The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966)

The Navy vs. the Night Monsters is a slice of classic 1960s drive-in movie cheesiness.

As so often in sci-fi/horror movies of that era the threat to humanity originates in the frozen wastes of either the Arctic or Antarctica. In this case it’s Antarctica. Plant samples from the frozen continent are being flown to a remote US Navy base at Gow Island but disaster strikes the aircraft and it has to make an emergency landing. There is only one survivor, the pilot, and he’s in no condition to tell anything of the odd events that caused the aerial mishap.

Before very long personnel at the base start to disappear and then turn up dead. Of course if you’re a horror movie fan then at this point you’ll be suspecting that those plant samples belonged to giant walking carnivorous plants. And you’d be spot on! It takes a while for the base’s resident scientists to catch on.

This particular base doesn’t seem to be especially well equipped - when the killer plants cut the wires to the generator the task of repairing the damage is quite beyond the capabilities of the personnel here. The officer in charge, Lt Charlie Brown (Anthony Eisley), eventually realises the full significance of the menace posed by these vicious plants. The only way of stopping them seems to be by using fire.

There’s the expected romantic sub-plot involving beautiful Navy nurse Nora Hall (Mamie van Doren), and there are the usual conflicts between the Navy people and the somewhat irritable civilian meteorologist.

It’s played to a large extent for laughs, and the comic elements are rather heavy going. But this is very much standard drive-in fodder so you expect that sort of thing. On the plus side there’s plenty of enjoyably goofy technobabble. And the monsters are as cheesy as one could possibly desire.

The acting is exactly what you expect in a low-budget drive-in movie. Oddly enough Mamie van Doren isn’t given to many opportunities to show off the spectacularly voluptuous figure that made her a B-movie queen. As an actress her abilities are strictly limited but they’re more than adequate for his role.

Of course you know that sooner or later someone will decide to all in an air strike by Navy bombers to pulverise those rampaging killer shrubs, or in this case to zap them with napalm. Half a dozen aircraft duly arrive, and in each shot they strangely metamorphose into entirely different types of aircraft. That sort of thing is one of the great joys of low-budget sci-fi movies.

It’s not overly scary but even at the time the picture was released it was essentially an exercise in campy silly fun and on that level it works admirably. I certainly enjoyed it.

The Region 1 DVD comes to us from an outfit called Cheezy Flicks. They don’t seem to have done a great deal in the way of restoration but these days we have to be grateful that such obscurities are being released on DVD at all.

If you’re in the mood for a popcorn movie you could do a lot worse.