The Doomsday Machine immediately brings to mind such films as Journey to the Seventh Planet, The Wizard of Mars, and Space Probe Taurus, in terms of the film's quality of execution and special effects. Having seen many a "bad" sci-fi film in my day, I recognized most of the SFX as coming from other movies (Gorath and Robinson Crusoe on Mars, predominately) or NASA launch/separation footage, and a lot of repetition of those as well. The only new effects seem to be the ending, and they don't fit in well with the rest of the picture (well, the end just doesn't fit at all, since it was made about six or seven years after the rest of the picture). The La-Z-Boy launch couches are pretty funny when you first see them, and I swear some of the equipment in the spaceship has been cannibalized from other movies I've seen.
The storyline is mildly interesting, but it just isn't followed through on properly, and things degrade to a somewhat barbaric level on the spaceship far too quickly (with Grant Williams' character going psycho speedily and with no real foreshadowing, at least for me, since my experience with Williams has been limited to basically just his Everyman character from The Incredible Shrinking Man).
I'm a fan of this genre and I enjoy the cheapie movies better than most of the big budget escapades, since its always enjoyable to try and determine the creators' rationale for what he's doing (and its always fun to riff along to the movie on my own). If you like film science fiction, rent this one if you can find it.
I remember seeing this one as a Sinister Cinema offering back in the late eighties/early nineties, but never got around to getting it. The copy I watched is in the Nightmare Worlds collection from Mill Creek Entertainment (along with a mess of other good/bad movies from around the same time period), making it a fairly good purchase for the price (less than $20 on eBay).
The storyline is mildly interesting, but it just isn't followed through on properly, and things degrade to a somewhat barbaric level on the spaceship far too quickly (with Grant Williams' character going psycho speedily and with no real foreshadowing, at least for me, since my experience with Williams has been limited to basically just his Everyman character from The Incredible Shrinking Man).
I'm a fan of this genre and I enjoy the cheapie movies better than most of the big budget escapades, since its always enjoyable to try and determine the creators' rationale for what he's doing (and its always fun to riff along to the movie on my own). If you like film science fiction, rent this one if you can find it.
I remember seeing this one as a Sinister Cinema offering back in the late eighties/early nineties, but never got around to getting it. The copy I watched is in the Nightmare Worlds collection from Mill Creek Entertainment (along with a mess of other good/bad movies from around the same time period), making it a fairly good purchase for the price (less than $20 on eBay).