The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966)

What a beautiful movie!

good back-story, and good acting

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This science fiction/horror film doesn't even rate a high mark on a camp scale. It is truly one of the most boring attempts to give some unintentional laughs with acting that isn't even funny bad, just simply bad. If you thought Bobby Van was over the top singing and dancing in strange Llamasary clothing in "Lost Horizon", see him here as he faces a tree monster which only comes out in the dark so the photographers don't have to worry about the audience really not being scared. How can you be scared when you can't see it? At least the producers of "From Hell it Came" (with an ancient curse turning a murdered Amazonian prince into a tree with a skeleton dagger stuck in what used to be a human heart) allowed the creature to do its evil during the day, and that one is a 10 on the camp scale, even if a 2-3 on a film rating scale.Mamie Van Doren doesn't so much act badly as pretty much non-act, never even managing to crack a smile as a nurse with nil a personality. The premise isn't bad, in fact, it's rather intelligent, but for very little which comes out of it, that drops the rating way, way down. It appears that explorers of Antarctica have found frozen cactus under the Southern ice and decide to bring them back along with some poor penguins which either get eaten or dissolved by these tree monsters that ooze acidic liquid off their bark. A poor dog, barking at the bark (or the crawling little spider like critter that looks like something the tree poop'd, gets turned into tree chow, while brave men scream like little girls when they see whatever is approaching them approach. This has a handsome likable hero in Anthony Eisley who has absolutely a zero chemistry quotient with Ms. Van Doren. So if you would like something to put you right to sleep, watch this one. After 30 minutes of some interesting science fiction documentary of what supposedly lives under the cape of the South Pole, there's still another 20 minutes until a full visual of these darkly lit acidic shrubberies.

If you thought those walking trees in The Day Of The Triffids were highly cheesy and camp wait till you see The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters. Next to these the Triffids could have been created by the Bard himself.On a South Pacific island the scientists who inhabit it are expecting an arrival of colleagues from Antarctica with plant and animal specimens. The plane arrives with a crazed pilot at the wheel and its human cargo apparently jumped from the plane because the cargo door is wide open.What they've brought from the bottom of the world are some omnivorous plants who now in a more tropical climate are thriving eating all kinds of life in their path. They secrete some nasty acid that makes its food melt down and more digestible.This whole cast looked like they took this assignment for the tropical vacation. The dialog is spoken with all the force of a noodle in the wind. No one could work up any enthusiasm. Such enthusiasm a you might be stimulated to have will come from Mamie Van Doren whose weapons of mass destruction just bounce all over the screen. I reckon she was the reason people paid money to see The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters.In that the ticket buyers were not disappointed.

The only thing that would have made this movie a lot better would have been a nude shower scene with Mamie. The real night monsters of this film are the ones under Mamie's blouse. And those really are monsters! But seriously, this movie is not half bad once you get past the idiot plot. The cast, such as it is, is worth a look-see in spite of the plot and terrible dialog. The romantic triangle subplot is a mere throwaway and the monsters look like people and midgets camouflaged and moving like the walking carpet in THE CREEPING TERROR. But this movie is a lot more entertaining than that film. For a drive in type horror movie, it's okay as they go, but almost entirely predictable and you can even play the "okay who's the next celebrity cameo who is going to get devoured by these fugitives from a greenhouse.

The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters is basically The Thing From Another World Meets Day of the Triffids. If you like either of those movies, you might like this one...or you might hate it even more for stealing plot elements from both those movies and executing them badly. A plane carrying a load of specimens from the Antarctic crashed on a South Seas naval base and a horde of long-dormant killer plants is released.My biggest complaint is that this movie would have been better in black and white. The monsters are basically a dark black color anyway, and a lack of color has never hidden Mamie Van Doren's...umm...charms...before. I think black and white would have improved whatever atmospheric quality the director was reaching for as well. The way it stands, the film reminds me of something Sid Pink directed.The movie has all the standard and rather-cliched characters you would normally find in a 1950's monster movie. Unfortunately, this film was made in 1966. No explanation or reasoning is ever given for the homicidal and suicidal fits that the pilot is prone to...he spends most of the movie laying in a hospital bed or choking people.