Monday, February 3, 2014

THE DAY IT CAME TO EARTH / Rainbow Productions - 1979

Welcome to Meteor Monster Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Here's a little story about a meteor that falls into a pond where Mafia hitmen have dumped the body of one of their victims, then, students from the local college go swimming there and find the object from space, which has weird, unearthly powers. That poster is pathetic!

Eegah!! sent over a soundclip with the rockin' theme from this flick, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there next to our big old glowing meteor, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... THE DAY IT CAME TO EARTH!

After the mafia dudes throw the dead guy into a secluded pond, a meteor falls out of the sky and into the pool a few weeks later. It activates the corpse, which then lumbers out of the pond and into town, where it locates the two murderers and returns the favor in spades! (they were playing cards) The police are totally baffled at the crime scene.

Here's a guy Eegah!! and I grew up with on TV, George Gobel, who plays science teacher, Prof. Bartholomew. George had his own show in 1956 and could be seen on a number of other programs including WAGON TRAIN, CANDID CAMERA, THE BING CROSBY SHOW, F TROOP, THE BOB HOPE SHOW, ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH IN, THE RED SKELTON HOUR and more.

Eddie and Ronnie are trying to impress Sally (the blonde) and Debbie at school! It works and the girls agree to go with them to the local pond to go skinny... err, swimming. Debbie's played by the beautiful Rita Wilson.

The animated corpse is awakened by Sally as she swims near the thing and it grabs at her! It only leaves the pool at night.

Eddie finds some strange crystals near where the meteor landed, so, the boys go to Prof. Bartholomew to show him what they found. The professor is very interested, they go back to the pool, locate the meteor and take it back to the school.

Cool shot as Prof. Bartholomew checks out the crystal structure under a microscope! Later that night, the corpse breaks into the lab and takes the meteor back to the pond for safe keeping.

Eddie made Sally a necklace out of one small crystal, they have an encounter with the thing because it's attracted to the rock.

Of all things, a few girls from school, including Sally and Debbie, decide to have a slumber party at a creepy old house in the country!! The boys sneak into the place to scare them, but, the tables are turned when the meteor monster shows up! Everyone scrambles out of the house, including the cops, at the sight of the gruesome thing.

If you ever wondered what a tear gas cartridge from 1979 looks like, well, here ya go!

Another meteor comes to Earth, but, it's too late for the thing as it holds onto Sally's necklace while a fire in the theater burns it to a crisp!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You missed an interesting trivia fact about THE DAY IT CAME TO EARTH. It was the debut of Tom Hanks actress wife, Rita Wilson as "Debbie." I think that's her (brunette) next to the "blonde" in one of your pictures. I believe she was on David Letterman in the past year or two and they showed a clip of DAY and she talked about working with George Gobel. Though according to IMDB, she had appeared in a bit part in SPINOUT (1966) with Elvis and followed DAY with CHEECH AND CHONGS NEXT MOVIE (1980)
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TABONGA! said...

Thank you for added info on this film, it's always appreciated..

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