By J. KNIGHT

Take your seats, students. Today in our continuing study of Lapland and its culture, we'll be examining the Lapps' contribution to classic horror films.

In 1959, producers Gustaf Unger and Bertil Jernberg unleashed their creation Rymdinvasion i Lappland, otherwise known as Terror In The Midnight Sun, Horror In The Midnight Sun, and Space Invasion Of (or From) Lapland. Part science fiction and part Board of Tourism promotional piece, Terror In The Midnight Sun blends a story about aliens and their giant pet Abominable Snowman with lingering shots of people skiing the snow-covered mountains of northern Sweden.

The marriage is not a particularly effective one. The advertising message comes across as "Visit beautiful Sweden, land of blizzards, aliens and monsters," and the monster story is regularly slowed to a crawl by long scenes of the characters skiing from one location to another.

Virgil Vogel directed the film. Vogel's work on the feature films The Mole People (1956) and The Land Unknown (1957), plus Terror In The Midnight Sun, catapulted him straight from the big screen to the small one, and he enjoyed a long and profitable career directing television episodes for shows such as Bonanza, Mission Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man and nearly every other dramatic TV show Americans watched between 1957 and 1994.

The story (written by Arthur C. Pierce) begins as Swedish scientists discover a set of mysterious skid marks in the icy mountains of Lapland, north of the Arctic Circle. Alarmed by the skid marks and by Laplanders' reports of a mysterious object descending from the sky, scientist Frederick Wilson (Robert Burton) summons geologist Erik Engström (Sten Gester) to help him investigate.

(You in the back--quit snickering every time I say, "skid marks!" You know what I'm talking about and it has nothing to do with your underwear!)

Erik flies out to Sweden, meets Wilson and is smitten by Wilson's niece, Diane (Barbara Wilson), an American figure skating champion. Actually, he's smitten by Barbara's skating double, who then takes a shower in a nude scene starring Barbara's nude double. Erik and Diane ski off, or rather, Erik skis off with Barbara's skiing double. So in the first twenty minutes or so of the film, Barbara Wilson and three stunt doubles have played Diane, if you consider taking a shower as a stunt.

Diane plays a little joke on Erik, stealing his skis and leaving him stranded in northern Sweden miles from the lodge. If this had been an underwater picture, she'd have swum away with Erik's oxygen tanks, or in the desert, she'd have stolen his camel. What a kidder that Diane is! Erik hoofs it back to the lodge, arriving just in time for dinner.

Dinner is interrupted by news of a massive reindeer slaughter, and our heroes and Diane drive off to investigate. In a movie where the leading lady already has had three stunt doubles, you'd imagine that the slaughtered reindeer would be played by dummies, but such is not the case. Instead, the producers decided it would be cheaper to just shoot a bunch of reindeer, and that's what they did. So, if your Christmas presents were a little late back in 1959, you know what slowed Santa down.

The next day, they all fly off to investigate the skid marks and discover a mysterious alien spacecraft imbedded in the snow. A bulbous-headed alien watches them on his TV monitor. They leave to get more help.

Here the plot gets a little murky, because now they're visited by an off-screen giant who kills a scientist who shoots at him. The unseen monster exits, leaving enormous footprints in the snow. What our heroes don't know, and neither does the audience, is that the giant is a kind of "search dog" (in the producer's terms, gleaned from the DVD commentary) of the aliens.

Erik and Diane ski off. They ski for a long time. At one point Erik tells Diane (and the audience), "We'll stop soon, I promise." Then they ski some more and Diane wipes out, injuring her knee. She and Erik take refuge in a cabin where Diane's silhouette gets out of her wet things while Erik stokes the fire.

Then Erik skis off into the night, to get help or something. Anyway, that's the monster's cue to attack. Now we see him. He's a towering beast about thirty feet tall who looks like Chewbacca's ugly big brother. Let's call him "Spitbacca."

