Doug drives aimlessly some more, and he again sees Muppet eyes floating towards him. This causes him to crash into a tree, and despite this being a period in time when cars were made out of solid steel and seat belts were a luxury feature, Doug survives.

He wakes up in a hospital bed, surrounded by the entire cast. He’s yelling incoherently, so the Doctor injects him with truth serum. The Doc explains that this will “deprive his mind of any imagination”. So that’s what happened to the screenwriter.

The Doc has Doug count backwards from 100. Doug makes it to 94 and goes under. And suddenly, I’m reminded of another Peter Graves movie.

Under the influence of the serum, Doug reveals he was “delivering” those classified secrets just as he was “ordered”. And then his repressed memories return, with a flashback to the aftermath of the jet crash. Doug is lying on a bed made of glass blocks, and there’s a strange black object over his chest, which his voiceover says was his own heart.

Oh yeah, and he’s now surrounded by ridiculous aliens, with big googly eyes. They all have on black bodysuits with hoods, and to complete the goofy look, they’re wearing striped cummerbunds. They look like the Phantom, if the Phantom had some sort of thyroid problem.

They’ve repaired Doug’s heart and put it back in his body. Yes, the “killers from space” actually possess miraculous healing technology. That’s the way to kill ‘em from space! They spray steam around Doug’s chest, which somehow results in the L-shaped scar.

Now that he’s all better, Doug is led through underground caverns to another googly-eyed alien who’s standing under a glowing electric coil, which he operates via handheld remote.

He says his people come from another planet, and Doug is so freaked out that he tries to run away. But the coil glows and somehow freezes Doug to the spot.

“We are much like you Earthlings, only we grow our mustaches on our foreheads.”

The alien decides to show him proof that they come from another planet. So he turns to the coil and pushes a button on his remote, and the way the coil sluggishly blinks on and off, you almost think the alien’s about to yell, “Fuck! Death ray’s on the fritz again!”

On a nearby screen, Doug views footage of standard issue flying saucers, while the alien vaguely explains they came to Earth across an “electron bridge”. I don’t know what that means, either. He says they’ve been “accumulating the energy released with each of your atomic explosions”.

And that... takes us to intermission, where we watch the Film Crew have their “lunch break”, the equivalent of the host sketches on MST3k. Here, Kevin shows off sketches of rejected designs for the aliens in the movie, and... that’s really all there is to it, actually.

There’s also a bonus feature on the DVD where they make fun of another scene in the movie, but it’s honestly not even worth getting into. Suffice to say that the host sketches were always the weakest part of MST3k, and the Film Crew proudly carries on that tradition.

Back from break, the lead alien is still explaining things to Doug. He says his people come from a planet called “Ass Tron Delta”. Okay, fine, it’s supposed to be “Astron Delta”, but you didn’t think I would let that one slide, did you? On the other hand, the Film Crew guys never make any kind of “Ass Tron” joke at all, so evidently they have a lot more class and restraint than I do.

The alien explains their sun slowly died out, which is why their eyes got bigger, “to combat the ever growing darkness”. Makes sense to me. And now that their sun is dead, the Ass Tronians want to take over Earth.

Doug again tries to escape, but the alien just laughs. Thus begins an interminable sequence of Doug running aimlessly around caves. After several encounters with bug-eyed aliens who just casually brush past him, Doug sees all sorts of giant vermin, which are represented by close-up footage of tarantulas, lizards, roaches, and grasshoppers, while Peter Graves stands in front of a movie screen.

This goes on and on, and when this much sheer stupidity is on display, you know that’s when the Film Crew guys really shine. Once again, they succeed in transforming a crushingly dull sequence into pure entertainment.

Finally, Doug has had enough close-ups of backyard pests, and he runs back in defeat to the lead alien. The alien explains the vermin are the giant “armies” they’re breeding, which will eventually “devour every living thing on the surface of the earth”. Um... are you guys sure you want do that? Call me crazy, but I think that would make the planet just a bit less hospitable.

