Microbudget Movies: It Came From Uranus!
If you’re not enticed to watch this movie simply by reading the title, then it isn’t for you. Don’t even try to give it a shot. The rest of us, however, will find an adventure in ‘It Came From Uranus’ to rival the cheese of any Doctor Who story arc from way back when. In fact, the way the story is told seems as if it would be a better 6 part serial than a full-length feature.
It should already be understood that this movie is a comedy, but comedy is a tricky thing. Where it could have easily been boring filler, ‘It Came From Uranus’ actually intelligently lampoons 1950′s culture. Somewhat feministic, the movie takes most of it’s shots at the male superiority complex, one of the most memorable lines being the spunky female reporter’s response to finding out about a world without men.
The acting goes very well with the overall tone of the movie, each actor playing an overconfident idiot but not as extreme as Will Ferrel stupid, more like Steve Carell sort of well-meaning stupid. It’s this type of delivery that gives the movie more life than it would otherwise have, as, at certain points you’ll find yourself wondering if this is really going to be a full-length movie.
In the end, you’ll definitely be glad it’s all over, but there is a lot here to love, and it is definitely clear that nobody phoned it in, they all put a lot of heart into making this movie as funny as they can.
‘It Came From Uranus’ is an admirable attempt at stretching out a story that could have told itself over an hour. There’s no blatant filler, but the story definitely drags itself into some unnecessary places.
Oh, and there are robots made out of garbage cans. Hilarious!
I enjoyed myself.
Interview with Steve Niles (no relation) Writer/Director/Star of ‘It Came From Uranus’:
MM – How long did it take to film ‘It Came From Uranus,’ and how did you fund the production?
SN – We shot the movie off an on over a period of about a year. ‘It Came From Uranus’ featured one of the biggest casts we’ve ever assembled, and coordinating schedules can be incredibly challenging. In the micro-budget world, when you’re dealing with actors and crew with day jobs and who are donating their time and talent, you have to be flexible and accommodating.
Actor availability can even have an impact on the script, often with serendipitous results. The restricted availability of one of our lead actors, for example, resulted in our writing him an entire side-plot to get him away from the main action. That actually ended up making the story that much more rich and interesting.
As for funding the movie, that was completely out of pocket.
MM – What lessons did you learn in the process of making this film, and how did you come to learn them?
SN – Kevin Spotts and I have been making micro-budget movies for more than a decade, starting way back in junior high school. Every project is a learning experience, getting us just that little bit better. Shooting ‘It Came From Uranus’ actually benefited from a lesson learned on our previous feature, a vampire movie called ‘Lifeblood.’ With ‘Lifeblood,’ we relied too much on available lighting, making for an unfortunately dark and murky image in a few scenes. With ‘It Came From Uranus,’ we made use of lighting rigs, diffusion screens, and the like to maximize the image quality.
As for a lesson learned with this movie, one thing that comes to mind is the wonderful forgiveness of black & white. As a spoof of old sci-fi B-movies, ‘It Came From Uranus’ needed to be presented in black & white as a stylistic necessity, but the unintended benefit was that it smoothed over the rough edges of our shoe-string set design.
The decision to make an homage to the classic sci-fi and adventure serials and B-movies of the past was also a deliberate attempt to use our micro-budget to our greatest advantage. Creating a royal throne room out of a few draped sheets and a garden chair became not just a financial necessity but a direct nod to the Flash Gordon serials that preceded us. No attempt was made to disguise the fact that our giant death ray was fashioned out of a toilet paper tube. Rather, that was entirely the point.
Embracing the low-budget aesthetic allowed us to go big and bold in terms of story. ‘It Came From Uranus’ is a micro-budget epic, with laser battles, rocket-ship dogfights, prehistoric monsters, and a gladiatorial duel held over a pit of boiling lava… and spikes… and sharks… lava-sharks!
MM – Did you have the idea for the title before you had a story in mind? If so, how did you go about constructing the story?
SN – The feature-length ‘It Came From Uranus’ was actually a remake and expansion of a 20-minute short film I made in college. The short-film concept was set in the present day with three scientists hiding in a bunker waiting for the world to be destroyed by a hurtling chunk of Uranus. I don’t remember exactly, but yeah, the title probably came first.
I loved the concept and the juvenile pun of the title, and ten years later I set upon the idea of remaking it. However, as I started writing, I realized that the characters and situation offered an opportunity to open the story up and send the scientists into space to face the meteor threat head on. My movie-making partner Kevin Spotts and I decided to turn it into a serialized adventure in the style of Flash Gordon, and together we worked out the outline for the story. While the episodic story structure remained, we eventually decided to turn it into one sustained feature-length movie.
In developing the story, we made a deliberate effort to hit all the classic sci-fi tropes we possibly could, including a planet inhabited by a race of warrior women, trap doors, crazed gorillas, giant spiders, and evil clones to name a few. Along the way we peppered in references to classic sci-fi from the 30’s to the present, with nods to Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, The Terminator, Doctor Who, and many more.
MM – What, ultimately, were you trying to say about 1950’s science fiction with ‘It Came From Uranus’?
SN – That we love it. And that goes for sci-fi of all eras. Really, I saw this as a chance to make my ‘Star Wars’ while meshing together my love of sci-fi with my love of comedy.
MM – What’s Your Favorite?
-Musical Instrument?
SN – The Synthesizer
-Fictional Fascist Regime?
SN – The Terran Federation in Paul Verhoeven’s film version of ‘Starship Troopers’. The movie is an underappreciated masterpiece of political satire with some awesome action set pieces thrown in for good measure.
-Activity from elementary school P.E., why?
SN – Gymnastics. It was one of the only things I was any good at, and the limbering up served me well when I started doing my own stunts in movies.
MM – If you could change one scene in any film, which would it be and why?
SN – The moment in the Doctor Who TV movie when Doc #8 suggests he’s half human, on his mother’s side. There was no point to it, it’s a terrible rip-off of Mr. Spock’s back story, and the needless in-fighting that throw-away comment has made in the fan community ever since is just tiresome. (By the way, he was lying as a distraction technique. He’s all Time Lord.)
MM – Where can I buy a spiffy copy of ‘It Came From Uranus’?
SN – Links to where you can buy all of our movies can be found at the S&N Films shop at http://www.sn-films.com/shop.htm
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