Sob o Domínio dos Aliens

However, being that Heinlein was one of the few sci-fi authors I +didn't+ read (I'm more of an Asimov and Bradbury fan myself) as a kid growing up, and I haven't seen the original film, I didn't have any problems with this movie when it came out in theaters. In fact, I found the premise genuinely creepy, the effects highly believable, and the presence of Donald Sutherland to be a masterful touch. It may not go down in the all-time pantheon of "greatest sci-horror films" ever, but if it was playing on HBO I wouldn't change the channel. Sometimes I think people get too caught up in whether a story is true to the original, and forget that it's JUST a movie and they should try to enjoy it on that basis.

Aliens have landed in the small town of Ambrose, Iowa. The locals have made an attraction of an alien landing. Government agents Andrew Nivens (Donald Sutherland) and son Sam (Eric Thal) arrive with Mary Sefton (Julie Warner) and Neil Jarvis (Richard Belzer) to investigate. They discover stingray-like creatures using humans as puppets. They escape back to base where agents Alex Holland (Keith David) and Dr. Graves (Will Patton) examine the parasite.

The problem for this movie is that the solution seems so obvious. Everybody should walk around without their shirts. The soldier can have extra armor on their backs. The President should be warning the general public. The movie starts out great with Julie Warner and her boobs theory. However, the tension peters out after they escape from the town. The movie wants to have a big third act but it's never big enough.

I remember watching this as a kid and thinking it was so scary. Now on rewatch I realize it is a campy sci-fi movie but with some good practical effects and John Carpenter vibes.

It looks like a UFO has landed in a small Iowa farm town. A top-secret US government investigative team from the "Office of Scientific Central Intelligence" goes out to investigate. The three stars are: limping leader Donald Sutherland (as Andrew Nivens), his handsome son and partner Eric Thal (as Sam Nivens) and sexy alien biologist Julie Warner (as Mary Sefton). They are about to conclude the whole thing was a teenagers' hoax, but Ms. Warner realizes aliens have landed. The reason, according to Warner, is that no males on the scene have noticed her arousing figure or tried to look down her unbuttoned blouse. You can almost hear her say, "Don't look at that alien spaceship, dammit, look down my shirt!"...

Now, these aliens attach themselves to your back (your spinal column, specifically) and they multiply quickly. The way to see if someone has been "infected" is to order the person to, "Take off your shirt!" Since this trick works, we're left wondering why most people in the cast are allowed to keep their backs covered. Most viewers would not protest Warner and Mr. Thal acting without their shirts (Thal goes without pants, too). If you don't mind wondering about plot confusions and contrivances like that, you could do worse than Stuart Orme's vision of Robert A. Heinlein's science-fiction novel. Thal and Warner are an attractive couple and Mr. Sutherland is a classic performer who can improve movies by simply being there.

****** The Puppet Masters (10/21/94) Stuart Orme ~ Eric Thal, Julie Warner, Donald Sutherland, Keith David

This was a decent sci-fi flick. Good performances by Julie Warner and Eric Thal, and of course there's no role that Donald Sutherland can't pull off. Alien effects were revoltingly good. OK, it's not completely true to Heinlein's magnificent novel. Hollywood has a formula, (the happy ending, the obligatory love interest of one or more of the stars, etc.) and any deviation from it is exceedingly rare. That's why foreign films are good, because they are not bound by the formula. I've noticed that great sci-fi movies are almost always originally written for the screen, rather than adapted from books. Books are always better than movies, but science fiction seems to be particularly so.