O Retorno Do Extraterrestre

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After watching a movie like this I lose faith in humanity but after watching MST3K bad mouth movies like this I regain a little faith in humanity. This is one of the worst movies ever. This is really the second time I have watched MST3K and fully understood it. I watched it with my dad as far back as the Minneapolis year!!! But I never really understood, I mean I understood it some what but not all of the jokes. The first movie I rented was the Movie Version with "This Island Earth" which isn't really bad so I thought MST3K was an damn funny show, now I know it is one of the damn funniest shows ever! This is one of their best episodes I just know it, every time someone screams for help they go through a bunch of names always ending with: McCloud!

This movie is the worst movie I have ever seen (although I want to see 'Manos' Hands of Fate). There are three different plots, PLOT A is about a little boy and his family in the wood, PLOT B is about some singers (who sing for 7 minutes then cut back to boy then sing for another 7), finally PLOT C involve some poachers. Eventually the singers go to the little boys house and you think finally it all comes together, not really the family leave the little boys plot and hang with the singers. Anyway the director must have been the son of the inventor of the fog machine because every scene outside is foggy, not an exaggeration either. Then it switches from winter to summer a few times outside also. The little boy finds an egg and tries to hatch it and becomes friends with it and calls the creature 'Trumpy'. he feed it milk and with the magic of choppy editing the thing grows from a kitten's size to the kids size.

The second plot has the singers getting in a fight and one of them going into the forest and getting killed by Trumpy's fellow creature so they take her to a house and then they decide to go to the rangers house and tell them stuff I guess.

I'll stop here in case you are waiting to watch this movie, but the best part is when Trumpy does magic things which the guys rip to shreds.

Hi all, it's two years later and I want to say that this review is a bit out dated. First, I openly admit I focused too much on Joel and the bots. I was new to MST3K, and just wanted to talk as much as possible about them. Second, I have seen Monster a-Go Go, and that is far worse than Pod People. BTW, I didn't know you can't talk in caps anymore.

Oh, how I love this, the movie that introduced me to the work of Juan Piquer Simon, one of the best "bad" directors ever. It was also the very first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 I ever saw, way back when, so it will always have a special place in my heart. Although this version of his movie was run through the Film Ventures International ringer (a company that takes movies and re-edits them, adding new music & credits), Simon's style shines through. There's also the usual Juan Piquer Simon stable of actors, including Ian Sera (Kendle in "Pieces") and Frank Brana (the guy who says "You don't have the authority to declare Happy Birthday!" in "Slugs").

The movie is about some poachers who encounter some strange eggs in the woods- no wait, it's about a rockin' rock-n-roll band who are going on a camping trip- no, wait, it's about an animal-loving red-haired kid named Tommy who lives with his unpleasant aunt and uncle deep in the woods. Eventually all these tales converge when Trumpy, a lovable fuzzy alien with an odd shaped head and phallic snout, hatches out of one the aforementioned strange eggs.

Tommy takes in Trumpy and teaches him the joys of jigsaw puzzles and eating peanuts (which Trumpy sucks through his snout, which should be charming but is ultimately a creepy image). Unfortunately, another alien who looks exactly like Trumpy is on a killing spree, and a case of mistaken identity could land Trumpy on the business end of alcoholic Uncle Joe's shotgun!

This is a pleasantly dumb movie, full of dumb characters and dumber dialog ("Oh yeah? Well, you're a jerk!" says Brana to his bearded sidekick). Trumpy is cool, especially when he does "magic things" like stand on the ceiling, make Tommy's laundry fly through the air, and turn an old Simon game into a slammin' beat box (Mix Master Trumpy's jams would later be pilfered by Moby, The Beastie Boys, and others). Also putting in an appearance is a picture of Ronald Reagan, which completely fooled me into thinking this was an American movie.

The MST3K episode featuring this masterpiece is available on video from Rhino, and no fan of absurd cinema should be without it!

I saw this film on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Suffice to say, it is one of my favorite episodes of the show as it is a very bad film that is a complete mess and deserving of the riffs it receives. The film apparently was going to be yet another film that tried to copy the success of Alien by having people in the woods being terrorized by an alien. Then, E.T. happened and thus a switch in gears and the alien was now friendly. Well, not entirely, there are two aliens present in the film, one mean and the other friendly so they kind of do a mash up of both films and thus these film was born. I cannot say if the alien was going to look like it did in the final product initially when the film was being made though. The way it looks in this film, I almost have to wonder if the people would would create the semi hit television show Alf saw this film as it does sort of resemble the alien from that show. The version I saw of this film was called Pod People and I am almost positive that the people who released it under the Pod People title are the same ones that did Cave Dwellers as they do the same thing with the credits, having a totally different film run during the opening and ending credits. Here it is a film called Galaxy Invader and from the looks of it, I am going to guess it is not much better than this one.

The story has poachers in the woods and then a little boy in a cabin in the woods and then a singer in a studio and we get introduced to all the principal cast members, thus making this one feel more like a horror at the beginning. A comet or meteor or something crashes and one of the poachers goes into a cave with huge eggs or pods and immediately begins bashing them! The mother returns and dispatches him and later the kid will find a surviving egg and hatch it and raise an alien of his own, all while the mother goes on a kill spree. The film is a mess as it goes all over the place. The singer and his back up singers go camping with a fan of his who falls off a cliff and this leads them to the boy in the cabin's cabin where his mother and cranky uncle resides. Can they get help before all are killed, will the boy get to play with his alien or will this film remain completely uneven?

This made for a wonderful episode of MST3K, in fact, it is my favorite Joel hosted episode. I prefer Mike, but Joel was on fire with this one as it played to his strengths. I never understood the people who claimed Manos was his best episode as to me that one was dull in a lot of places and this one was entertaining throughout. I actually own this film without the riffs on a collection of science fiction films and one day I may try to watch it and see how much was left out due to the show's time constraints; however, I do not see this one becoming vastly better. Unless there is some nudity or something...which brings up another point. What was the deal with the one girl that supposedly was not attractive. Sure, she was the least attractive of the backup singers and the groupie, but she was not exactly ugly either.

So, this film is a movie that wanted to be one thing and then became something else entirely. Kind of like a film from the 70's called The Dark. It started out being about a zombie roaming the streets of L.A, but they turned it into an alien due to the success of the film Alien. This one was trying to copy Alien, but due to the success of E.T it changed. Though the horror elements are still there as the mother alien knocks people off left and right while the boy tries to feed and hide his buddy alien. Strange how the friendly alien had all this magical abilities, but the mother only seem gifted with on hell of a karate chop!

They say that no good deed goes unpunished. This movie - or should I say "this swill" - shows that to be 100% true. Spielberg made "E.T." and someone made "Los nuevos extraterrestres" (called "Pod People" in the United States) in response. The movie has a boy befriending an alien who looks sort of like an anteater, and some weird things result. WHY CAN'T ALIENS KIDNAP THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THESE KINDS OF MOVIES?! There are plenty of good stories out there and they have to go and make this?!

That said, the movie was not a complete waste. Quite the opposite: "MST3K" once showed it. As you might imagine, Joel, Servo and Crow have lots of fun with it.

Says one of the many annoying characters that populate this really stupid movie. Something comes to earth and lands in the woods next to a cabin inhabited by a high pitched boy who has a thing for animals, his mother and some old cranky guy. There's also poachers running around, and pretty soon there's a group of teenagers driving around. Eventually they all wind up getting killed by the aliens. Well, not all of them, which is unfortunate because then the movie would be over in thirty minutes! Watch this stinker with Joel, Tom and Crow and laugh along at this really, really bad movie. As Tom would say "Huzzah!"