Overview: A runaway asteroid dubbed The Outsider mysteriously begins orbiting the Earth and threatens it with lethal flying saucers.

A runaway asteroid dubbed The Outsider mysteriously begins orbiting the Earth and threatens it with lethal flying saucers.

Directed by Amtonio Margheriti and starring Claude Rains, Bill Carter, Umberto Orsini, Maya Brent, Jaqueline Derval, Renzo Palmer it was filmed in Italy at the height of Italy’s sci-fi craze. Cinematography by Marcello Masciocchi.

Best watched late at night!

Blu-ray Verdict: In all honesty, to judge this film on its special effects techniques is just a silly waste of time, considering it is from 1961 and its special effects are not very different from what was coming out of Japan or the UK at the time.

The SPFX weren’t even much further away from what Hollywood was doing in 1961 too. I was a little bit concerned with director Antonio Margheriti (Anthony Dawson in the credits) and his choice to go with a strange orange hue over all the effects, but it didn’t make much of a difference.

The titular hero in the film and token Hollywood star-hire is Claude Rains, who plays a cranky and sometimes rude scientist, who predicts possible world devastation by an astronomical space object called the Visitor. Rains’ performance is an over-acting dream, to the point that he sounded a little senile! (He was 72 at the time).

The other acting is pretty bad, but you need to remember that this is an Italian produced film and Rains was going off the reactions of a cast that was speaking Italian or a form of broken English in order to deliver his lines back.

I am pretty sure I heard some of the same voice-over actors that are in Speed Racer or some of the old Godzilla movies. There are some moments of comedy that help things along the way and I particularly enjoyed all the cigarette lighter/matches jokes!

It is true this film still suffers from its low budget dilemmas although Anthony Dawson is still considered a legendary and cult favorite director from a long distant past in Italian film-history. Indeed, his stylish signature, warm approach to his directing and editing is very evident in this film.

The problem is the dialogue, acting and script that tries its utmost throughout to tear at the very foundation of the film, but luckily for us fans of this genre, it doesn’t wholly succeed.

For in just one of the scenes I could choose right now, where a character is descending deep into the bowels of the runaway planet, it actually does look like bowels! Glowing red and filled with plastic tubing, this was a major triumph of low-budget ingenuity from the Godfather of Spaghetti sci-fi thanks to his resourcefulness as a special effects wizard, working miracles out of a few toilet rolls and a vacuum hose!

Oh, and amidst the relentlessly talky script and the pointless romantic interludes, there’s a strange, almost quasi-revolutionary thread against the military industrial complex, but that’s the crazy Italians for you! This is a Full Screen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the special features of:

Presented from a 4K scan from an original 35mm archival print
All new original featurette production, A Cinematic Outsider: The Fantastical Worlds of Antonio Margheriti, from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures
Full length commentary track by author/film historian, Justin Humphreys
Original Essay by author, Don Stradley: Margheriti’s World
Special insert with a surprise for Film Detective fans!