Invasion of the Pod People

After a meteor shower in California, Melissa (Erica Roby) feels that her co-workers and her boss Samantha (Jessica Bork) that work in the agency owned by Vickland (Michael Tower) are acting differently after receiving a weird plant. She shares her fears with her colleague Billie (Danae Nason) and with Detective Alexander (Marat Glaer) that are the only persons that she can trust.

"Invasion of the Pod People" is another remake of the classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", actually an awful rip-off. Erica Roby is the best in this flick, showing he lovely breasts and naked body and having a good performance with the poor script. This sci-fi – horror movie is so bad that the best scene is the lesbian party promoted by Samantha, especially when she seduces Melissa. The actors have lame performances in this forgettable crap. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Devoradores de Almas" ("Souls Devours")

Picked this up in a 10-movie pack for five bucks at K-Mart.

Is it classic sci-fi? No. Is it a very good movie? Hardly.

But I look at it this way: 50 cents for a flick about an alien ginger plant that turns mean girls into sex-starved, naked lesbians? Oh, yeah, K-Mart, here's my four bits. Can't buy me a Hershey bar for that anymore.

Gotta admit, I find a certain charm to The Asylum's "mockbuster" movies. They remind me of my childhood, when I'd read "Cinemagic" magazine and make my own "Star Wars" films on Super-8. Terrible, to be sure, but made with a modicum of love and reverence for the source material.

In rare cases, Asylum's movies are actually better than those they're aping. I'll take "Allan Quartermain and the Temple of Skulls" any day over the incomprehensible "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." And while the first "Aliens Vs. Predator" was good in a comic book sort of way, "AVP: Requiem" didn't make a lick of sense. Asylum's "AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter," starring aged stoner William Katt, was far more enjoyable. And who'da thunk Asylum's martial arts version of "I Am Legend" -- titled "I Am Omega" and starring that dude from "Iron Chef" -- would be as charming as it is? Not me, brother. But it's now my second favorite version of the story, next to Vincent Price's classic "The Last Man on Earth."

For the record, I'm not some Asylum company suit posting fake positive reviews, and I acknowledge the vast majority of Asylum's output is crapola. I'm just some guy who appreciates bad movies, and The Asylum tends to make more of those than anyone else.

And as long as K-Mart keeps selling them for 50 cents, I'm gonna keep buying them.

This movie had all the qualifications of a bad, bad movie; bad acting, bad dialog, poor plot progression, terrible soundtrack quality, bad set selection, scenes of people talking on cell phones, scenes of people in cars, stock footage and really bad special effects. When I see films like this I think, this was someone's film school project. The truth is it was probably an independent film festival project or made for Showtime.

To describe the acting as bad is using creative license on my part. There wasn't much acting in the film but there was a good bit of reading of cue cards or TelePrompter. The people in the film look at the side of the camera in every scene. The soundtrack had a lot of unexplained noise in a few scenes. The noise, which I figured out was supposed to be the pods multiplying, was so loud that the dialog was unintelligible.

The plot of the film would have been difficult to follow if I hadn't read the description on the DVD cover. The characters of the movie supposedly worked for a modeling agency. The story the film presents is; There's a company named Blockthorn that does something and one guy, the boss, wants something done and yells at his employees about getting it right. Then some of the employees become obsessed with a strange plant. One of the employees is attacked by a pod from the plant and then keeps sharing the plant with her coworkers. Yes, this movie was so bad that I wanted to turn away. But we suffered through to the end which left the plot open as if they intend to make a sequel.

Then there's the sex. Of course these pods from outer space know about seduction and use it to acquire their pod victims. There where at least four sex scenes with topless ladies. But these scenes were bad too cause only in low budget films to folks have sex without taking their pants and skirts off. Invasion of the Pod People is just bad. I wouldn't recommend that anyone watch this film.

First of all, the title of the movie is a clear indicator of what you are in for here. "Invasion of the Pod People" was very much a shameful rip-off of the classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", except it was just a horrible rendering of a classic movie.

I managed to sustain 42 minutes of the ordeal that is "Invasion of the Pod People" before I just gave up out of utter and complete boredom with the movie. Nothing happened throughout this time, unless you could women getting naked and making out and questionable acting as being worth mentioning of something happening.

The movie sounded like the audio was recorded from inside an empty metal barrel. The sound was just so annoying and poorly recorded. And more often than not that sound was serving as a nuisance and as an anchor around the movie.

Even the storyline was a blatant rip-off off the classic movie, but just don't less skillful. A meteor shower bring foreign celestial to Earth. And while the people see these objects as harmless, they harbor a darker purpose and a sinister ability to clone those in their vicinity.

The acting in the movie was wooden, rigid and questionable. It was obvious why most of the women on the cast list had been cast for this particular movie. Erica Kessler was actually doing a good enough performance from what I managed to witness, but then the script made her get naked as well. I am not a prude or anything, but the nudity in this movie was too excessive and didn't really serve the movie well.

"Invasion of the Pod People" was nowhere near to doing justice to the classic movie that the writers Ron Magid, Jay Marks and Leigh Scott so shamelessly had ripped off.

I have no intention of returning to finish watching "Invasion of the Pod People", and I would recommend that you watch the original movie over this at any time.

In all honesty though that is not saying all that much. It is better than the likes of 2012: Doomsday, Alien Origin, Titanic II, Transmorphers, AVH: Alien vs. Hunter, Death Racers, War of the Worlds 2 and Universal Soldiers, but it is nowhere near tolerable(of the Asylum's movies I've seen so far their best has been I Am Omega, which was only on the decently-average side). Eric Roby is decent, but his performance is the only asset that is that. The special effects are thankfully at least not overused but they are still very artificial looking, but the dark unfocused lighting and the hopelessly choppy editing were what cheapened the film visually. The music is forgettable and repetitive, while the sound effects were even worse, there is far too much muddied noise in the background in every scene that sometimes the dialogue is incoherent. And speaking of the dialogue, it's no great shakes either, very cheesy and lacking any kind of flow, while the story is thin and predictable with scenes that either drag on or abruptly end. The characters are ones you don't learn anything about and also get on your nerves, and the rest of the acting shows no charisma or inspired line delivery whatsoever. The ladies are hot but their talent ends there. So in conclusion, really bad but The Asylum have done much worse. 2/10 Bethany Cox