The Doomsday Machine (1972)

In my attempt to slowly get myself back into the grove of things I present for your reading entertainment another edition of classic horrible cinema from the Mills Creek 250 Horror Collection, a film which once again has absolutely nothing to do with horror and everything to do with science fiction! The sole reason I chose to watch Doomsday Machine is surprisingly over the last month I have received about 23 hits from Goggle for this film. Being the only film off this collection I've received that much traffic for I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

Doomsday Machine is the story of a USA space program to Venus which is pushed ahead of schedule due to the threat of a nuclear fallout between China and the rest of the world. In order to protect the future of the human race three women are substituted into the mission party with the sole purpose of repopulating the human race if Earth should be destroyed. When Earth is inevitability blown up four men and three women are all that remain of the human race (not really very fair to the odd man out). But the crews' problems are only about to begin as they realize they don't have enough fuel to land on Venus, they'll have to jettison most of their supplies and four members of their crew in order to make it!

The entire premise of this film is hilarious, how exactly they plan to live on Venus in the first place was beyond me. Luckily the absurdness of the story ultimately made it entertaining although there were way to many drawn out scenes which easily could have been cut and made the film a clean hour ultimately making it a little more enjoyable. Also the ending was atrocious, making absolutely no sense and then abruptly ending as if to suggest a possible follow up. Overall, I'm not sure what the reason is for the sudden burst of interest in this film, while I found it mildly entertaining ultimately I can't suggest running out and renting it, or in this case freely streaming it online.

5/10