End of the World (1977)

Cast:

Christopher "Shame that all will remember me as Count Dooku" Lee is Father Pergado / Zindar
Sue "Lolita" Lyon is Sylvia Boran
Kirk Scott is Andrew Boran
Dean Jagger is Collins
Lew "from this movie to Damien: Omen 2" Ayres is Beckerman

What the box says:

A scientist discovers signals from space that appear to carry information concerning a series of seemingly unrelated natural disasters, occurring across the globe. Hoping to discover the source of these signal and who's behind them, the scientist and his wife set out on a trek to locate the intended recipient of the signals. What the couple eventually discovers is a small remote convent with occupants who are not really who they appears to be.

Plot:

Father Pergado runs into a diner to call for help when the phone and other machines explode.

In a lab, the computers are toiling when Professor Andrew Boran picks up some unusual patterns from space. Coded messages coming and going from space. He's distracted when he hears about an earthquake in China with fatalities of 20,000. Andrew's boss sends him out on a scientific tour.

Dr, can you tell me about Sir Isaac Newton? You look old enough to have met him..

More natural disasters continue. Andrew wants to investigate more on his research and stop by a remote convent on way to some coordinates he decoded earlier. He and his wife, Sylvia, are caught on the area and learn that it's a secret military base.

Aliens are sending messages about natural disasters....

The next day, they stop by the convent again and meet Father Pergado. Andrew tries snooping around to find some strange noises to no avail.

Andrew resumes to his touring but discovers that the convent is still sending strange messages. Andrew and Sylvia head back to the convent but are caught by the nuns.

The singing nun was also a security guard....
The nuns are activating numerous supercomputers, etc...and numerous Christopher Lees that one zaps another one.
One joke about Count Dooku will get you light-sabred...
Father Pergado has been cloned along with the nuns. They are extraterrestrials who can't return to their home planet but need Andrew and Sylvia for a chance.

The aliens need a time warp and to use Andrew's Earth's emergency speed unit to change it. They force Andrew to steal for Sylvia's life. An escape attempt fails when Pergado catches are scientific couple again. Andrew is sent to steal some variance crystal. He sneaks into the the factory and knocks out the guard. When Andrew turns over the crystal to Pergado who refuses to free Sylvia.

Later, Andrew awakens beside Sylvia. Pergado readies the warp drive but must destroy the Earth to save the other planets in the local area.

Stock footage of movie natural disasters ensue on a planetary scale.

Why do I get the idea this is stock footage from a volcano from another movie?

The nuns teleport away.

Take me to your leader...
Pergado offers to take Andrew and Syliva with them to another planet. The couple walk into the teleport gate and beam away before the Earth blows up...

What I say:

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine..."- R.E.M. Shouldn't I have learnt a valuable lesson from Doomsday Machine? Public domain sci-fi movies aren't typically considered very good. Most sci-fi movies have the more 1950s vibe, the alien invasion of Earth Versus the Flying Saucers or War of the Worlds rather than the alien sending messages of Contact, Knowing, or 2012. What do you get if you take Christopher Lee, a lame sci-fi plot, and cross with some stock footage of movie disasters? Well, that's a decent description of this movie...

Christopher Lee reading a grocery list has to lend credibility to any movie. From Hammer's Dracula [even Satanic Rites of Dracula] and Frankenstein's Monster, to Star Wars's Count Dooku, to Lord of the Ring's Saruman. The mid and late 1970s did see some of Lee's more painful movies including the tv-movie of Captain America 2. However, he had a number of other bad movies and was talked into making this movie by being told of other actors like José Ferrer and John Carradine. He seems to think of End of the World as one of his lowest...

While Roger Corman is definitely known more for the B-movies he directed and produced, Lloyd Kaufman is also known in the same vein. Another of those producers is Charles Band mostly known for the Puppet Master series and pick some of the strangely named movies from the past 20 years or so Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn to Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver . In the 1990s, he filmed quite a number of movies in Romania for Full Moon Enertainment for the sequels of Trancers, Josh Kirby-Time Warrior-Trapped in Toy Land, and quite a number of his other movies. Well, Shrunken Heads gave usw heroic shrunken heads fighting crime.

Movie sci-fi techno-babble isn't going to make much sense. However, when the aliens need a time machine, a device to alter the planetary speed of Earth, and a crystal to power an intergalactic transporter, Star Trek starts to sound like more plausible physics. Aliens that want to get home and if they happen to a blow a planet away in the process that's perfectly acceptable. No prime directive ever touched these alien minds.

Quotable Dialogue
"Need help, help, all of us..."
"Andrew, we might get in trouble."
"You get back on that tour."
"Sub-warp speed should be an order."
"You're telling us you murdered 6 nuns and a priest."
Morals of the Story
Pay phones are highly explosive.
Red phones are automatically emergency phones.
Christopher Lee automatically looks creepy as a priest.
Nuns are excellent security guards.
Earth is composed of 20% glitter.