Sooo technically, it's a government housing project for undocumented...um....guests?

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. 

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.

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.

Infinitely Stupid

Infinite Santa 8000

     Over a thousand years ago, humanity died out, and (for the most part) only robots, cyborgs, and mutants walk the earth. So does Santa. And when we first see him, he's in the middle of a competitive blood sport. After winning, he heads back to his ranch and we meet his herd of robot reign deer and Martha, his robot companion. During the night, Martha is kidnapped by some guy that looks a rabbit, but he's not the Easter bunny. Santa rescues her, but then they're ambushed and captured. That's when we meet our really uncharismatic antagonist Dr. Shackleton. She's got some sort of world domination plot cooking, and she needs Santa's DNA to build her army. Yeah, strong writing.

     This is not the first time I've watched animated Halloween features for this blog, but this is the crappiest I've ever seen. It was like watching a Flash cartoon from 1999. This was something that should have only been 45 minutes maximum. Somehow they stretched this out to over an hour and a half. There wasn't anything funny, edgy, or even interesting. The dialog is painful to listen to and the voice talent is partly to blame. And I almost feel bad trashing this because somewhere out there is a group of people that busted their ass to make this happen. Was it a horror movie? No, probably not intentionally. It's a good candidate for this years Horror Movie Mulligan, and you can test yourself to see how far you can get into this movie by watching it here:

Infinite Santa 8000 via Youtube

Tuesday: Final film for 2017!

Rest in peace, Angus Scrimm

Phantasm 5: Ravager

Never put 'Final' in your title. Nobody believes it.

     I'm not sure how the last movie ended, but we find Reggie walking in the desert, mostly lost, battered, but alive. Within minutes, the balls this series is known for start chasing him around. After fending them off, he wakes up in an asylum. Mike, the person he's been looking for since #3, appears and informs him that he has dementia and needs to keep him 'engaged', so he asks Reggie to tell him the story from the beginning.

Really, this is all we ever want to see. Skip the ugly little grave Jawas

     From there we're given the back and forth through time, reality, not reality....it's trope that's a little tired, but far more inspiring than the last film. The problem is, you ALSO don't know what direction the film is going and that makes it really hard to keep up or simply give a damn. It happens so much that it takes over the movie, and pretty soon you start to lose interest. And the ending? Um....I'm not touching that. It was ambiguous, then the credits started rolling, then stopped and the movie started up again. Then the credits rolled again. I'm not sure who was in charge of editing, but they flubbed it.

     Now the $20 question: Will they make another? They treated it as a franchise finale, but we all know that's crap if someone comes up with the money. The only other thing that could prevent it would be the death of Angus Scrimm, who died shortly after filming this. The Tall Man was a staple of the franchise, and the one thing truly haunting about it. Though he was really showing his age and couldn't move like before, he still banged out his lines, and you still listened to every word. His was a commanding voice and I'll miss it.

Monday: My Halloween needs more Santa...