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Well I made it through this bizarre western/sci-fi mash up, that's about all I can say about this. It's a definite B-movie with the aliens reminiscent of (copied from) 'War Of The Worlds' only on a smaller and much cheaper scale as is the whole tone of this weird movie.

It follows (best I can figure) a condemned outlaw (train robber Sam Phoenix -James Marsters) who's eminent hanging is abruptly halted by an invasion of aliens. Outlaws and townspeople must then join forces to survive as the ragtag group find sanctuary in a church. Yeah this was a tough movie to get through. I found the female gunslinger/bounty hunter character super annoying but was strangely fascinated by James Marsters' hair which look great throughout. 05.13

It's "War of the Worlds" set in the Old West. Just as a legendary train robber is about to be hanged in a small Western town, a bunch of mechanical creatures invade the town and kill everyone in their path. A mother ship also begins to hover overhead. The outlaw and several others desperately battle the space invaders, but they quickly get picked off one by one. By the time the dust has settled ... well, you can guess the outcome. A Canadian job, this has some interesting characters but very poor CGI for the invaders. And the action sequences are clumsily staged. You never believe for a moment that humans and monsters are battling one another. A little more production money and attention to script details would have helped. As it is, we were just relieved when it was over.

Interesting flick. Original plot line. Mediorce cgi. James Marsters (Spike, Buffy the vampire series) plays the lead character in a sci/western about invading aliens. Faced with certain death, Marsters, (Sam) chooses to fight the alien invasion with his own resourses.

I truly wish that the Canadian company that produced this had invested the money to make this film correctly. The actors have nothing to apologize for, they did the best with a small budget.

This film is worth a watch. Pay attention to the acting of the actress playing the bounty hunter Rose. Other than Marsters, she is one to watch.

Aliens invade a small town in westernville land. That's it for the plot. There is a lame attempt at a love interest sub plot but it never takes off and just seems like wasted lines.

This movie felt like I was watching grown men playing 'lets pretend' out in the back garden. It just had nothing to it that you could believe in. There was no single point throughout the entire film where there was an emotional connection with the audience. The acting was for the most part ridiculous not just hammy and poor but ridiculous. The female bounty hunter was just... I can't think of a superlative to meet so I'll just say miscast. Shouting out her corny lines in this schoolyard westernville town cheap TV accent.

The sound was pretty decent. The lighting I did not like. I think maybe a tint or some basic attempt at contrast was needed but it was all very samey and bland. The CGI was just passable not good but it was better than cardboard (although not a funny). All in all a film with very little charm or wit to carry off the lower budget. If you want to see a similar theme in a different setting (i.e. not westernville land town) look for Alien Raiders to see how a film of this kind can be made so much better on similar (if not smaller) budgets.

It's more difficult to review a movie that is abysmal than wonderful because there's just so much that's bad it's hard to decide how to begin. The dialog was infantile. Not only was the writing cliché and trite, it was obvious that the writer had never seen a western let alone ever heard anyone who actually spoke with an authentic western accent and dialect. Possibly the most horrid aspect of this terrible writing took the form of the character "Rose" whose ludicrous dialog mixed with laughable acting made for a character of pure comedy, but it wasn't supposed to be funny.

The story line was sophomoric, moronic even. The plot was as thin as tissue and weaker than a ghost town's watered down whiskey. The timing of the expository statements were so in-your-face that one watching could only believe that the writer had the impression that everyone in the audience was incapable of understanding anything over second grade information. Saying it was insulting is an insult to the word insulting.

The guns were a horrible anachronism. The style if six shooters used in the movie wasn't in place in the "Wild West". The only consolation is that the guns matched era of the dialog which is modern, though stupid.

This movie is the clearest case of "let's make money as quickly as possible" I've ever seen. Utter crap. I wouldn't have finished watching it but my eyes were glued to the screen as if I were watching a horrible accident on TV and couldn't look away.

This movie is so bad, I felt it necessary to pen my first movie review. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time watching it, making fun of it, shaking my head in disbelief... but it is on the borderline of being so terrible as to not even be fun to ridicule. Luckily, I had beer.

The idea for the movie isn't so bad, but the execution was unbearable. Horrible acting, especially on the part of Sanny Van Heteren who is almost unwatchable. The dialogue is unbelievably insipid and unrealistic. Characters talk about what has happened in exposition form instead of relaying the information through discovery by the character. Predictable, awful. It makes me wonder how it ever got made.

Pet peeve: modern guns mixed with older ones, none from the right time period. Mixed with the fouled up science, trite and contrived story, this one is a must pass. Save your money. Keep this 90 minutes of your life for something else. Been meaning to clean the bathroom? Do that instead. It will be far less taxing and ultimately more rewarding.

In the Old West of 1892, a bank robber is about to become guest of honor at a neck tie party. Suddenly, giant metallic scorpion type things appear and break up the party. But just when this looks like it will be another body-count sideshow, an interesting story emerges.

