O Retorno Do Extraterrestre

Yeah. "The Pod People" is a movie that is so extremely bad, you'll OK the TV and yell out at the top of your lungs, "It stinks!!!!!!" I've compared this movie with other kid versus alien family movies from the 1980s such as "E.T. The Extra-terrestrial" and the lovable "Mac and Me," and what do both of those movies have that "The Pod People" is missing from sight? A good, well thought out story, innovation, happiness, and not being able to get depression within a single viewing, of course! So do not, I repeat, do not watch "The Pod People" without Joel and the Bots of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," because after watching the MST3K version, I couldn't imagine what this movie would be like without the funny commentary!

This movie is really bad, one of the worst I've ever seen. Thank God for "MST3000" and the 'bots helping us out with this one. I especially hated the squeaky voiced Mason Resse look-alike as the kid, and the scenes of the idiots in the recording studio were the absolute pits. What was with that guy wearing an "I'm a Virgin" t-shirt? Also, according to the book "Gestures" by former Parker Pen VP Roger E. Axtell, "The 'O.K.' sign, with thumb and forefinger in a circle and the other fingers splayed outward, is an obscene gesture in Spain." This explains why the singer is giving this sign when saying "It sucks!" in the movie, since it's Spanish. Why was it left in for the overseas audience? It also does NOT let off the hook those who dubbed the song into something pathetically incomprehensible and indefensible. "Flying over fish"? "Idiot in control now"? Who can figure out what they were trying to dub? I loved it when Joel and friends did their take off on this. The alien character also sucked, looking like a reject from a Sid and Marty Krofft pilot. One of the all time worst! Consider yourself duly warned even if you watch this with Joel and the crew! My rating: 1 out of 10.

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.

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!

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!