Film Year: 1978
Genre: Science Fiction
Director: John Floria, Gene Fowler Jr., Arthur C. Pierce
Starring: Robert Foxworth, Stefanie Powers, Sue Lyon, Mark Slade
CT Number: ??? Unreleased
The Movie
No, this isn't a lost spin-off sequel to The Alien Factor.
A convicted felon discovers the ability to tap into supernatural powers that give him psychic abilities and turn himself invisible. He uses these powers to escape from jail and murder the women who testified against him. A cop who has a pet bimbo without pants attempts to track him down.
In the Cinematic Titanic intro Joel ponders that this might have been a TV pilot for a series, but I can't really find any evidence to support this. In fact I'm inclined to believe the contrary. While there isn't much info about this film online that I can find, simple IMDB and Google searches bring up info that it played in theaters, or at the very least it could have in 1984 under the title Invisible Strangler. I also think the content of the film itself contradict Joel's conclusion, as it features some slight-but-not-1978-TV-friendly nudity and has an ending that doesn't quite set up anything episodic (like at all). I think Joel's way off base on that one.
As invisible antagonists go, The Astral Factor is closer to Kevin Bacon's Hollow Man than Claude Rains' Invisible Man. It's pretty low budget, almost a borderline slasher movie. But the idea of having a murderer you can't see is neat, keeping the victims in the dark and never seeing the killer coming while the authority figures have no idea how to track him. But the budget and overall cheesiness of the writing get the best of it, as the film seems to be so in love with the idea that it came up with that it tries to escape the lack of development and resources they put into it.
The Astral Factor is good for some unintentional laughs and is rarely dull, though at times it does threaten us with blandness. That gives me enough to recommend it to those who like to wade through cheap, bad movies. But those with taste will be best to avoid without a riff accompanying it.
The Riff
May the Titans forgive me but I find myself watching one of their shows via bootleg. But since the group is defunct now, they never played in Idaho, and they never released a DVD of The Astral Factor, chances are they weren't getting my money anyway. So guess what? I don't feel guilty.
The Astral Factor is one of three riffs the Titans made that was never released on DVD, the others being Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World and The Doll Squad. Someone attending one of Cinematic Titanic's Live shows decided to record the audio somehow. Normally this would be a call for shame, but it turns out they actually preserved something that would have otherwise been lost. They then took video from the film itself and synced it to the audio, recreating a lost Cinematic Titanic release. Unfortunately Samson and Doll Squad are lost to time (Samson actually only played a handful of times before rights issues with the movie arose), though at a future date I might watch the films uncut to add them onto the site.
One thing to note off the bat here is that J. Elvis Weinstein was unable to attend this show due to an unfortunate bout with cancer. A comedian named Dave Allen takes his place, who I am unfamiliar with. I'm going to make an uneducated guess and assume it's this Dave Allen and not the one who died in 2005, before Cinematic Titanic was even formed. Allen does fine, and sometimes even sounds a bit like J. Elvis, making the replacement barely noticeable.
As for the riffing, it took me a while to get into it. This might have been because while the audio is surprisingly good for an audience recording it's of lower quality than we're used to on live shows for not just CT but Rifftrax as well. A lot of it is coherent, but some of the slighter deliveries tend to get a tad lost. At times someone delivers what seems to be a tasteless punchline, gets a jeering response from the audience, and the performers do some humorous defense, which would be funnier if I understood what the joke was in the first place. There's also a bit halfway through where there isn't really any riffing but the audience is reacting to something involving a twirling hypnotic disc in the film. I'm not sure but I'm almost positive that the Titan's are doing expression gags at this point, which we unfortunately cannot see. The disc itself still is fairly funny, but there seems to be something missing in the scene. But all of this is circumstantial of the recording and not a fault of the show itself.
I find myself more invested in this show by the third act. Not only is there more going on in the movie but I felt I had gotten used to the presentation by then. The laughs started coming in very steady just in time for a killer, hysterical finale. I found myself with an overall positive impression of the riff as a whole, even when I was having trouble working myself past the audio. Joel even makes a quite perfect callback to Pod People at one point in the show, and when you can make me remember Pod People fondly (which doesn't happen often) then your show must be doing something right. I'm glad The Astral Factor made it out of obscurity if only because it feels like a better final impression of Cinematic Titanic than Rattlers was.
The Astral Factor is one of three riffs the Titans made that was never released on DVD, the others being Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World and The Doll Squad. Someone attending one of Cinematic Titanic's Live shows decided to record the audio somehow. Normally this would be a call for shame, but it turns out they actually preserved something that would have otherwise been lost. They then took video from the film itself and synced it to the audio, recreating a lost Cinematic Titanic release. Unfortunately Samson and Doll Squad are lost to time (Samson actually only played a handful of times before rights issues with the movie arose), though at a future date I might watch the films uncut to add them onto the site.
One thing to note off the bat here is that J. Elvis Weinstein was unable to attend this show due to an unfortunate bout with cancer. A comedian named Dave Allen takes his place, who I am unfamiliar with. I'm going to make an uneducated guess and assume it's this Dave Allen and not the one who died in 2005, before Cinematic Titanic was even formed. Allen does fine, and sometimes even sounds a bit like J. Elvis, making the replacement barely noticeable.
As for the riffing, it took me a while to get into it. This might have been because while the audio is surprisingly good for an audience recording it's of lower quality than we're used to on live shows for not just CT but Rifftrax as well. A lot of it is coherent, but some of the slighter deliveries tend to get a tad lost. At times someone delivers what seems to be a tasteless punchline, gets a jeering response from the audience, and the performers do some humorous defense, which would be funnier if I understood what the joke was in the first place. There's also a bit halfway through where there isn't really any riffing but the audience is reacting to something involving a twirling hypnotic disc in the film. I'm not sure but I'm almost positive that the Titan's are doing expression gags at this point, which we unfortunately cannot see. The disc itself still is fairly funny, but there seems to be something missing in the scene. But all of this is circumstantial of the recording and not a fault of the show itself.
I find myself more invested in this show by the third act. Not only is there more going on in the movie but I felt I had gotten used to the presentation by then. The laughs started coming in very steady just in time for a killer, hysterical finale. I found myself with an overall positive impression of the riff as a whole, even when I was having trouble working myself past the audio. Joel even makes a quite perfect callback to Pod People at one point in the show, and when you can make me remember Pod People fondly (which doesn't happen often) then your show must be doing something right. I'm glad The Astral Factor made it out of obscurity if only because it feels like a better final impression of Cinematic Titanic than Rattlers was.
Good
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