The budget isn't extravagant, but much is accomplished with what they have. The style of the story is a tip of the hat to the vision of Jules Verne (who is mentioned in the film), and it shows some real imagination. The invaders also look to be of the sort H.G. Wells might cook up after a bad nightmare. The plot draws you in, with an intriguing mystery of just what do these rampaging creatures want, why are they here, and where did they come from. The film wisely withholds some of that, and releases just enough information to the characters and you at a very well constructed pace to keeps things interesting. It isn't even too clear if these things are machines or organic life forms until deep into the movie.

A weakness might be that the characters are written as western clichés, but they are developed in an adequate fashion. The acting is actually superior, and most of the cast rises above any limitations the script gives their roles. CGI effects are done well enough to make these hostile invaders threatening. The dialog supports the action, and doesn't fall into the cornball quips trap that so many films do. The ending is perhaps too abrupt, with no epilogue given at all.

Overall, not a bad watch.

The Good:

-Neat, Original Idea; Aliens v.s. Cowboys. How can you screw that up?

-Nice set design, costumes, casting. Looks like what I imagine a real Western town might have been like if I wasn't being overly critical.

-Marsters is fun to see playing the hero.

-The production values, action and running around and hammy story-telling was all very formula, but nonetheless executed with competence. It was as good as any average hour-long TV drama, and we've all sat through enough of that stuff without complaint.

The Bad:

-Dreary lighting. This might have been on purpose, but I found it a bit tiresome. Some clear sunlight would have gone a long way.

-The sci-fi thinking is about as sophisticated as a mediocre old Star Trek episode (minus the Kirk/Bones/Spock magic). The alien bugs eat, get this, *Uranium*. -Now, if this were the 1950's when, in the minds of the public, uranium was akin to magical pixie dust; the Gee-Whiz Science of the era, then it might not have seemed hopelessly silly. But today, it's simply not that impressive a trope to run a whole story around. Though, apparently the writer slept through high school science because in his world view, uranium, being the fuel of leading-edge human science *seventy* years ago, must clearly also be the core ingredient of any super-advanced alien society as well.

And for some reason, when it comes to this particular brand of silly, other levels of child-like thinking crop up. Because the aliens don't just eat uranium; oh no! It's also their primary weapon! But they don't use radioactive space rays. No sir! They shoot big Indian arrow head chunks of the stuff out of their tails. Uranium is probably the life blood of their entire alien empire as well, but I wouldn't know, because I had to give up two thirds of the way through the story. It just got too dumb for me and I started cringing.

-The dialogue was hammy; it sounded like what a child thinks the adult world sounds like. The actors did their best with what they had.

Conclusion: "High Plains Invaders" looks pretty good if you don't examine it too closely. If you're a (young) kid, this would probably be fun. But if you're a discerning adult, the whole exercise is tiresome and unrewarding. It's not so bad that you'll feel abused, but I say that after having hit the 'eject' button before finishing.

Only watch this if you're under the age of 10, stoned or have absolutely nothing else to do.

Okay, this is far from perfect, but it is watchable compared to other SyFy channel movies, most of which range from really quite bad to unwatchable. Granted the story is formulaic, the writing silly and weak, the characters clichéd and the ending abrupt. However, what makes High Plains Invaders better than most of SyFy's outputs is that in particular while it is not high art visually it doesn't look cheap either. The photography and editing is less slapdash than usual, the lighting has more atmosphere and the effects are much less crude and used fairly well. The music and sound effects for a SyFy movie are also above average, the film's direction while hardly genius or influential actually feels as though there is direction evident and the pacing is much more even than usual, going at a brisker pace without feeling too rushed apart from the ending. Also while the characters are clichéd, James Marsters, Sanny Van Hetteren and Cindy Sampson's above decent performances stopped me from feeling bored and disengaged by them. So all in all, could've done with a lot of improvements but actually compared to a lot of SyFy's stuff it is one of their more tolerable movies. 6/10 Bethany Cox

The concept of the movie interested me but unfortunately the film itself while decent still isn't something memorable. Technically it's better than the average syfy movie but... that's not really a compliment.

The characters actually are slightly deeper than most stock archetypes you'd find inhabiting similar film scripts. Unfortunately long before it's necessary too many sign the "doomed" roster, and honestly knowing who's going to survive or not takes away from the film too much.

Interesting creatures. Unfortunately that only means we're not going to be seeing them appear in one of the occasional good syfy movies. Ultimately I was hoping for another film like "Aztec Rex" where the cheesy scenario and interesting characters in danger provide an entertaining film; apparently it wasn't to be.

This movie is a complete waste of time. Poor acting, poor directing, amazingly poor script and 1990's looking CGI, the budget for this movie should have gone to a project that was worthwhile. While the first few scenes of this movie fool anyone into thinking this is going to be a gripping Sci-Fi Western, it is far from it. Almost every scene is predictable. Being a paid actor, it shouldn't be that hard to play a bad as gun slinging shooter. Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Yule Brenner and John Wayne and so many more have left behind a massive library to learn from. Somehow the crew behind this movie seemed to have missed the basics that are taught from so many movies. The actors may have had a better shot if the scripting and directing had some talent behind them, but even a poorly scripted and directed movie with someone like Clint Eastwood still is enjoyable to watch.

