This is not to say that it doesn't have its own stupid charm: the story of a naval base on tropical Gow Island (somewhere north of Antarctica) is filled with gaffes and lazily constructed plotlines, but what do you really expect when the commanding officer is named Lt. Charlie Brown (okay, the placard on his desk says "Charles" but you get the idea)?Mamie Van Doren plays Nora Hall, who is a nurse or doctor or something; it's really hard to tell because she mostly wears short-sleeved dresses who is either in love with or involved with most of the male characters. Seriously. At first, you think she's with the visiting Meteorologist (sorry, I'm checking IMDB, but none of these names ring a bell), but then it seems pretty clear she's in love with Charlie Brown. On the other hand, I could have sworn there was another guy she was clinging to.
One of the film's many problems is that there are too many characters. Apparently director Michael Hoey felt the need to introduce to all 33 members of the Naval base before we meet the night monsters (which happens 50 minutes into an 87 minute movie), so the first half hour or so is spent meeting character after character, all of whom look and behave similarly, so that other than the Meteorologist wearing a cardigan, you can't tell them apart after a while. At gunpoint, I'm not sure that I could tell you who was who in The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, and after a while you just give up. Every guy has brown hair and wears a uniform. There are three women: Mamie Van Doren, the brunette, and the kind-red haired woman who speaks with a mannered, New England prep-school affectation.
The Night Monsters stand out, in comparison, because they're cheap looking tree creatures that attack with their fronds and... uh... well, they kill people somehow. To be honest, we tried to keep up, but there's not much to hang your hat on in this film.
Instead, it's easier to gravitate towards the many things that don't make sense: the geography of the island, which appears to be half Arizona / half cheap set. The base is (at first) separate from the jungle, but then is right next to the jungle so that the characters don't have to wander far to follow a tiny tree monster. How exactly the tree monsters were frozen in Antarctica was probably covered but we were a little more interested in the film's take on "Molotov Cocktails", which appear simply to be bottles filled with gasoline. You don't have to light anything on fire; just throw them and they'll explode.
That turns out to be important, since the only way to (SPOILER) kill a tree monster is to burn it. The Joint Chiefs (we're guessing) decide the best course of action is to napalm the hell out of Gow Island and call it a day. For some reason the Navy is stationed in a landlocked base and can only fly on and off the island, despite the beach being within walking distance of the compound. These are the kind of things you get in a movie shot in ten days.
After a while, one gives up on trying to make sense of the film and relaxes into its doofy groove, patiently biding your time for something, anything to happen. It's nothing new for a sci-fi / horror film of the 50s and 60s to devote most of the running time to the human characters (I suppose that the filmmakers were convinced monsters were "too terrifying" for audiences), so the Night Monsters are barely in the film (and not exactly "night monsters" if the ending is any indication). At the end, I felt the most pity for those poor penguins; they survived a plane crash where the door was open only to be killed by a tree monster for no particular reason. Not cool, tree monsters. Not cool.
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