The Doomsday Machine - 1972
By The Bottom Reel Editorial Team ·
The Doomsday Machine (1972) – The Two Movies In One That Became A Cult Disaster
“DEATH IN SPACE” up top and “FILMED IN NEW HORRORSCOPE” across the rocket exhaust. That gimmick was fake widescreen – there was no “Horrorscope.”
Doomsday Machine, also sold as Escape from Planet Earth, is not one unfinished movie. It’s two unfinished movies cut together 5 years apart to make one releasable 83-minute feature.
The Two Movies in One
Movie 1: The 1967 Core – Armageddon 1975 / Doomsday Plus Seven
Production began in 1967 under Herbert J. Leder's direction under the titles Armageddon 1975 and Doomsday Plus Seven. Production stopped on the film before it was completed, presumably due to funding problems, and the unfinished footage lay in storage for several years.
Shot with real stars, real sets, and clear bubble-helmet spacesuits:
Project Astra, a 2-year US mission to Venus, is about to launch.
The story was a serious Cold War space ark film.
Cast: Grant Williams, Mala Powers, Ruta Lee, Denny Miller, Henry Wilcoxon, James Craig, Bobby Van
Look: 1967 bouffants, proper studio lighting
Movie 2: The 1972 Completion – The Spy Film + The Soviet Ship
Production resumed in 1972, though without benefit of access to the original cast members, costumes or sets. Producer Harry Hope and director Lee Sholem finished it.
What they added:
The entire Chinese spy prologue – a woman sneaks into a lab, murders guards with her pigtails, and tells men in yacht-sail ties “Only Chairman Mao has the key.” You never see these characters again. It was lifted from another unidentified movie to justify the new title Doomsday Machine.
Stock footage library – The film relies extensively on stock footage, including real but badly degraded NASA rocket footage, special effects shots from David L. Hewitt's The Wizard of Mars (1965) and Gorath (1962) and other disparate sources, leading to numerous continuity errors. Among such mistakes is the external appearance of the Astra, which inexplicably changes throughout the film.
The final 20-minute Soviet ship ending – The protracted last segment – with an American and Russian astronaut boarding a derelict Soviet spacecraft – was obviously shot after the unfinished principal photography without the participation of the original actors. After this point, the characters stay in their spacesuits, which look different from those shown in the immediately preceding scenes, and their helmets are now opaque, concealing the doubles' faces.
The characters do speak but now with different voices. The slow, repetitive pacing suggests an effort to pad the film's running time out in order to reach a desired length.
Tagline
On your poster: “FILMED IN NEW HORRORSCOPE”
Top banner: "DEATH IN SPACE”
Sales tagline: “Spies discover that the Red Chinese have built a ‘doomsday machine’ capable of destroying the surface of the Earth, and that they plan to use it within a matter of days.”
Plot
A spy discovers that the Chinese government has created a doomsday device capable of destroying the Earth and it will be activated in 72 hours. Soon after, Astra – a two-year return mission to Venus by the United States Space Program – has its time of launch speeded up and half of the male flight crew are replaced by women shortly before take-off, including one Russian.
After leaving Earth, the seven crew members of Astra deduce that they have been put together to restart the human race should the Chinese activate their device. Shortly after this, the device goes off and Earth is destroyed.
As Astra continues to Venus, the crew discovers that a safe landing on Venus is impossible unless the crew is reduced to three. Going mad, Mason tries to rape Carlson, at which point she accidentally gets them both blown out of an airlock.
Two more crew-members—Danny and Major Bronski—are lost as they head out to repair a fault with the spaceship. However, they notice another spacecraft nearby and jump to it. The second craft prove to be a lost Soviet ship that disappeared piloted by a close friend of the Russian crew member. Though its pilot is dead, Danny and Bronski successfully power up the Soviet ship. Before the two ships can rendezvous, contact with Astra is lost.
A Venusian collective voice tells them humanity will never be allowed to reach Venus, and the film ends on a psychedelic light show “beyond the rim of the universe.”
Cast
Denny Miller, Ruta Lee, Grant Williams, Mala Powers, Henry Wilcoxon, Bobby Van – as billed on poster
Danny – Bobby Van
Dr. Marion Turner – Ruta Lee
Maj. Georgianna Bronski – Mala Powers
Maj. Kurt Mason – Grant Williams
Dr. Christopher Perry – Henry Wilcoxon
Dr. Haines – James Craig
Girl Spy – Essie Lin Chia
Mission Control Officer – Casey Kasem
Lt. Katie Carlson – Lorri Scott
Col. Don Price – Denny Miller
Directed by Herbert J. Leder / Lee Sholem / Harry Hope. Produced by Harry Hope. Written by Stuart J. Byrne.
Cinematography by Stanley Cortez.
Distributed by Cine-Find. 83 minutes, 1972.
Social Impact & Reception
No social impact on release – it barely had a theatrical release. It became a favorite for buffs of bad cinema precisely because of its sloppy production standards.
Modern assessments:
IMDb: 1 hour and 23 minutes, with a score of 2.4/10 from 761 brave souls.
MST3K community: “The Doomsday Machine marks a MST3K Season 4 level challenge. At one-point, Frank Conniff states exasperatedly that this experience is like ‘watching someone else watching Manos: The Hands of Fate’.”
It was later riffed by the original MST3K cast as Cinematic Titanic.
Its legacy is as a textbook example of Cold War paranoia exploitation and how producers would buy unfinished films, add a new title, and sell them to late-night TV.
Budget vs. Profit
Budget: Not officially listed. Original 1967 shoot was low six figures, completion was under $10k of stock footage.
Box Office: Domestic –, International –, Worldwide –. No theatrical grosses reported on Box Office Mojo.
Profit: Never profitable theatrically. Made small money as TV filler and VHS as Escape from Planet Earth in Mill Creek 50-movie packs.
Ratings
IMDb: 2.4 / 10
Rotten Tomatoes: No Tomatometer (0 critic reviews). Audience Score ∼10-20%, listed as 0% liked on some aggregators. Blu-ray.com rate: 5.16, 0% like it.
MUBI: 4.0 / 10 from 7 ratings