Institute History
Description
Self-described as “the only comedy that combines seafood and science fiction” (go figure), Lobster Man from Mars is a rousing, accomplished send-up of 1950s sci-fi films, populated with cheap, tinny monsters, brave men, innocent women and eccentric scientists. It’s actually a film-within-a-film, beginning when a studio mogul (Tony Curtis), in need of a tax write-off, gives a break to a seventeen-year-old wunderkind filmmaker.
This boy genius comes up with a film opus that’s unique, to say the very least. Mars, the angry red planet, is running out of air and sends the dreaded Lobster Man to steal Earth’s atmosphere. A young couple discover the creature’s crashed spaceship, and are pursued by the monster to the safety of their eccentric uncle, Professor Plocostomos.
The monster, by now, has left a trail of smoking human skeletons in his wake. But the Professor devises a scheme to have him boiled alive in a hot spring. Typically the plan goes awry with the bumbling help of the U.S. Army, but a wild climax ensues in Yellowstone National Park. Lobster Man from Mars is a harder film to pull off than one might think, succeeding where other attempts have fallen into sophomoric humor. It is, in fact, a polished, wacky satire, mocking all the marks of its silly genre with keen efficiency and loving wit.