Invasion Earth: The Aliens Are Here

Okay, when I got this movie (on Danish VHS for less than $2), I was expecting a low-budget cheesy movie, which would be good for a laugh or two.. but what I actually got was a muddled incomprehensible mess of a "movie", just above an hour in running-time (fortunately!), consisting mainly of clips from such "classics" as "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "The Blob" and - my personal favorite - "Reptilicus".. but why even bother to disguise this as a movie? Why not go all out and a make a 90-minute clip-show from the old classics?? Instead, we have these stupid characters, looking like something take straight from a random Troma-production, which have the potential to be very funny, but are all wasted as random movie-goers who sit and eat popcorn, annoy each other, and are one by one assimilated by these alien "bug-creatures", who plan on taking over the world by making people watch crappy movies, so they are distracted and can easily be taken over, "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers"-style.

Anyways, because of the constant inter-cutting between new footage and old clips, the viewer can't really understand what's actually going on, and is left with a bunch of random scenes, sloppily put together, only creating few giggles here and there, but overall leaves a "what-the-hell-is-going-on"-feeling, which isn't helped by the many different characters either.

Highlights: A random biker goes into the cinema and asks the alien with an elephant-trunk to give him some popcorn. He then proceeds to fetch 10 huge packs. Hardy-har-har.

1/10, only because 0/10 is not an option, and because some of the old clips were good.

The premise of the movie had least some potential: deliberately crummy looking aliens invade a small town movie theater which is screening a B-movie marathon. The aliens take over the projection booth, to enact their plan to first numb the mind of the audience with the terrible films they are watching, and then when the audience is at their weakest, in some nonsensical to control them in order to take over the world. Naturally only a group of young kids are the only ones aware of what's really going on, and it's up to them to save the day.

Now of course, this isn't exactly the material for the next Citizen Kane. But that said, there's no reason this movie couldn't be some cheesy fun, maybe as a "monsters gone mad" movie the likes of Gremlins (1984) or Critters (1986), or perhaps as a nostalgic throwback to monster the movies of days gone by, the likes of say The Monster Squad (1987), or at least Transylvania-6-5000 (1985).

Apparently there was a reason it couldn't be any fun.

The problem is while the movie is about aliens making an audience watch old movies, that's the ONLY thing this movie is about. The thing is, there are more scenes of these old movies, than there are scenes of the actual movie itself! I'm serious; about 80, perhaps even 90 percent of the movie is simply clips from old B-movies. Out of the few and far between clips of original footage, most of it simply consists of the audience members watching these clips. There is perhaps only 10 minutes worth of actual "plot" scenes in the entire 79 minute film.

So it's not really a movie; it's just a 79 minute montage of scenes from other movies, occasionally inter-cut with clips of aliens making an audience watch the said montage. It's as if the filmmakers starting off by trying to make a movie about this group of kids, but then ran out of film 10 minutes in, so they had to make up the rest of the movie with stock footage. In fact even out of the original footage in the movie much of it gets reused over and over again, but set to different voice tracks.

The film is just wasted potential. Of course it couldn't have been a masterpiece, but it could have been a bit of harmless fun. Thank god I only paid bargain bin price for the DVD.

This movie was shot over a couple weeks at the Warner Grand in San Pedro Ca. Getting to dress up as one of the aliens was fun also getting painted green was fun. Getting to know the cast was the best part. And the director was wonderful. The worst part was seem to a screening of this and about halfway through looking at my watch to see how much longer it would last and I was in it!

To date, this is the single worst movie I've seen. It's not even bad-funny, it's just a tragedy that it's been made. It's only 1h. 15 min. anyway, but anyway it's a waste of your life! Have I made myself clear? Don't waste your money nor your time on this horrible, horrible semi-movie!!! It's not a request, it a direct order!

I was after the BBC DVD of Invasion: Earth, that really rather good mini series, but somehow received this terrible dross in the mail. I never suspected for a minute it would be a serious horror film; yet neither did I suspect it would be this tragically incoherent mess. There are theoretically good ideas: The now-irrelevant commentary on the human condition of wasting time in movie theatres, could have been a good basis for exploration, but it is hokey and poorly executed. The various pastiches of sci-fi horrors of the B movie days, while obviously a good idea on paper, are also horribly done. This is probably given that the low budget prevented any good material. But in the face of a low budget, most films of this ilk would have some truly clever dialogue, but not in this movie. The only redeeming feature comes from that which the film makers didn't even accomplish themselves. That is, to say, the clips of the B movie films of the bygone era of cinema, are a fun nostalgia trip. Unfortunately, you'll find yourself being irritatingly interrupted from watching classic moments from films such as Them, and The Blob, by the amateurish and childish plot.

AVOID LIKE SWINE FLU.