The Doomsday Machine

The Doomsday Machine (or Escape from Planet Earth) is a science fiction film. Production began in 1967, but the film wasn't completed until 1972. It was finished without the original actors or the original sets. As you can imagine, continuity errors abound. The ship is represented by something like 6 different images. Production quality is sad -or laughable depending on how you look at it. Sexism is rampant. These pitiful women are just helpless with anything except hair styles.

This is the first time I've ever seen throwing a cat to distract the guard dog as a way to infiltrate a military facility.

Grant Williams (The Incredible Shrinking Man) is one of the stars, though he doesn't get top billing. This was the last film released with him in it. Casey Kasem gets a co-starring credit. Mike Farrell is in the list of featured actors.

It takes them almost 30 minutes to get into space. And soon after:

Man: "Why don't you relax and enjoy it."

Woman, after passionate kiss: "You're very forceful, aren't you."

Man: "Do I need force?"

Woman: "I was talking about vibration."

Man: "Oh. How are yours doing?"

Oh, my.

The plot has a lot of these awkward sexual encounters, some more tasteless than others.

And there are unstable, screaming astronauts. You'd think those types would get screened out of the program.

from Wikipedia:

A spy discovers that the Chinese government has created a doomsday device capable of destroying the Earth, and it will be activated in 72 hours. Soon after, Astra –a two year return mission to Venus by the United States Space Program– has its time of launch sped up and half of the male flight crew are replaced by women shortly before take-off. Shortly before blastoff military alerts are put into effect.

via youtube:

Million Monkey Theater opens their review with this: "If there was ever a crappy, grade-z sci-fi stinker whose murky and bastardized provenance has been beat to death with the snarkystick, it's this film" and then provides a lengthy and snarky plot description. Stomp Tokyo closes its review saying, "Misery, of course, always loves company, so if you choose to seek out Doomsday Machine, I cannot stop you, but I felt that for the sake of my immortal soul, I had to at least try." DVD Talk says, "Hard-core science fiction movie fans should try and muster up the courage to experience Doomsday Machine at least once. All others will find it stupefyingly dull". Rotten Tomatoes has no critics score, but the audience rating is 5%. That's not a typo- the audience score is 5%.