Also see H.G. Lewis Goreography
This unscheduled foray into sci-fi presented itself when Herschell Gordon Lewis acquired Bill Rebane‘s unfinished black-and-white film Terror at Halfday. With the aid of some deliriously absurd narration and a dash of additional shooting, Lewis cobbled together enough footage to eek out a second feature to pair with his beloved Moonshine Mountain. It’s a familiar yarn about an ill-fated astronaut who returns to Earth as a 10-foot-tall, 400-pound, pizza-faced monstrosity (real-deal tall man, get this, Henry Hite) who turns anyone he paws into an overgrown and very lifeless PRUNE! (Even if a "dead" actor can’t quite hold a twisted grimace for his postmortem closeup). Bikini’d babes jiggle for their lives as this beast lumbers hither and yon, miraculously managing to evade capture. Marvel at the much-too-tiny cardboard space capsule and, most of all, behold how Lewis adeptly handles an actor’s amazing-disappearing toupee.
Notables: No breasts. Four corpses. Gratuitous go-go title song. Martini closeup. Sunbathing. Trucker smooching.
Quotables: Our narrator emotes, "There is ONE terrifying word in the world of nuclear physics: RADIATION!" The pressure is on, "What the hell do you want from me doctor!? … I don’t have a precision mind like yours!"
Time codes: This boogie-woogie dancin’ gal made the scene AND the trailer (15:40). First clear look at the monster (23:53). Here’s one of the added "filler" sequences (50:10). As in Blood Feast, Herschell’s voice on the radio (51:18).