Lou Jacoby (Ed Love) is a gangster. He is shot by some fellow gangsters and his body is dumped into nearby Miller’s Lake. The police know that Lou was killed but they haven’t been able to find his body. An unusual meteorite falls into the lake. The unusual properties in the rock reanimate the dead gangster. The first thing zombie Jacoby (Ed Love) does is return to town and take revenge on the goons who killed him. He then returns to the lake. Lt. Kelly (Robert Ginnaven) is assigned to investigate the slaughter of the goons. The only clue is some slime found near the bodies.
The next day four college students, Eddie Newton (Wink Roberts), Ronnie McGuire (Roger Manning), Sally Baxter (Delight De Bruine) and Debbie (Rita Wilson), take a trip to Miller’s lake. They spend the day swimming and having a picnic. Eddie finds several pieces of the meteorite on the shoreline. They notice that the stones are unusual. Eddie and Ronnie decide to take a piece to Professor Bartholomew (George Gobel), one of their college teachers, for his opinion.
Bartholomew is intrigued by the find and has the boys take him to where they found the rock. Searching the shallows of the lake the boys find the mother-stone of the meteorite. Bartholomew then has the boys bring the rock back to campus so he can examine it.
That night, wanting his meteorite back, the zombified Jacoby leaves his lake and breaks into the classroom where Professor Bartholomew has the rock. A security guard tries to stop him, but the bullets have no effect. Lt. Kelly finds the same strange slime in the professor’s classroom. The zombie is determined to be a geological gaseous goon. It is dubbed a Ge-Ga-Goo.
Eddie has a necklace made for Sally out of a piece of the meteorite. The Jacoby zombie gegagoo is obsessed with getting back the meteorite necklace. Rising out of his watery home he ventures into town looking for it.
“The Day It Came To Earth” was released in 1977 and was directed by Harry Thomason. It is an American science fiction horror film and a satire.
There’s a lot of camp but whether or not it’s intentional is up for debate. I’m not sure if enough people saw this film to give it a cult following. It has some cheezy over-the-top acting but a really interesting music score. It also appears to be a homage to fifties style movies. It does check a lot of the boxes, zombie, meteorite, haunted house, teenagers necking. The zombie mobster is actually pretty good but the meteorite hurtling towards the Earth was bad.
The idea is good. It’s reminiscent of “Night of the Living Dead” 1968 and it takes place in the 50’s like “The Blob” 1958. Unfortunately, they went a little overboard with the camp. In particular Wink Roberts, who plays Eddie Newton, goes too far with the comic frat boy character. The movie is not great, or all that memorable but as a “B” camp movie it’s good enough.
It is the theatrical debut of Rita Wilson.