The Cremators (1972) — Triskaidekafiles

THE CREMATORS

WRITER: Screenplay by Harry Essex
From a short story by Judy Ditky

DIRECTOR: Harry Essex

STARRING: Maria de Aragon as Jeanne
Marvin Howard as Dr. Ian Thorne
Eric Allison as Dr. Willy Seppel
Manson Caulfield as Mason
Cecil Redick as Medical Examiner
Barney Bossick as Merv
Al Ward as Phil

QUICK CUT: An environmental scientist gets the hots for the new girl in town, but he has some competition!

THE MORGUE

Ian - A dedicated scientist looking into a local lake and how we are affecting the environment. He’s a good guy, determined, and curious.

Jeanne - Our love interest.

Willy - Another scientist whom Ian calls in to help out. A bit more sceptical, but still curious, and possibly with more going on behind the scenes.

NOTE: The “Cover Image” used this review is, unlike 99.999% of Trisk reviews, not my own image. My copy of The Cremators came as a double feature with Octaman, and it had the tiniest of poster images on the back. So I looked online, and liked the look of that image. It is not representative of the version I own. Just to be clear. =)

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! It's time to dig back into the files, and watch this wonderful bit of obscurity, The Cremators. I really have no other build up for this, so let's get right to it.

The movie kicks off with some set up in the distant past, talking about a meteor crashing into a lake, and there were only two witnesses. One is a fish that ate a piece of the rock and died

And the other was a Native looking for water, and instead found a burning ball of fire that chases him down the hill, until it runs him over, leaving nothing but ash.

The credits bring us through the intervening 300 years, and the narrator introduces us to Ian Thorne, a scientist looking into the changing ecology due to pollution and climate change. How relevant.

Ian finds a small rock, and it must be super important, because the music swells to a mighty crescendo. Over a rock.

He packages up the sample to send to another doctor friend, and rushes to town to get it to the mail carrier.

The rock starts blinking and beeping, and that should be your first sign of trouble right there. But that's when the fireball XL5 shows up and roasts the car and the mailman like he's a baked potato. Fortunately, he opened the door so his dog could escape.

I guess something CAN keep a mailman from his appointed rounds.

Also, for a car turned to slag, Ian's package is remarkably untouched, but I digress.

Ian goes to collect new samples, and he gets interrupted by his old friend Max, and his niece Jeanne, our love interest.

Jeanne eyeballs one of the pretty rocks, and he offers to let her keep it. Oh I'm sure that will go well.

Later that night, a friend stops by after finding his cat injured and near death, and there's nothing he can do. His friend heads out, leaving Ian to do a bit of an autopsy, and bury the poor thing.

Even more later, Ian hears some whimpering, and finds the mailman's dog, not in much better shape than the cat.

He pulls out more of the rocks from the dog, and radios Max to get rid of the rock he gave to Jeanne, just to be safe.

Around this time, we keep getting shots through a flame watching Ian and others, and...look. We've seen the size of this thing, and I get they want to show them being watched, but how, ESPECIALLY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, do you NOT see the giant sun sitting 20 feet away??

Smooooke on the waaater, a fire...also on the water, really.

Following a tasteful sex scene, Ian drives Jeanne home, and has a strange encounter with what Ian theorises might be heat lightning. And honestly, that's a fair explanation at this point in the story.

Meanwhile, some random guy is off for a walk, and he takes a moment to have a rest on a rock. He lights a match on one of the spacerocks, and along comes the giant orb of fiery death to smoke him.

Someone really should have reminded him, he's supposed to strike match and get away.

Ian stops at the spot while driving by, picks up the rock. Which you would think he would stop doing with the track record these things have. Anyways, he brings it home, and it beeps at him. Look, if your rocks are beeping THAT IS A SIGN.

But he takes it back to the charred remains, and as he's about to get rid of it, he decides to smack it with something. This causes...I'm not sure what, but the baby Rock Lord cries out, and Ian is flung backwards, in pain.

The sheriff comes out to investigate, and they brush it off as lightning, because why is anyone gonna jump to alien space rocks, right?

Ian's scientist friend pays him a visit to talk about the rocks. Doctor Exposition tells us that apparently the rocks can think, and react differently to the same stimulus at different times.

Nugget calling Boulder! Come in Boulder! This is a Rock Lord emergency!!

After a fiery dream with freaky visuals, Ian wakes up and discovers two of his samples have signed their way out of the wooden drawer they were in, and have apparently rolled on out the door.

