CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS (G)

You may know that son K enjoys watching ‘50s horror and sci-fi movies with us (dad started feeding him Godzilla at a steady clip starting around age seven). The other night we settled in to watch a movie tagged as one of Andy Warhol’s favorites, but many, many user reviews on Netflix complained of the movie’s endless talking. No action, they said, just talk, talk, talk.

I kept my mouth shut. Not only did K stick with it (it’s only 80 minutes long), but he loved Creation of the Humanoids, and was highly annoyed at the abrupt ending.

“Did they run out of film, or what?” he complained.

I really wasn’t going to write this one up, but I just changed my mind. I won’t go on about it in detail, but here’s what you need to know:

It is a talker. No real action. There are about six or seven scenes (K counted), and very little in set design (although husband D and I found it extremely beautiful in its simplicity).

There are zero special effects.

There is very little violence, no racy language or other small-kid offenders (it may just bore them to death).

It shares a certain aesthetic with Plan Nine From Outer Space.

The director may or may not have intended a subtext about equality and race. Or maybe about technology and fear. Or maybe intended no subtext at all.

It’s a bizarrely fascinating, Saturday-night-pass-the-popcorn kind of movie, and we had a lot of fun with it.

Here’s the 1962 trailer:



Note: on Netflix, it comes only as part of a “Drive-in Double Feature,” with War Between the Planets, for which I can't vouch, but husband D says: "It has some of the most amusingly amature sets ever captured on celluloid ... and it ends with a nice big explosion."

I'm not sure that's a recommendation.