This is one of those movies that’s difficult for me. On the one hand, it’s mind-numbingly boring. It’s a poorly made movie in pretty much every way the quality of a movie can be judged. On the other hand, it’s a movie that’s terrible in a way that makes for pleasant background noise, like a song you would never buy but can deal with when it comes on the radio (radios are what we listened to before mp3 players). Movies like this existed primarily to give couples something to make out during at the drive-in, and judged by that criteria, well, The Incredible Petrified World is definitely a movie during which you’d rather do something else besides watch it. Whether that’s necking with your sweetheart or cleaning the toilet, there’s nothing wrong with having The Incredible Petrified World playing in the background.

Larry Buchanan is no stranger here at Teleport City. Not too many years ago, the B-Masters Cabal dedicated a round table theme to the film maker, celebrating his ability to take a small budget and amateur actors and turn them into a movie that looks like it had an even smaller budget and actors who were even worse than amateurs. The reason we know him, for the most part, is because in the 1960s, American International Pictures needed some quick and dirty filler for some open broadcast television slots. They hired Larry Buchanan to crank out a bunch of color remakes of famous old AIP movies. Thus we get movies like Zontar, The Thing from Venus, a remake of AIP’s earlier It Conquered the World.

It’s obvious that while director BJ Davis is a director of limited skill, he knows exactly how to make a low-budget 80′s action movie. Every single thing you need in the movie is present, and if it’s not expertly realized, it’s usually at least delivered in a competently incompetent manner — a statement that will make perfect sense to anyone who watches a lot of these movies. A movie like Laser Mission can really only disappoint me by not delivering on the predictable formula to which it cleaves. That happens a lot with low-budget action movies, but not with Laser Mission. It may not deliver on the promised lasers of the title, but it delivers exactly what you’d want from a cheap, goofy 80s action movie.

I don’t like anthology films. I don’t know exactly why, but even the supposedly good ones don’t really click with me. Too often, it seems like they either rush through everything in sloppy fashion in order to fit it in a fifteen minute run-time, or they’re fifteen minute segments that still manage to feel like nothing but padding. All too often, it’s because the premise is so basic, the route so obvious, that even taking a small amount of time to get to the glaringly predictable conclusion of each segment is excruciating. Thus, a no-budget regional stab at making an Amicus-style horror anthology has that mark against it already. I really don’t like the actual Amicus horror anthologies; a no budget mimic? Hmmm.

That said, I think my disclaimer is only mildly warranted, as The Devil’s Partner is a much more successful little film than dismissing it as “a beneficiary of nostalgia” would lead you to believe. I really do like this film, whatever faults it may have. It operates well within its limitations, executes formula competently, and has a few surprises to throw in to keep it from being completely formulaic. It’s greatest strength is that it makes you really feel the heat and claustrophobic atmosphere of this doomed town, a sense of mood that is driven home by Ronald Stein’s eerie theremin-driven score. It may not have a naked woman on a centaur, but what it does offer was well worth watching.

In the hands of someone who knew what the hell they were doing, Manos would never have achieved the air of total strangeness that makes it such an entrancing work of…art? Sure, why not? The out-of-focus camera work, the terrible editing, the silent scenes of people standing around waiting for their queues…these things never would have happened with a real editor on the crew, and Manos would have been worse off because of it. It would have been merely terrible. But Hal Warren, bless him, had no clue what the hell he was doing, and by lucky happenstance, his incompetence elevates Manos to a transcendental plane of existence. It is the sort of out-of-its-mind experience that we jaded filmgoers spend years looking for, and like the mole, when we finally see it, we are blinded by its brilliance.

Pretty much the only reason this movie went into production was that someone noticed that had a lot of stuff laying around that was used on Brescia’s previous War of the Planets and figured they might as well squeeze another movie or two out of it. And if they were doing that, they might as well hire the same basic cast, since they already fit into their costumes as well as anyone can fit into a pleather jumper. And since some of that model work of space ships and stations was so good the last time around, we might as well get some more mileage out of that. Maybe later we can use it all yet again in, oh, I don’t know, an Alfonso Brescia directed space porno or something.