The Monitors

This was not easy to find, and the DVD I watched had an oddity. A stretch of 10-15 minutes repeats over during the first 1/3 of the film. Whether this is intentional, or whether it's a transfer glitch I'll never know.

Second City IS Chicago school improv comedy, and this looks like a first attempt to take it to film. 10 years later SCTV became very entertaining with Rick Moranis, John Candy and Eugene Levy involved. All the elements of good stand-up comedy are here, and it's full of great throwaway lines. Sometimes it's shockingly funny (Xavier Cugat with toy poodles?). Larry Storch is prototype John Belushi, and his limo with cheap deflector shields is a prototype of the Animal House cake-car. Odetta singing hippie songs? Everett Dirksen quoting from the Bible with a giant bronze bust behind him? Different.

But as the first SCTV efforts were sloppy and uneven, this earlier film is even more so. All the great improv comedy fails to marry with the sci-fi theme and cheap psychedelia and it ends up falling flat. I had trouble staying awake.

I saw this years ago, before I really knew much about Second City. Apparently, this was done by a group of Second City folks in the "let's make a movie" spirit, & it shows! Cameos by everybody & their dog, including Jackie Vernon, Sen. Everitt Dirkson, & Xavier Cougat (& his dog!). I knew it was based on a Keith Laumer novel, but didn't know until now that he co-wrote it.

Very funny, very strange, & now that I live in Chicago, I recognize many of the locations as being within a few blocks of Second City!

How can you beat Guy Williams, Larry Storch, & Avery Schreiber? Fun, relaxed performances in a very enjoyable SF story.

I saw this movie as a kid on the late late show .I really liked it and if anyone knows where I can get a copy of it let me know.From what I can remember of it I think it was very cool the way the aliens had control over everything. they were supposed to be the bad guys but you started cheering for them .

This used to turn up at 3AM on those stations you had to stick a coat hanger in the back of your TV to get semi-clearly, but I haven't seen it crop up in twenty years now. Aliens conquer the Earth, but the twist is that they bring peace and prosperity and the population rebels against it. Based on a book by Keith Laumer one of the movies more memorable moments are the recurring commercials promoting the Monitors that begin with a chorus singing "the moooo-nitors mmmm-mmmmmm....." Worth a look if you ever stumble across it.

I remember watching this movie on late nite TV many times as a child. Although a bit slow it is a good movie and worth watching. The Monitors are a group of aliens which inhabit Earth and take responsibility as a sort of police force, bringing peace to the planet as well as technological and medical advancements. Although the Monitors are truly benign, an underground movement does not want the planet to be controlled by outsiders.

The TV series Earth Final Conflict seems suspiciously similar. The social statements are similar to those found in Metropolis, 1984, and Planet of the Apes, and Colossus: The Forbin Project, to name a few. The commentary questions government intervention in affairs domestic as well as foreign, and seems to question whether peace is better than the freedom of self-governance, and if "peace" can be enforced. It is also one of the few cold war science fiction movies that does not focus on the USSR by proxy.