A while back, I bought this 50-movie set, Sci-Fi Invasion for only $5. That adds up to ten cents per movie. Today it’s a return to badly-dubbed Italian thrillers with 1974’s Primal Impulse (originally titled Le Orme and alternatively titled Footprints on the Moon).

Here’s what happens: Alice is an ordinary woman is haunted by dreams of an astronaut stranded on the moon, with no way home. Fearing these are more than dreams, and experiencing gaps in her memory, she investigates.

Speculative spectacle: Turns out there really was a stranded astronaut, left behind on the moon as part of a secret and highly unethical science experiment. His “mental screams” have somehow psychically traveled across the void and into the mind of our heroine. Sure, why not?

Sleaze factor: Less than five minutes into the movie and there’s a gratuitous shower scene. Alice later gets it on with a hunky guy she meets during her investigation.

Quantum quotables: Little girl: “Your pin says ‘Alice.’” Alice: “My name is Alice.” Little girl: “Not true.” (One of our first indications that something freaky is happening.)

What the felgercarb? Alice’s journeys take her to an exotic seaside resort, where we get a lot of tourist-y shots of her walking around the place. Is this the old “Let’s film the movie where we want to have our vacation” thing?

Microcosmic minutiae: Actor Klaus Kinski, who has a habit of showing up in weird movies, makes an appearance in this one as a professor. The mysterious little girl is played by Nicoletta Elmi, who apparently has a huge cult following, based on the vast amount of not-creepy-at-all YouTube clips of her.

Worth ten cents? This one’s kind of interesting, but the slow pace and unnecessarily artsy tone make it a chore to sit through.

*****

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