Strange Invaders
Quick backstory:
I've been looking for this movie for about 10 years. I remember
seeing it on HBO or Cinemax in the mid '80s, but I could never
remember the name. I would describe it to people, and they'd have no
clue what I was talking about. Internet searches didn't help much
either because I could only remember a couple of scenes. Then about
6 months ago Comet TV was running an ad and BAM, there it was. I went
to Amazon and they had plenty of copies so here we are. My last movie
for the season. I don't remember it being a great movie, but there's
scenes that take place in the basement of a church that creeped me
out when I encountered nearly the same design when visiting another
church in Minnesota. And when you're 8, that shit is real!
In
1950-something, aliens invade a small Midwestern town and make all
the residents disappear. Fast forward to 1980-something, and we meet our university entomologist hero, The Professor. His ex-wife stops by to
inform him that her mother has died and he needs to care for their
daughter. After weeks go by, he tries to find her in that very same
small town, now populated with human skin wearing aliens that look
stoned and kinda chill. Their hobbies include walking, creeping people out, and turning humans into blue glowing balls. Professor must have harshed their mellow because
they start making his life hell once he's home. After involving a
tabloid writer in his strange story, his ex shows up and explains
she's one of them and she fell in love with him blablabla..had a kid with him blablabla...not really sure how the biology works here. On top of
everything else, the Feds knew about the aliens and had an agreement with
them to provide a place to stay, why they shared some tech with us. Typical. A bunch more stuff happens and at the climax, we're treated to a face ripping march towards a flying saucer filled with aliens working on steam valves inside a space ship. I guess interstellar travel still involves steam.
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| And it's really phallic too! |
So how does it hold up to my memories from 30+ years ago? Pretty good, actually. The only 2 scenes I remember were very skewed compared to tonight's re-watch. Without my bias, it's really just a forgotten sci-fi movie from the mid 80s, and not really a horror film at all. As a kid, the face ripping part made me think it was a scary movie, but it was actually just a small plot detail to let us see the aliens take off their human suits.
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| Shout out to Comet, I guess. I don't know what the etiquette is. |
And wow. I'm done. 31 days, 31 movies, and for only the second time since we've been doing this, it was completely uninterrupted by any of the usually things that throw it off course. I'm happy to say I've seen every Halloween film, and sad to say the same thing about the Evil Bong series. In the unlikely event that you read this, thank you for doing so. And speaking of reading, I'm tired of movies. I'm going to go read a damn book or something...
See you Oct. 1st, 2018.
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