The Terrornauts * (1967, Simon Oates, Zena Marshall, Charles Hawtrey, Patricia Hayes, Stanley Meadows, Max Adrian) – Classic Movie Review 4408

Director Montgomery Tully’s insipid 1967 science fiction film The Terrornauts for Amicus Productions was released with They Came from Beyond Space in a flop double bill famously comprising ‘the two worst films the company ever produced’.

Zena Marshall stars as Sandy Lund, a secretary fighting alien enemies, in her last feature, though she lived till July 10 2009, passing away at the age of 84. Carry On star Charles Hawtrey is weirdly cast as an accountant called Joshua Yellowlees. Simon Oates, Patricia Hayes, Stanley Meadows and Max Adrian also head the interestingly eccentric cast.

Zena Marshall, seduced by 007.

The film is adapted for screen by John Brunner, based on The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster, in which scientists from a radio telescope laboratory are kidnapped and taken into space aboard a saucer inhabited by robots, who presents them with a series of intelligence tests.

Whatever the film’s shortcomings, there is nothing wrong with the title or advertising – ‘The virgin sacrifices to the gods of a ghastly galaxy!’ However, there is nothing at all wrong with the book’s original title The Wailing Asteroid, so why did they bother to change it?

The Terrornauts was shot at Twickenham Film Studios, Middlesex, UK.

The main cast are Simon Oates as Dr Joe Burke, Zena Marshall as Sandy Lund, Charles Hawtrey as Joshua Yellowlees, Patricia Hayes as Mrs Jones, Stanley Meadows as Ben Keller, Max Adrian as Dr Henry Shore, Frank Barry as Burke as a child, Richard Carpenter as Danny, Leonard Cracknell as Nick, André Maranne as Gendarme, Frank Forsyth as Uncle and Robert Jewell as Robot Operator.

Producer Milton Subotsky (September 27, 1921 – June 27, 1991).

The Terrornauts is written by John Brunner, shot in Eastmancolor by Geoffrey Faithfull, produced by Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, and scored by Elisabeth Lutyens. It runs 75 minutes. It is shot as Twickenham Film Studios, Middlesex, England.

After The Terrornauts, Zena Marshall retired for a domestic life with her third husband, writer-producer Ivan Foxwell. Her claim to posterity rests on her role as Eurasian double agent Miss Taro in the first Bond film Dr No (1962) when her character was the first woman to be seduced by Sean Connery’s 007. She also appeared in Sleeping Car to Trieste, The Bad Lord Byron, So Long at the Fair, Backfire! and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) as the Countess Ponticelli. Her film career began with a small uncredited role in Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4408

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