DoctorThotcer

It's very telling that the Wikipedia plot digest is one small paragraph, as clearly the script was too.

The premise is established and thereafter everyone is encouraged to just have fun and wing it, rambling on about their roles and responsibilities in-character, in the form of various raconteur-isms, that ultimately go nowhere.

There are a few nice moments, nice props, and it starts quite well, but as soon as the night fog roles in, it completely loses all focus and direction and becomes another 'and then this happens because why not' snooze fest.

Ultimately, an unnecessarily long exercise in keeping some artists in employment, that could have been a 5 minute radio sketch.

I'm sure the most pretentious critics loved it, but I just felt sorry for the editor.

This is some wonderfully entertaining nonsense, apparently released in 1980, yet with the production and gender values of the '50s, as in even though most of the ladies are supposedly in charge, they still need a good strong man, from whom they will happily take a slap with a smile.

Asides from a centre lull, it rattles along at a decent pace, past many pleasantly sunny locations, that are definitely mainly someplace in America honest, most of the cast do their jobs ok, and the studio sets aren't too bad neither.

Unfortunately, the main danger revolves around these little green eggs that are described as about the size of a football, even though initially they very much resemble over ripe avocados, and during some of the model scenes are clearly played by green olives.

As the plot unfolds it makes less and less sense, all that these small immobile macguffins seem to do is kill anything that stands around nearby for too long, yet somehow they are going to take over the world? Oh and the squishy big boss who lays them seems to be equally immobile, glued onto a metal deck; one quick poke with a sharp stick and it'd be all over for our alien overlord.

Asides from the obvious, the main issue is the sound mix. Throughout, all the dialogue volume is set to around 2, the sound effects at about 1, and the music tracks from the in-house prog-rock band stay firmly at 11, right through until the final climatic battle scene when apparently somebody thought it might help if the audience could also hear words.

If you enjoy this kind of old 'so bad it's good' earnestly made low budget sci-fi, then this is straight-to-Blockbuster heaven, but if you were hoping for the Alien sequel it clearly aspires to be, no.

Instantly spotted it as a low budget indie, but as a fan of such things I gave it a chance, and was sufficiently entertained to watch the whole thing.

Smartly, it plays to its strengths, with some decent CGI and zombie like make-up effects carrying its mostly uninteresting settings, and the direction isn't bad at all, but it's mainly let down by extremely variable effectiveness of the required mood, scene to scene.

As an example of these issues, the lead varies from wooden to the point of rictus, barely reacting to some initial splashy deaths, to later, over-reacting to things we frustratingly cannot see, with some lines of dialogue from the cast desperately needing some better takes overdubbed in the edit, particularly when a scene is full-on action oriented yet some actors still deliver their lines like they're afraid to wake the neighbours.

But my main issue was: why doesn't anyone shoot the bosses not their equipment?

Oh well, for what it is, it's not bad, and the ending had quite an original 'blink and you'll miss it' twist that I rather enjoyed.

Worth a go, if you're into this kind of thing.