Release Date: 1981
Directed by: David Lane, David Elliot, John Kelly, Desmond Saunders
Written by: Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson, Alan Fennell
Based on: Stingray TV series
Music by: Barry Gray
Cast: Robert Easton, Don Mason, Ray Barrett, Lois Maxwell, David Graham
ITC Entertainment Group, 92 Minutes
Review:
Like the recently reviewed Revenge of the Mysterons From Mars, this feature “film” was chopped up from episodes of one of those popular British marionette puppet sci-fi shows.
In the case of this one, it was taken from the show Stingray, which actually exists in the same lore as Thunderbirds. How exactly, I don’t know, as I’m not really a fan of these marionette shows.
This one wasn’t as hard for me to track down as the Mysterons one, as I found a shoddy copy up on a website awhile ago. Luckily, I downloaded it and saved it, as that site is now gone.
You can find the host segments with Joel Hodgson though, if you wanted to see the material that was made when this was featured on the original, local Minneapolis version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Unfortunately, the MST3K version in its entirety is missing, as far as I know.
Overall, this is pretty hard to watch. The edit is a real hatchet job and honestly, this just feels like more of the same after having just watched Revenge of the Mysterons From Mars.
In fact, Mysterons actually was better even though I also hated that one.
The story is hard to follow but that’s because this is comprised of four different episodes that all had their own plots.
The puppets also aren’t as good as the puppets from series that came after this. This looks and feels like an underwater Thunderbirds but with less skill and care behind the production.
Rating: 2/10
Pairs well with: the Stingray show it’s chopped up and re-edited from, as well as other MST3K features that were just sci-fi TV shows edited into full length “films”.
Talking Pulp 