Night Caller from Outer Space (1965)

Night Caller from Outer Space (UK, 1965) DIR: John Gilling. SCR: Jim O’Connolly, adapted from the novel by Frank Crisp. PROD: Ronald Liles. DOP: Stephen Dade. MUSIC: John Gregory. CAST: John Saxon, Maurice Denham, Patricia Haines, Alfred Burke, Warren Mitchell, Aubrey Morris. (Butcher’s Film Service)

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An alien intelligence from the Jupiter moon of Ganymede has the sophistication to travel to Earth by way of a compact little sphere, out of which it can step into life-sized humanoid form. And for all that, what is the extra-terrestrial left to do, except kidnap human females by running an ad in Bikini Girl magazine? 

Your mileage may vary, but this daft sci-fi effort feels like two movies put together. At first it is a serviceable, rather engaging procedural in which a group of scientists, Dr. Jack Constain (John Saxon), Dr. Morley (Maurice Denham), and Ann Barlow (Patricia Haines), investigate the meteorite crash in which the above-mentioned sphere is found. With the help of the military, the sphere is brought to a heavily-guarded lab complex. One night, Ann discovers that a scaly monster appears from the sphere. Dr. Morley attempts to communicate with the monster, but is killed for his trouble, and the beast escapes.

The second half of the film chronicles Constain’s attempts to capture the creature, and still keep it alive if possible, for further research. Once it is discovered that missing young women had all answered a modelling ad in the back of one Bikini Girl magazine, Ann, already seen as impervious to Constain’s weary pickup lines, takes one for the team, and applies to the ad, in an attempt for them to capture the monster that can also pass enough in human form to keep up the ruse. There is an interesting dynamic when Ann meets the “creature running the ad”, and is immediately told that she doesn’t look like someone applying for a modelling job. As with Jim O’Connolly’s other horror efforts (Berserk; Tower of Evil), this too has an underlying potential could have been better realized. Granted, the fault may also lie with its source material, but the last hour is comparatively weak, and murkily unresolved (save for an interesting scene with the parents of one missing girl, that appears ad-libbed), leading to a shrug of a climax.

It is rare to see an American actor in a British fantasy film, a decade after appearances by Brian Donlevy (the Quatermass films), Forrest Tucker (The Crawling Eye; The Cosmic Monsters) and Dean Jagger (X The Unknown), perhaps to give it some more international appeal. John Saxon treats the material with the same seriousness as his co-stars, lending the material some dignity. Though given the scenario, one feels it could have benefitted from some humour. The North American version at least has hints of that, as the opening credits feature a poppy lounge number called “The Night Caller” (also the film’s actual onscreen title in the copy I watched), sung by Mark Richardson. TRIVIA NOTE: this little ditty was written by Albert Hague, who began as a songwriter, before playing the lovable Mr. Shorofsky in the Fame TV Series. 

My copy for view was the Image Entertainment VHS, which surprisingly, for a late tape issue, shows the movie in a 4×3 ratio, thereby cropping a lot of the original widescreen presentation. Still, Stephen Dade’s crisp black-and-white photography adds a lot of mood. Director John Gilling would do more satisfying work in the genre, with the Hammer double-bill: The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile.