Military brass are scrambling. UFOs have been spotted and filmed over the United States. Lt. Robertson (Warren Hammack) is assigned to investigate the area the ship is expected to land. In a nearby small town two drifters are in a café discussing their prospects of finding some ready cash. Mike Lawrence (Chet Davis) and Carl Fenton (Bill Peck) are not having much luck. Mike decides to go to bed while Mike wants to ride around and see if he can find any money making possibilities. What Mike sees is a UFO.
At the same time one of the local teenagers also sees the craft. He tells a couple of his friends and the waitress at the café. One of his friends is Stan Kenyon (John Ashley). At another table, Lt. Robertson hears about the sighting. Robertson reports the incident back to his superiors. They determine that the ship landed near the property of old man Bailey (Ethan Allen). Bailey’s property is frequently used as a lovers’ lane by the local teenagers. They find the UFO and cordon off the area. They blow up the UFO. What they don’t know is that the aliens are not in the craft but are wandering around.
In another area Stan and his girlfriend Susan Rogers (Cynthia Hull) are two of the teens making out at the lovers’ lane. As they leave they run over one of the aliens. While they are trying to get the cops to believe they hit an alien Mike comes by and decides to take the alien home. Unfortunately there are more of them than there are of him. He gets attacked and ends up dead. The aliens take their friend and leave Mike behind. When the cops finally get there they think Stan ran over Mike and arrest him.
Mike and Susan escape the police when they leave them alone in a room with a back door. They enlist Mike’s roommate Carl to find evidence that the aliens exist. What they end up doing is finding themselves surrounded by aliens in a car that won’t start.
“The Eye Creatures” AKA “Attack of the Eye Creatures” was released in 1965 and was directed by Larry Buchanan. It is a made for TV science fiction/comedy movie. The movie is based on the short story “The Cosmic Frame” by Paul W. Fairman and is a color re-make of the American International Pictures film “Invasion of the Saucer Men” 1957. It is one of a series of films that Buchanan was hired to re-make for television.
AIP was one of the last film companies to create their own television production company. American International Television or AIP-TV released many of their films to television stations as well as creating some of their own television pilots. They also had some of their own films remade in color for their television production company that they sold for syndication.
As far as aliens go the creatures look a lot liked badly chewed bubblegum. But the lame looking aliens were not the real problem with the film.
I’ve tried to figure out what makes a Larry Buchanan movie so boring. There have been several movies that were adorably campy and silly that, when Buchanan gets his hands on them, turn to crap. I think it’s a combination of things. Buchanan’s flat directing combined with both bad acting and over acting have a mind numbing effect rendering the watcher comatose. To make the film worse Buchanan added two stupid army guys who did nothing but spend their time as peeping toms watching a bunch of thirty something teenagers neck. Although Cynthia Hull was about eighteen at the time John Ashley was thirty-one.
There was only one part of the film that I found interesting. When Stan, Susan and Carl are surrounded by eye creatures the accompanying music score was actually decent and made the scene actually a little on the scary side.
At one point the studio decided to rename the film “Attack of the Eye Creatures”. The title card was reshot adding in the “Attack of the”. Unfortunately the film title “The Eye Creatures” was still on the title card so the superimposed “Attack of the” ended up adding an additional “the” to the film’s title. The result was the title of the film reading as “Attack of the The Eye Creatures”.