could afford to show. Dr. Elliot (John Emery) runs the place with Dr. Gaskell (Jeff Morrow), Dr. Culver (George O'Hanlon) and Vera, the necessary babe (Barbara Lawrence) on his staff. All decent actors. Morrow starred in a few sci-fi films - The Giant Claw, The Island Earth, The Creature Walks Among Us, while Lawrence appeared in a number of A films -Oklahoma, Captain from Castille - but appearing in this film signals a shift to TV. Vera and Gaskell are hooked up but he has the romantic inclinations of a cucumber sandwich.

 
They track a meteor in the sky that is heading right at earth - but are puzzled in that it shifts course. Earth sends up a few nuclear missiles to knock it out of the sky but it does no harm. It lands in the waters of Mexico. What they don't know is that an alien in the form of light has taken over the mind of Dr. Elliot. No idea why. Our two boys head for Mexico and Vera joins them - out of the water the spaceship rises and comes on land - looking like a dome on two legs. Not a monster - just a ship with a purpose. To suck all the energy on the earth and store it to go back home where energy creates matter. As it slowly traverses Mexico heading for Los Angeles sucking all the energy out of power stations, America sends a jet with nukes to blow it up. Heck, it is only Mexico. Who would notice. At one point one of the military men exclaims "Great Caesar's Ghost" - not heard that since Perry White on Superman. That expression needs a comeback.