Alien Attack |
UK • 1976 • 104m •
   • Directed by: Charles Crichton, Lee H. Katzin, Bill Lenny. • Starring: Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Barry Morse, Roy Dotrice, Anthony Valentine, Isla Blair, Prentis Hancock, Zienia Merton, Anton Phillips, Nick Tate, Philip Madoc, Lon Satton, Eric Carte. • Music by: Barry Gray.    Earth's Moon is the site of Moonbase Alpha, a scientific research colony nestled in the crater Plato. Staffed by over 300 men and women from Earth, it is the operations center for several space expeditions. It is also a watchdog for vast amounts of atomic waste from Earth stored in silos on the Moon's far side. Magnetic radiation builds up and causes the wastes to explode with such force that the Earth's centripetal pull on the Moon is overcome, and the Moon is broken free of Earth's orbit to drift at incredible speed out of the Solar System off the plane of the ecliptic. The survivors on Moonbase Alpha are unable to return to Earth and must survive in unknown space on their wandering Moon. They encounter a planet whose advanced people project an illusion of a devastating attack on Moonbase.
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Review:
ALIEN ATTACK does show the strengths and weaknesses of season one of SPACE 1999. For a television show the effects and production are genuinely cinematic and are obviously inspired by 2001. The problem is that the structure is too obviously two episodic stories stuck together and the cutaway links on planet Earth don't do anything to remedy this and how could it? The first half is the episode Breakaway from the show and involves Commander John Koenig whose new command of Moonbase Alpha coincides with a series of mysterious deaths and accidents on the base. The nuclear disposal dump on the Moon is leaking its cargo that eventually leads to a chain reaction and explosion that blows the Moon out of orbit and in to space which sets up the second half of the story if you're watching this film or another 47 episodes if you're watching the series
One interesting aspect is how prominent the supporting character Commissioner Simmonds is at the start of the episode. One wonders then why the episode chosen to continue the film couldn't have been the episode Earthbound where Simmonds holds Moonbase Alpha to ransom. Earthbound also has Christopher Lee as a guest star which would have made ALIEN ATTACK more marketable but there again you'd need a reason to call it ALIEN ATTACK so the pretentious and perplexing episode War Games is tacked on to Breakaway trying and totally failing to give the impression this is anyway a coherent narrative. War Games is certainly action packed but suffers from what occasionally happened during series one of the show and has a resolution that doesn't even begin to make sense
As it stands ALIEN ATTACK is a good enough introduction to SPACE 1999 but the reason for releasing it is very puzzling and I'm curious as to the story behind it is. There's also something bizarre about the linking section and that is that it's set in the year 2100. This might make the scenario of having colonised the Moon more convincing within its own timeline but also means it's missing the point if ALIEN ATTACK is being used as an introduction to the show SPACE 1999. In fact the whole thing seems pointless with hindsight.
Review by Theo Robertson from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database