Video monsters from gardens, goo and gunk

Bill Knight column for 4-4, 5 or 6, 2019

With Spring, some anticipate potatoes and lettuce or hostas and lilies, and daydream. Others, waiting on warm temperatures, will stay inside and watch videos, fertilizing their imaginations.

You can do both: “Fungus and flowers and weeds, oh my!”

Floras of all types have been used as cinematic devices for decades, and screening some of the “gardening” goofiness and other gooiness can be a romp for still-chilly couch potatoes.

Hollywood’s loved this sort of compost. In 1957, there was “From Hell it Came,” where a monster looks like a walking tree stump. In 1966, “The Navy vs. The Night Monsters” had Mamie Van Doren, Billy Gray and others fighting homicidal trees from the Ice Age. And in 1983, there was “The Bog,” a whacky tale starring actors who apparently needed to make house payments: Aldo Ray, Gloria De Haven and Marshall Thompson.

For now, consider the following garden-variety horror/sci-fi movies – “The Dirt Dozen”:

“Attack of The Killer Tomatoes” (1980). Filmmaker John DeBello created a cult classic with this hilarious comedy, which had three sequels. This stars John Astin.

“Day of The Triffids” (1963). Howard Keel stars in this British science-fiction film about a blinding meteor shower that also brings alien plants that get big, mobile and hungry. Helpless humans become plant food. Keel helps survivors with undamaged vision battle “seven-foot-high galloping broccoli” that spit poison.

“Flowers for The Man in The Moon” (1975). Imported from East Germany, this sci-fi flick is charming as a socialist fable, a children’s story or another botanical adventure. Someone wants to transplant flowers to the Moon, where colonists could enjoy their appearance and fragrance. A biologist (Professor Vitamin!) helps and finally achieves something that can endure the Moon’s environment.

“Fungus of Terror” (1963). Described as “Gilligan’s Island meets Alice in Wonderland meets the Fruit of The Loom gang,” this follows shipwrecked sailors marooned with nothing to eat except radioactive mushrooms. They succumb to hunger, munch the mutant fungi – and mutate.

“Green Slime” (1969). So bad, it’s comical, this follows a space mission destroying an asteroid heading toward Earth but picking up a mysterious alien goo, too. The slimy gunk becomes yucky creatures like one-eyed serpents genetically altered with asparagus. Robert Horton and Richard Jaeckel star.

“Invasion of The Body Snatchers” (1978). Unlike Don Siegel’s fine 1956 version, Phillip Kaufman’s quasi-sequel stresses the plant-like spores from space and (Knox College alum) Jack Finney’s original novel’s notion that modern life makes it almost impossible to distinguish between people numbed by work or other pressures, and Earthlings controlled by aliens. “People are changing. They’re becoming less human,” comments a psychiatrist (Leonard Nimoy, who stars with Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum and Brooke Adams).

“Little Shop of Horrors” (1960). Filmmaker Roger Corman’s low-budget quickie (filmed in two days) focuses on a meek florist who accidentally creates a huge, sentient plant that likes blood and eats meat. And people. Corman’s cult gem features a memorable supporting bit from a young Jack Nicholson. It’s silly and funny (unlike 1986’s all-star film of the stage-musical version).

“Mutiny in Outer Space” (1958). Security agents investigate a space probe that’s returned to Earth covered in fungus in this hybrid of “Invasion of The Body Snatchers” and “The Quatermass Xperiment.” The fungus takes over a scientist, then threatens his fiancé, and it’s a nice, mindless escape (noteworthy for the Three Stooges’ Moe Howard in his first solo screen appearance).

“On Deadly Ground” (1994). Steven Seagal stars as an oil-rig troubleshooter in this environmental action-thriller about a tycoon (Michael Caine) scheming to sacrifice Alaska’s ecology for oil. Seagal fights Caine and his goons, stopping petroleum production-at-all-costs.

“Soylent Green” (1973). Edward G. Robinson’s final film, this is decent despite a dull turn by Charlton Heston as the hero. Winner of 1973’s Nebula Award for best science-fiction film, it’s set in 2022, when Earth is so polluted and overcrowded that people rely on wafers made by the planet’s only food company (plus assisted suicides). Robinson is good, and actors Joseph Cotton, Brock Peters and Chuck Connors aren’t bad.

“The Stuff” (1985). Michael Moriarty stars in this horror yarn spoofing marketing and fast food, and the cast salvages the odd premise: A white goo is discovered near a refinery and eventually promoted as a dessert. The glitch: It devours its diners (like “Alien”). Paul Sorvino, Danny Aiello and Garrett Morris co-star.

“Swamp Thing” (1982). Wes Craven’s version of the comic character who’s part plant and part man is fun. Unlike Howard Hawks “The Thing” (where James Arness’ monster was a mobile plant with little self-awareness), Ray Wise’s ST is a scientist with his mental faculties locked within a collection of weeds, moss and other ecological material. (Think: Miracle-Gro Hulk.) Adrienne Barbeau and Louis Jordan co-star.