Then Doug gets a tour of where they’re accumulating all the energy from nuclear blasts. Because why not show off all the secret inner chambers of your invasion headquarters to a guy who’s already tried to escape twice? Doug notes there’s so much energy stored up here, the whole place is like a “powder keg”. But the alien assures him they have everything under control, and there’s no possible way this is setting up the ending of the movie.

“So it’s a powder keg. Do I look surprised? Oh, yeah, right.”

Finally, the alien reveals what they want from Doug: they need him to find out when the next nuclear test will happen. That’s it. They can cross the vastness of space, breed giant insects, and harness the power of nuclear explosions, but the ability to gain access to classified military secrets currently eludes them.

The alien assures Doug that if he helps them, he’ll be kept in a safe place during the invasion, and then “resettled” once it’s over. Doug refuses, so they just outright hypnotize him. Jesus, why didn’t they just do that in the first place? They could have spared us all at least ten minutes of lizard footage.

The alien makes Doug look at the screen, which is showing an alien’s face. The face tells him to “listen and obey”, and... it’s actually the same alien who’s been talking to him this whole time. But he’s on the screen now! Apparently, this makes a huge difference.

Mirror, mirror on the wall... Who’s the goofiest looking bastard of them all?

The flashback ends, and we’re back in Doug’s hospital room. No one believes a word of Doug’s story. Probably because they were so bored by it that they stopped paying attention halfway through.

So Doug goes into a barely coherent rant about how the aliens must be using electricity to keep all that nuclear energy contained. Which can only mean one thing: they’re siphoning electricity away from a nearby power plant. Well, I’m sure it made sense to the filmmakers.

He says all they have to do is cut the power for ten seconds, and the nuclear energy will be released, and the aliens’ secret underground lair will be destroyed. Everyone still thinks he’s crazy, so he flies into a rage, puts on his robe, and runs out to his car.

Doug drives to the power plant, where he parks on a stretch of road clearly labeled “Do Not Park”. As he runs into the power plant, an amazing comedic highlight transpires: a guard reacts to a crazy man in his bathrobe running into a power plant in the middle of the night by yelling, “Hey! No parking!” And the voice is badly dubbed in, too. All in all, it’s a beautiful moment.

Parking Violators from Space!

Doug runs around the power plant in his robe, getting into random fistfights with workers. Briggs and the colonel and all the rest show up, and they scramble around looking for Doug with plenty of pointless yelling of things such as “Hurry!” and “Let’s go!”

Doug finally finds the head power plant guy and forces him to cut the power. And with that, the whole power plant shudders through the time-honored art of shaking the camera.

The whole cast goes to look out a window to watch the alien headquarters blow up, which is hilariously represented by stock footage of a nuclear test in the Pacific Ocean. So I guess the whole power plant is now hovering thousands of feet over the ocean. That must have been one hell of an explosion.

“And the Bikini Atoll Marriott seemed so nice in the brochure.”

Someone says Doug did it, “he blew them to pieces!” And he wasn’t crazy after all, and he saved the world, and that’s the end.

“Well, that’s all taken care of. So who’s up for a smoke?”

Well, that sure was a big load of nothing. As one of the Film Crew guys repeatedly says throughout the long stretches of pointless footage, “Killers from Space, ladies and gentleman!”

Actually, despite what I said about the sketches on this DVD, there is a pretty funny sketch at the end, where the guys make fun of the movie’s tendency to randomly drop in close-ups of the cast with dead-eyed stares.

Are you happy now, movie? You just destroyed Mike Nelson’s soul.

Overall, the humor on this DVD is about on par with your typical MST3k episode, only with slightly more risqué gags. There are plenty of jokes about Peter Graves’ career, including some Mission: Impossible jokes and probably a few too many Biography jokes. And the Muppet-eyed aliens are compared to everything from Andy Kaufman to Buzz Lightyear to Cookie Monster. Out of the four Film Crew DVDs, this one probably has the best riffing.

And that’s all she wrote, as far as the Film Crew goes, anwyay. Thankfully, Mike, Bill, and Kevin have continued their mission via the RiffTrax website. And as for the rest of us, we’ll always have Ass Tron Delta.