This movie is a bad acted sad performance. The only thing that I can find as positive is the bugs. They are well animated and look fine. That's why I rated this movie with a 3. Some score for the bugs. Also the spaceship is animated nicely. The actors really need some actor lessons - it's to awful to watch. The girl who plays the bounty hunter is the most bad actress I ever seen in a movie. The first scene with the farmer who carries uranium is also not acting how it should be. His answers are cold and it's like he reads his text from a text board.

The movie is not going fast enough and the dialogs are to slow and boring. No, sorry this is not how it should be.

Somebody thought it was a good idea to have extra-terrestrial creatures invade the Wild West and make it into a movie. The whole idea sounds very juvenile and the end result resembles a movie fitting for children but with the horror violence and gore added to attract mature audiences. Take away the horror violence and gore and this movie could have easily been made into a cartoon for children.

The end result is atrocious. There is not one single redeeming feature about this movie. Poor acting, terrible CGI and dodgy special effects done on the cheap, sloppy anachronistic attention to detail, and an even worse story. It might have been a low budget movie, but it definitely shows.

The dialogue was very unrealistic given the time period. Surely the screenwriters, the producers and the director would have done a bit of research and learnt from previous Western movies or even gone on the internet. It doesn't have to rip off famous movies from Clint Eastwood, John Wayne or Charles Bronson but surely they could have paid more attention to detail. A total insult to all Westerns.

The movie was so bad, I stopped watching the movie after 40 minutes as I could not waste a minute longer watching this rubbish. I didn't really care for how it ended as I felt it would be very predictable.

1/10 (if I could give this 1/2 a star I would).

Where to start...

While there were some good actors in this, in addition to some horrible performances, nothing could save this train wreck.

The writing was awful. The dialog corny. And the weaponsmaster should have been shot.

Let me explain. The setting is Colorado in 1892 if memory serves. The actors are turned loose with modern double-action revolvers. While you might find a model available back then, it would not likely have been in Colorado. Worse, two actors square off, the sound effect for cocking the gun is heard, and neither weapon is cocked.

Then, up against powerful badguys, the goodguys don't grab the long guns available in the Sheriff's Office...they ignore them at a time they need more firepower.

I could have put up with the cheesy CGI. But the movie just felt so amateurish, par for the course for a SyFy production these days.

Even Spike couldn't save this travesty.

Considering the utter garbage which has come from the SyFi Channel in the last few years, this movie was quite pleasantly surprising.

The plot was reasonably fresh and mostly logical. The actors delivered acceptable performances. The outfits were good. The setting was quite acceptable and looked like the northwestern U.S. CGI, if not great, was at least better than typical SyFi fair. The ending was, of course, predictable, and left unanswered questions.

A nice point was that the mandatory scientist (Jules) was not the typical all-knowledgeable font of information. Although he did make a few statements which included knowledge which did not yet exist in 1890, along with some that were just plain wrong; this role actually made fairly good sense within the situation.

There were a number of questionable items. The female bounty hunter is not something which would be likely in 1890. Many, but not all, of the firearms where very clearly modern. (Does anyone who produces movies ever listen to someone with knowledge in this field?) Finally, the repartee between characters who are opposed to each other before the arrival of the "invaders" begins to strain credulity.

Altogether and unexpectedly, this was a movie worth the watching.

My theory for this movie is that it is a prelude to War Of The Worlds, the remake with Tom Cruise. The aliens I believe came from another planet a milennia ago. They came upon Mars, probably inhabited, and killed its inhabitants. Then they stripped the planet of its resources. Somehow, they discovered Earth. They are after the Uranium in order for them to start the production of the Tripods, and that those "balloons", as one of the characters called it, is actually a manufacturing ship for those Tripods. After production, they bury them deep in the ground until they are needed to invade Earth. Does anyone else agree with my theory?

Let me start off by saying that it's better than most of the pot boiler Sci Fi channel movies. It makes a tiny bit of pseudo science fiction sense.

I'll start off with a pet peeve of mine, ridiculous gun handling. They mixed extremely modern guns with period guns with no rhyme or reason. Modern Smith and Wesson revolvers in stainless steel with modern target sights and ventilated ribs are used side by side with ones that almost could be period. It's sloppy, very sloppy.

It's no gem. It's pleasant, something to watch when you've had a bad day and are just in the mood to relax to something mindless. Unfortunately I found many of the characters ridiculously bad. The worst was the woman bounty hunter. She was just too 21st century politically correct, but she wasn't the only one.

For a made for TV movie, it is surprisingly good. Very good camera work, better-than-usual-for-TV acting. The theme is fine, the story is simple (best kind) and makes good use of a number of sub-threads. Some irritating characters, but then people really are like that. The script itself could have used a couple more coats of lacquer on it, but that's typical for Hollywood. The movie's ending falls apart a little (but only a little), but that's also typical for Hollywood, TV or otherwise.

Let's say, "between made for TV" and the title itself, the experience was better than I was prepared for.