Space Killers

Horror Movie for kids just decent. There is nothing that strikes the eye, not the special effects, not the acting, not the story, not the characters. It is a lukewarm experience that leaves no required memory behind.

After a meteor shower in the countryside, a destructive alien bio-mechanic form arrives together with the meteors feeding of electricity. The engineer Linda Fletcher (Lisa Hartman) has returned from New York with her son Billy Fletcher (Michael Greene) to the farm of her father, the local doctor Avery (Pat Hingle), to be responsible for the construction of a power plant with Japanese investment. Her friend Walt Tressie (Luke Edwards) has indicated her to the Japanese representative Mr. Shikido (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and she is pressed by the mayor Bruce MacNamara (Xander Berkeley) to accomplish the tight schedule to the commission of the power plant. Meanwhile Linda is seeing her former sweetheart and baseball player, Sheriff Tom Conway (A Martinez). After a couple of deaths, they learn that the creature must be destroyed to protect other towns. Will they succeed in their intent?

"Not of This World" is one of those B-movies made for television that recalls a sci-fi from the 50´s in colors. There is a poor character development, lame special effects but entertains. Maybe the most irritating is the conclusion, with Linda, Tom, Shikido, Doc and Billy happy together, forgetting that Gerry gave his life trying to stop the alien creature and not reporting the event to the National Security Agency. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Semente do Terror" ("Seed of the Terror")

MIT Engineer and single mom Linda Fletcher (Lisa Hartman) has moved back to her small hometown to live with her dad (Pat Hingle) while she gets a new power plant online for Japanese businessman Shikido (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). While she starts a budding romance with Sheriff Conway (A Martinez), a meteor shower introduces a half-organic, half-machine alien that grows bigger and stronger when it eats electricity. Thankfully a new power plant isn't being built...oh, crap!

Not to be confused with the Corman NOT OF THIS EARTH flicks, this is a made-for-TV sci-fi flick from the era before The Sci-Fi Channel cornered the market and choked it to death. And while it isn't going to change the face of sci-fi, it is a funny little film with a surprising amount of goo and gore including an exploding body that still makes me wonder how it got past TV censors. Director Jon Hess cut his teeth on flicks like WATCHERS and ALLIGATOR II before this and he knows how to make a competent b-movie. Supporting cast members include William Sanderson, Xander Berkeley, Michael Greene, Luke Edwards and some dude named Ivory Ocean.

This is an every day television movie that has nothing special to offer. In fact, I would have no interest in it at all, if not for cute little Luke Edwards.

"Grandpa, Grandpa!" Billy (Luke Edwards) shouts, directing Grandpa's attention to a glowing spider like creature outside his window! The creature attaches to a humans back and then controls him or her.

I do not use the expression "BOMB", as it is impossible for anyone to judge individual taste, but I will suggest that this will most likely NOT be a block-buster in anyone's opinion.

I remember, back when I first rented this, that a made-for-TV sci-fi/horror flick starring a SANTA BARBARA soap-actor (A. Martinez) just couldn't be good. Not in a million years, right? Yet still I rented it, because of the photo of a very weird, rather grotesque-looking alien creature on the back.

I got pretty much what I expected. It wasn't very good. But the creature and one particular death-scene stuck with me all those years. So I couldn't resist re-watching it again last week.

While technically, it's not badly made or anything. It's the made-for-TV vibe and the completely unoriginal (seen-a-dozen-times-before) script that kills it. It's just another take on the story of an alien creature invading and terrorizing a small American town. But I know that premise alone, might just be an excuse for some of you to watch it. By now, it has become an excuse for me too.

And considering what it is, the movie does actually deliver what you may expect (or want to see): No nudity (made-for-TV, folks) and all kinds of inhabitants in the town (from a kid & his grandpa, over the mom who's a scientist and has some love interest running around, to random people who serve the sole purpose of being killed off). But also, you get a meteor crashing, containing a larva that soon mutates into some slimy, rubbery, bug-like alien-thingie and eventually evolves into a larger, pretty darn weird-looking creature (bigger than a car, hard to describe and with jaws that open sideways). The only slightly original element that was added, is that it feeds on electricity (enter cheesy animated lightning effects) and when it gets its "suckies" on you, your bodily functions will shortly after start to malfunction and you'll basically explode, with the results being both bloody messy and electrifying... or something like that, 'cause it's hard to tell (this was the one cool death-scene I mentioned previously).

And of course, there's the obligatory, climactic battle with the creature at the end, in which mommy-scientist comes up with a way to kill it... and then the movie still tries to make its tail twitch, with a very predictable end-shot.

In a way, this does sound good, doesn't it? Too bad all this is being poured into a flat and unimaginative made-for-TV production. And I just can't help being a bit forgiving for such productions.