The Cape Canaveral Monsters is a 1960 independent American black-and-white science-fiction film, produced by Lionel Dichter and Richard Greer, and written and directed by Phil Tucker.
It stars Katherine Victor, Jason Johnson, Scott Peters and Linda Connell, Though planned as a theatrical feature, it was ultimately released directly to television.
The movies deals with two extraterrestrials who have come to earth to "transmit" healthy, living humans, especially women, back to their home planet and to disrupt rockets launched from Cape Canaveral.
It was made shortly before the start of the USA's crewed space program and has been categorized by a reviewer as a later entry in the "reds-under-the-beds," fear-of-communism films that were often part of sci-fi during the 1950s.
When Hauron reconnoiters Cape Canaveral one night, an MP's guard dogs attack him and tear off his recently reattached arm.
Tom says that the static coming in over a transistor radio means that an illegal transmitter is operating nearby and theorizes that it may have something to do with the launch failures.
[4] The movie was to be filmed in color on a two-week shooting schedule, with time for multiple takes, and with financing provided by "group of dentists or doctors," according to Victor in an interview she gave to critic Tom Weaver .She was paid, she says, $420 or $450 for her role.
[6] Nothing about the full production cost of the film has surfaced, although Warren wrote several years after the fact that the "budget must have been minuscule to begin with" and that the movie "does look cheap indeed.
[7] (Raw claimed that CCM is the abbreviation of Compagna Cinematographer Mantoro which produced a number of films in Europe in the 1960s, and credits the movie to it.
[15] Several years later, though, British critic Phil Hardy called The Cape Canaveral Monsters a "belated entry in the reds under the bed cycle of films,[16] which started at the beginning of the Cold War, when the fear of communist "subversion from within became a prevalent force" in the USA.
[17] The notion in science fiction is exemplified by such movies as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which Hardy called a "classic example of an anti-communist film of the period for its handling of the take-over from within theme," although "it is far better and far more complex than such crude reductions suggest.
Warren called it a "stilted, limited disaster"[3] although he added that "Tucker seemed to be sincere in his efforts to make it a good low-budget film.
"[10] Kay Glenn wrote, "Though not as ineptly made as Robot Monster, this is all cut-rate stuff, full of plot holes, bad acting, and a few unintentional laughs thanks to the aliens, who bicker like a married couple.
[10] Bruce Eder says that a greater emphasis on the extraterrestrial's "strange focus on the lusty side of being human" might have "made for a more interesting movie.
"[23] Although numerous blogs and websites that deal with movies contain commentary on The Cape Canaveral Monsters, only one reference to it in the traditional mass media has been found.
The movie was mentioned in dialogue and a poster of it was shown on the Robot Monster episode of the TV program I Hate Everything: The Search for the Worst in 2015.