Audience Member
Director Jim Wynorski made Roger Corman a bet: he could remake the 1957 film with the same budget and schedule thirty years later.
Luckily, he had a not-so-secret weapon. Let's be honest: Traci Lords being in a Merchant-Ivory movie about malaria would make me watch that movie ten times in a row. Wyrnorski is a smart guy. After all, he told John McCarty in The Sleaze Merchants: Adventures in Exploitation Filmmaking from the '50s to the '90s, "While we were at an optical house doing some effects work for Big Bad Mama II, I came across an original print of the old Corman film. Kelli Maroney was there, and Raven, and we had a big hoot watching it. So I said "I think we could have a blast remaking this picture." And they said "Well, who are you going to get to play the Beverly Garland part?" There were some newspapers lying around, and I saw a story in one of them about Traci Lords. So I said, "Let's get Traci Lords!" She even looks a little bit like Beverly Garland."
Lords, however, didn't want to be found in the wake of the scandalous idea that she made adult films underage. But he convinced her to be in it and was surprised that she improved as an actress as the filming went on.
Traci plays Nadine Story, a nurse who soon gets hired to be the personal blood transfusion person for Mr. Johnson, who is really an alien from the planet Davanna. So yeah, it's a vampire movie — and fits into the "Not-So-Classic Monsters" theme this week — while also being an alien movie.
To get the movie under budget, some scenes are directly lifted from other Corman movies, like a stalker from Hollywood Boulevard and a foggy scene of a woman being followed from Humanoids from the Deep.
The opening also has a quick blast of scenes from past Corman movies like Forbidden World, Battle Beyond the Stars, Galaxy of Terror, Battle Beyond the Sun and Piranha.
This being a Wynorski movie, he filled it with plenty of gorgeous women. So look out for Rebecca Perle (Savage Streets), Becky LeBeau (Bubbles in the hot tub from Back to School; her voice is dubbed by Michelle Bauer), Roxanne Kernohan (Critters 2), Monique Gabrielle (61 magical films to choose from and I'll pick Young Lady Chatterley II), Ava Cadell (Ava from the world of Andy Sidaris), Cynthia Thompson (Body Count), Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet) and Kim Sill (AKA Kimberly Dawn, AKA Kim Dawson, star of a ton of movies you snuck watch on Cinemax in your puberty).
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
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Audience Member
Roger CORMAN produces this remake of a 1957 movie of the same name he directed, which explains why it has a distinct 50's-60's science-fiction feel. The scream queens, however, are 80's as hell. The best part is the opening credits, which are quite confusing and mostly unrelated to the storyline.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/15/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Not of This Earth (Jim Wynorski, 1988)
I first saw Not of This Earth not long after it came out on VHS. The draw, needless to say, was former porn star Traci Lords, in her very first non-porn flick. (Say what you will about underage porn stars, but when that news came out in the mid-eighties and I realized Traci Lords is only six months older than I am? That was a very powerful thing, and probably one of the defining moments of my psyche vis-a-vis sexuality; but that is another review, and considering most of Traci Lords' porn films were destroyed for being "kiddie porn", well, it is most likely a review I will never write, and you will never read.) As a side note, it was also the movie that introduced me to the wild and woolly world of Jim Wynorski, who over the course of his career in low-budget sleaze (who else would give Traci Lords a break in the film industry?) has directed both some of the best (oh, come on, you know you love Dinosaur Island) and some of the worst (The Bone Eater) bad movies you are ever likely to have the misfortune to see. Not of This Earth, which I re-watched recently to see if it held up to my twenty-five-year-old memories, is closer to the former than the latter. Though I rush to add that "best" is a term I am using very, very loosely here. It's still an awful movie, but it's the kind of awful movie that you rent knowing without a shadow of a doubt will deliver you a wonderful time.
Plot: the sinister Mr. Johnson (Up in Smoke's Arthur Roberts) shows up at the office of Dr. Rochelle (Chopping Mall's Ace Mask) desperately needing a blood transfusion. He is attended to by the good doctor and his nubile nurse Nadine (Lords). He then ropes them into the movie's silly plot: Mr. Johnson is a vampire. Not just any vampire, but an alien vampire who plans to enslave Earth for the purpose of providing blood. It is up to Nadine and hunky cop Harry (Tammy and the T-Rex's Roger Lodge) to stop the evil aliens from harvesting Earth's blood supply.
If you've ever seen a Jim Wynorski movie, you know this is crap. Wynorski has been specializing in bottom-of-the-barrel exploitation trash his entire carer, and Not of This Earth is no exception. However, Wynorski claims in the entertaining documentary Popatopolis (2009) that of the over one hundred movies he had made at the time, not a single one of them failed to earn back its budget. Not bad, not bad at all. If you make dreck, people will watch it. I'm not going to say you need to rush right out and see this-I strongly suspect there is a "you had to be there" aspect to this film to make you understand its importance in the late-eighties film industry (Lords was the first porn star to launch a successful mainstream career, and that has everything to do with Jim Wynorski)-but as far as being a trip down nostalgia lane? Can't beat it. **
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
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Audience Member
For ironic viewing only + Traci Lords = you could do worse.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
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Audience Member
Better than Wynorski's later work by a long shot. It's not that he's any more careful here. The continuity is awful (a nude Traci is wearing shoes in her mirror reflection, but not in the direct shots) and the movie stops making sense long before it's over. But here he understands exactly what he's making, and he delivers it ... it's a really fun bit of nonsense. Lords is really quite good, as is Arthur Roberts as the alien. The rest of the cast are thoroughly disposable. Kudos to Wynorski for stealing a lot of footage from earlier Corman flicks and opening his flick with the Miracle Pictures logo.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
Full Review
don s
This is a B-movie; Roger Corman's involvement should tell you that. As such, you can't expect Oscar caliber performances and big-budget sets. It's a harmless sci-fi story with an abundance of gratuitous nudity starring former porn star Traci Lords. The concept is ludicrous and the script is awful, but the actors do their best to play it straight and make it watchable. Rated against regular movies, it fails. Rated against other B-movies, it shines.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
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