I recently happened upon a movie on YouTube which I had missed back in the “heyday” of its release, 1967. It’s titled They Came from Beyond Space, and being British-produced proves that we are not alone in producing vintage sci-fi schlock (hmm, “We are not alone” was an oft-used phrase in those old movies).

The beginning credits reflected the times of the movie’s filming. It had absorbed the scent of the late 60s in much the manner as an old sofa having absorbed decades of cigarette smoke.

The title, They Came from Beyond Space made me wonder: “What’s beyond SPACE? SOLID?”

The background of the credits began with pictures of galaxies, which then seemingly melted into something resembling globules of different colors floating in a liquid matrix. It seemed like an excellent formula for the making of a good ol’ 1960s-style tie-dyed shirt!

The soundtrack music reminded me more of Henry Mancini’s music for the Pink Panther movies than something composed for the far-out reaches of space (John Denver started saying the expression “far-out” back in the 1960s. He was born in Roswell, New Mexico, but we’ll just let that lie). The first Pink Panther movie was released in 1963.

The movie begins with aliens hitching a ride on meteorites to earth (the song, “Hitchin’ a Ride” came out in 1969, the same year I graduated from high school).

One of the main protagonists of the film is a lady who comes under the mind control of the aliens. Speaking of mind control, I remember the sight of people playing Pokémon Go making me think they were under the “mind control” of their iPads (Pokémon Go didn’t begin in the 1960s; but if it had, perhaps it would be Pokémon Went by now).

That protagonist lady had one of those “beehive” hairdos like the girls at my high school (East Rowan Senior High) in the mid-late 1960s. But they went out of style (the hairdos, not the girls). Nowadays, in the case of “hive abandonment,” it seems the bees are going out of style too.

The male protagonist, Dr. Temple, was in love with Lee Mason, the female protagonist (of course, I’ve never seen a movie in which the male protagonist was in love with one of the “extras,” or vice-versa). But after the lady’s mind was taken over by the aliens, she behaved in an aloof manner towards him (some of the “beehive beauties” back at East Rowan behaved in sort of an aloof manner towards me too, but I don’t think it was due to their minds having been taken over by aliens).

The beginning narration of the 1960s TV show, The Outer Limits stated the show didn’t set out to control the viewer’s mind, only to “Control the horizontal, control the vertical, etc.” of the TV set.

It apparently didn’t take the aliens long to learn how to drive the 1960s cars! If those same aliens returned now, I bet they would remark on how “devolved” we had become for having abandoned the idea of the “dimmer switch” being in the car floor.

While everybody else was driving around in 1960s vehicles, Dr. Mason drove around in something that looked like the old Grand Prix car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). Every time he went “motoring,” I hummed the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang theme.

Dr. Temple and a colleague fashioned special viewers by which the wearer could tell which person’s mind had been taken over by the aliens (I almost hate to mention it, but these “viewers” looked almost like the driving goggles from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

To protect their minds from being taken over, the “good guys” wore specially fashioned “head gear,” resembling the inverted salad strainer hanging in my late mother-in-law’s kitchen (perhaps she purchased it in the 1960s).

I recognized one of the “brainwashed” characters as the actor Bernard Kay. In that wonderful classic film, Doctor Zhivago (1965), Bernard Kay played one of the Bolshevik leaders (hmm, some brainwashing going on there, too).

At movie’s end, everyone got their minds back and no one was killed, much like on the A-Team, (except for the character Murdoch, who never got his right mind back). Though the A-Team was from the mid 1980s, I think it’s style would have easily fitted it into the 1960s as well.

As the final credits rolled, I felt my mind being “re-released” from the control of the 1960s and returning to the present day.