Clockwork-Avacado Unusual mid-sixties science fiction story about three crash landed aliens who "recruit" a scientist and his team to make repairs on their ship, and pilot it back to their home planet. Reasonable effort, although slightly drawn out and uninteresting, still has moments of suspense and character drama. The usual Italian glamour is provided by the sexy wanna-be actress, who goes along with the team, and wears increasingly outrageous outfits, and flirts with one of the male aliens. The lead alien, a fire haired female begins to see the error of her emotionless ways, and at one point exhibits romantic inclinations towards Kirk Morris. Acting is fine, effects average, storyline meandering but rarely fatally dull, with a few good bits, such as a rather weird attack by a group of alien gorillas. Slightly lacking in traditional Italian high octane liveliness, but compelling, and not without a few interesting twists.Pros; -Interesting basic storyline-Most of the film's acting is consistently competent and believable-Good imagery – especially the pair of skeletons at the cockpit of the other spaceship Cons; -Ends rather abruptly -Some of the movie's logic is questionable-Quite a few characters are simply left as cardboard cut outs -The alien race appear completely human and aren't especially convincing as such -Main room of the spaceship set gets claustrophobic after a while -A very long sequence where the characters are in space, changing an arial, kills the pace for a bit and is un-necessarily tedious -A child-like robot is killed early on, and after only a minute's screen time, although its' design was not especially interesting -Plot stretches thin in some places, as it is a fairly basic idea with little deviation to carry the film along -A terrible voice over at the start

Woodyanders Aliens from the planet Hydra crash land their spaceship on Earth. The ship's occupants kidnap a scientist and force him to fix their damaged craft. However, the scientist, his daughter, several technicians, and two untrustworthy Oriental spies who all have been taken hostage band together to mutiny against their captures. Writer/director Pietro Francisco relates the entertainingly asinine story at a snappy pace and treats the gloriously ludicrous premise with hilariously misguided seriousness. The game acting from the enthusiastic cast keeps everything humming, with especially commendable work from ravishing redhead Leonora Ruffo as formidable alien leader Kaena, Mario Novelli as the handsome and dashing Paolo, Roland Lesaffre as the no-nonsense Prof. Solmi, Kirk Morris as the stolid Belsy, and the luscious Leontine May as the spunky Luisa Solmi. Legendary muscleman Gordon Mitchell has a regrettably tiny part as gruff alien Murdu. The cruddy (far from) special effects, dodgy dubbing, clumsily staged action set pieces, a welcome appearance by a savage tribe of grunting'n'leaping primitive apemen extraterrestrials, and the totally unexpected from out in left field surprise bummer ending all add immensely to this picture's considerable campy charm. The garish cinematography by Giulio Albonico and Silvano Ippoliti gives the movie an eye-popping bright look. Nico Fidenco's neatly varied score alternates between groovy swinging lounge and more generic spacey stuff. A complete kitschy hoot.

John Seal This film has it all: spandex suited space aliens who will remind you of the brain gobblers from Monster Zero, neurotic robots who look like mummies, oriental (not Chinese) secret agents, terrible special effects, worse fight scenes, an incomprehensible intergalactic language, and the incredibly yummy Leontine May. In the pantheon of Italian science fiction, 2+5 Mission Hydra is perhaps only outdone in the cheap 'n cheesy stakes by those Argoman movies, but there's so much going on that it's hard to get bored with the proceedings. As for the Star Pilot reissue: did this really happen? Does anyone remember paying to see it in 1977? If there's an IMDb user out there had the misfortune of seeing this in expectation of more Star Wars style thrills, I'd love to hear your tale of woe!

Vigilante-407 This film reminded me a little of Mission Stardust in reverse...the aliens land on our planet instead of what happened in that movie. While fairly coherent, the movie doesn't really know where it's going, as a lot of Italian SF movies didn't in that era. I'm still trying to figure out what the heck the secret agents were doing in the movie (and please remember, they're "Oriental, not Chinese"). Once the spaceship gets off the ground, we're treated to a lot of stock footage from Toho's Gorath, as a number of space stations and satellites try to pretend they are the starforces of Hydra. Then there's the time travel thing, and the female characters' need to wear fishnet bodystockings with leather or feather bikinis (obviously either an aside to the popularity of the fashions of Barbarella or just standard wear in Italian space operas...lord knows I've seen at least four other movies where leather was the material of choice for spacesuits). And then there's the need for spacehelmets when venturing onto a new planet, but two people can cross the cold void of space between two ships in what amounted to a snorkel and leather.To me, 2:5: Mission Hydra reminded me a lot of They Came From Beyond Space or the Terrornauts or similar British features made in the mid-sixties...not bad, but not necessarily well thought out.