Don't Ask, Don't Tell

      Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a good-natured, cheapie movie, for which the director, Doug Miles, and the writer, Doug Miles, laid hands on a godawful 1954 sci-fi flick, Killers from Space, deconstructed it with inserted scenes, spoonfed it silly new dialogue. In the old version, pilot Peter Graves is brought back from the grave by Russki-like space aliens who program him to steal US atomic secrets. The new: the spaceniks transform the macho military man into a "homo," and the refurbished sound track is littered with gags about Barney Frank and "Babs" Streisand.

     Fortunately, the filmmakers retain on screen the original invaders from the planet Astron Delta. You can't get campier than these guys with pingpong balls cut in two for eyeballs. And they keep the 1950s FBI men, but now led by an out-of-the-closet, high-drag J. Edgar Hoover. All in all: Don't Ask is very Mad Magazine, sometimes a laugh, sometimes a dud, with the best jokes time and again the filthiest ones.

GERALD PEARY
(July, 2002)

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