PreCommentary: The following summary contains a few bracketed asides from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of the film (#210, with the short New Jersey motor vehicle safety film "X Marks the Spot").

Notes: Lippert Productions. 63 minutes.
Dr. Richard (Dick) Gordon: Douglas Henderson
Dr. Nora Pierce: Patricia Gallagher
Dr. Ralph Martin: Bill Bryant
Dr. Patricia Bennett: Wanda Curtis
Alligator: a fake rubber alligator
Vicious Tyrannosaurus: an iguana

Produced: Bert I. Gordon and Al Zimbalist
Directed: Bert I. Gordon
Story: Bert I. Gordon and Al Zimbalist (originally titled The Beast from Outer Space)
Screenplay: Tom Gries
Special Effects: Howard A. Anderson Company

Summary: The first forty-five hours of this film consist of mechanical business and stock footage of rockets and dials. A stray planet has shown up in our solar system, a "new planet" as it were, and the earth's creative geniuses decide to call it "Planet Nova." We are unwillingly introduced to Dr. Richard (Dick) Gordon, a zoologist whose claim to fame involves tar pits near Salt Lake City; Dr. Nora Pierce, geologist and Himalayan Mountains expert; Dr. Ralph Martin, a medical doctor; and Dr. Patricia Bennett, a chemist. They are all hideous idiots from the '50s who rocket off to Planet Nova.

The next sixty-seven hours of the film involve a lot of yammering about their analysis of the planet. Here's a surprise: it's much like earth, what with stock footage of bear cubs, vultures, etc. Still, it seems much younger and some types of bacteria are unidentifiable. A snake looms.

Our frantically hetero foursome pair up: Dick-Pierce, Pat 'n' Ralph. The latter two arbitrarily go for a walk and Ralph is viciously attacked by a large rubber alligator. His bloodied carcass is carried back to camp. When he wakes up the next morning he shoots a giant bee, or ant (difficult to tell). The snake visits again.

Welp, Ralph is too injured to go anywhere and Pat stays with him and her microscope while Dick and Weed inflate a raft and head for a volcanic island that has been intriguing Nora for ever so long. They take Joe the kinkajou (which the MST people identified as Joey the Lemur). On the island, Nora blurts, "What a desolate forsaken place!" [Crow: "What a stilted pretentious line!"] They encounter an iguana, propped or yanked upright, which is supposed to be a gigantic dinosaur. [Crow: "Hey, lizards don't stand erect!"] This herbivorous monster traps them in a cave, but, during a lizard fight between the iguana and a cayman dragon, they fire a flare, signalling Butt and Head to come running and rafting. The bloody-mouthed iguana wins. [Tom Servo: "Yes, 'twas beast killed the beast."]

Dick snaps a picture of the "dinosaur" and insists "it resembles the Tyrannosaurus Rex." Nora irrationally has a fit, whines "oh, who cares?" and rips the photo. The other two dopes arrive and do nothing, from afar. Dick and Nora sneak out of the cave as the iguana becomes involved in another lizard battle. "King Dinosaur" wins again and begins to pursue the pseudo-humans. Fortunately, Ralph thought ahead: "I brought the atom bomb. I think it's a good time to use it." They set the timer for half an hour and run past armadillo and mastodon stock footage, pursued, sort of, by the roaring iguana.

They paddle one raft back, duck behind an embankment, and watch the fun as the atom bomb goes off (more stock footage). Dick intones: "We sure have done it: brought civilization to Planet Nova. C'mon, let's go home." [Joel: "Yeah, let's go home and raise some three-headed kids."]

Commentary: Only the MST3K version of this stinkburger is tolerable. All four of these Dr. Jackasses deserve the cancer they'll get by watching the atom bomb explode. What Dickweed means by his freefloating final irony is anybody's guess. And where did the footage of lizard fights come from? Bert I.? Not from One Million BC for a change, meaning one suspects that everyone associated with this film deserve a suite in Hell.