They brief the sheriff on what's going on, and how all these strange fire related incidents can't be brushed away, and they head off to talk to a woman who saw some strange lights.

Also, there's this line Ian has, "We're scientists, sheriff, with some standing in our profession. And doesn't it sound reasonable to you that we might know what the hell we're talking about?" Which is frighteningly relevant today.

Ian and Willy put the figurative pieces together, surmise that it must be a space rock, and the pieces have slowly been turning up over the years, with the core coming to retrieve them.

Let’s see what happens when we drop the red hot nickel ball into a lake of water!

He radios up Max to talk for a bit, while Jeanne is out on the lake. Unbeknownst to her, the fragment Max was supposed to dispose of is still on board, and the mothersun shows up to take her kids home.

Jeanne calls for help over the radio, and Max admits he kept the rock. He tells her where it is on the boat, so Jeanne can find it and get rid of it before the orb burns her alive.

She gets rid of it just in time, but she's still shaken up, got VERY close to the ball, and they take her to a hospital to make sure she's okay.

Ian's hippie friend that owned the cat shows up, and he's pretty smart for a hippie. He's figured out that the same thing that went after his cat went after Jeanne.

But he also has something to show the doc, as he claps his hands, and they begin to glow. Dude, the original Clapper!

He runs off when a ranger shows up to ask some questions about the boating accident. But Ian does some tests later, and shows that he and Willy both have residue from handling the stones, and can do the same trick. They determine it's a way for the mothersun to track her rocklets.

Meanwhile, Ian gathers up more samples, and there's this odd subplot with Wally and the ranger, that almost seems sinister, but really just comes off as unnecessary.

Willy takes the samples to try and lure the sunsphere and deal with it although how is a big question. His chosen method is...equally questionable.

…WHY WOULD YOU THINK SHOOTING AT THE SUN WOULD DO ANYTHING.

Ian takes his rocks out into the woods, sets them out, and lays in wait for momma to come get her kids.

Jeanne frustratingly follows him out into the night, calling out for him, and this is not gonna end well. She's already had one encounter, she should go back inside.

Oh yeah, Ian's plan...he brought out some dynamite, buried it under the circle of stones, and uses them as bait. Yes, that's right, he's going to BLOW UP THE SUN

Honestly, it's probably a better plan than shooting it, but only just.

Meanwhile, the town mob comes out, because what's a 70s monster movie without your local mob?? Didn't we already cover the efficacy of guns against this thing?? Also, this mob does nothing, we just see them walking off and then…zzzzilch.

Jean shows up, as does the giant sun, and the final sundown can begin. Which really amounts to the cheesy 1970s effect of the fireball being rolled across the screen, Ian running away, and things going boom.

And so we end on the hilarious note of "if only we could have learned more from it than that it destroys things." YOU ARE ONE TO TALK MISTER EXPLODEYPANTS.

I'd say everyone rides off into the sunset, but apparently they blewed that up!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Urgh, it doesn’t look that great. It’s washed out, blocky…could just be the version crammed onto the same disc a Octaman, but I wish they would come out with a cleaned up edition somewhere down the road.

Audio: It’s fine, but nothing great. It gets the job done.

Sound Bite: “When you spank them, they get mad!!”

Body Count: For a creature purported to seek to burn ‘all of humanity’ it sure makes a piss poor attempt at it.

1 - Native gets burned alive under two minutes in.
2 - Some poor fish we have to be informed of eating a meteor and dying.
3 - Postal worker gets roasted.
4 - Random guy gets creamted
5 - Wally dies trying to shoot the flames

Best Corpse: Postal worker made a nice pile of ash.

Blood Type - F: Only just barely not hitting rock bottom because there’s some blood on the rock bits taken from animal stomachs.

Sex Appeal: Nothing major, and the sex scene is tastefully done!

Drink Up! every time you see a flashlight not working.

Movie Review: I found myself rather enjoying this. It is, as you have heard me say many times, a very quaint little 70s movie. It has that old school charm. It’s a simple, basic story that gets the job done, with adequate acting. It would be on the Syfy channel today, in a heartbeat. It’s very 70s, but well made enough. It is what it is, and what I would expect if you told me the plot, and it was made in 72. Three out of five rock droplets.

Entertainment Value: Not much to really write home about. Nothing so bad it’s good. Nothing so good you ooh. The shining star is the fireball special effects. They just work, and look great for a 70s era contet. But not much to really roll with. Two out of five rolling space suns.