Space Probe Taurus (1965)

OK, so who remembers late on a Friday night when your parents had handed over the remote control, retreated to bed and left you to watch the "Outer Limits"? Well, this is exactly the kind of film we would have watched - a sci-fi escapade very light on the science and very heavy on the fiction. This one also has a fair smattering of sexist behaviour and some ginormous, unidentifiable underwater beasties and some little green men from the planet Taurus. I say little green men - it's black and white so I am adding to the cinematic licence a bit - but you get the drift, as our intrepid space travellers set out to find traces of life on this planet gazillions of miles from Earth. Aside from one or two scenes at the end, very - very - little actually happens in this film. It develops a rather predictable romance to clutter up the cockpit and the acting led by James Brown ("Hank") and Francine York ("Lisa") is all very join-the-dots. It's the aquatic creatures that do it for me, though - the crew all look in abject bewilderment at these monstrous things that we, even after 3 bottles of Malbec and ten tequila shots could identify in an heartbeat - it is actually quite comical. No point watching this if you are looking for anything remotely cerebral - but for a bit of daft late night cinema, you could do a great deal worse.