Erik hears Diane's screams and skis back in time to be caught in an avalanche that Spitbacca creates. Diane, true to character, abandons Erik and runs off and gets caught in a blizzard. Spitbacca follows her, picks her up and takes her back to his alien masters. Or rather, he carries Barbara Wilson's fourth stunt double, a seven-year-old girl, off. Diane sees the aliens in their bulbous-headedness, screams (one thing Barbara Wilson does quite well for herself) and faints. Spitbacca takes her scarf even though it's many sizes too small for him.

Meanwhile, back with the Lapps...did I tell you there were Lapps in the movie? No? Well, we've hardly seen them up to now, so you didn't miss much. Anyway, the Lapps are eating dried reindeer and talking about the giant monster when one of them skis up from somewhere warning them that Spitbacca is coming. They flee to their village.

Spitbacca arrives at the Lapp village carrying Diane's scarf. Again, this would all be pretty mysterious if we didn't have the producer explaining on the commentary track that Spitbacca is really good and is trying to tell the Lapps where they can pick up Diane. The Lapps, in harmony with the audience, fail to understand what in the Sam Hill is going on and attack Spitbacca. Our heroes arrive in their airplane. Spitbacca destroys the Lapp village and the airplane both.

The villagers pursue Spitbacca with torches. Erik and the other scientists follow helplessly, unable to stop them. Spitbacca gets away, but, recognizing that his attempt to communicate with the Lapps by waving a scarf was a dismal failure, he goes back to Diane, picks her up, and carries her stunt double off. It's up to the producer to explain to us that Spitbacca's bringing her back to the Lapps.

The Lapps run headlong into Spitbacca. He hands Diane over to them and, in gratitude, the Lapps set him on fire. A burning dummy of Spitbacca falls off the mountain. At least, I hope it was a burning dummy. After the way the producers treated the reindeer, I wouldn't take anything for granted.

The aliens have seen the whole miserable affair on their monitor and, once more in tune with the audience, they've had enough. The film is reversed and their ship takes off, erasing the skid marks as it goes.

Erik says, "Wonder if they found out what they wanted to know." The scientist played by Robert Burton says, "Well, let's hope for better luck when we set foot on some other world." You and I can hope that we have better luck when we next set foot in a movie theater. The fact that the scientists' plane has been destroyed and they're trapped in the middle of Lapland doesn't seem to worry anyone.

Terror In The Midnight Sun boasts some very nice miniature effects of cabins and tents being destroyed by Spitbacca, the creature looks pretty darned good, and the Lapps wear really funny hats. However, if you're looking for a plot that makes sense, you'll have to do your exploring south of the Arctic Circle.

(Hey, wait a minute! Class isn't over! Sit back down!)

In 1962, schlockmeister extraordinaire Jerry Warren took Terror In The Midnight Sun, cut out the nudity and the few moments of the film that made sense, tacked on some quick footage shot in Los Angeles, most of which involves three old guys standing around a desk discussing UFOs, bookended the sorry mess with some literally incomprehensible narration by John Carradine, and delivered Invasion Of The Animal People to movie audiences that didn't have enough stale popcorn in their lives.

In short, he performed a butcher job on an already mediocre film that turned it into one of the most insufferable monster movies ever made. (Like a King Midas on the Bizarro planet, Warren had an uncanny ability to turn everything he touched into skid marks.) Tragically, Invasion Of The Animal People has been immortalized on the same DVD from Something Weird Video as Terror In The Midnight Sun. The good news is, you don't have to watch it just because it's there. I mean, there's no law requiring it, just as there's no law compelling people to look at a train wreck.

A couple more notes about the DVD: The cover depicts a busty woman in a ripped red dress and spike heels lying in the snow as the monster attacks. Don't believe it. In the movie she wears a parka and boots like everybody else. Also, Something Weird has added trailers for various Swedish sex films that are incongruously raunchy and more explicit than the feature itself, so be careful if you watch this one with your kids.

Okay, students, this concludes our study of Lapp Horror Movies. Next week you'll want to get here early, as the subject will be Lapp Dances, which for some reason always attracts extra visitors to the classroom.

Dismissed.

(More of J. Knight's writing can be found on his Website.)