The Galaxy Invader

The Galaxy Invader tells the story of a couple of clueless rednecks who come upon an alien with a powerful weapon. The pair believe that if they can capture the alien, they'll hit the jackpot. The alien, however, isn't going to be easy to take. The industrious rednecks recruit some friends from a local bar to help them out. Soon, the woods are full of drunken yokels with guns and an alien with an even more deadly gun. It's not a good combination.

The Galaxy Invader is another of those films that I find difficult to write about. Director Don Doher has either crafted one of the most inept pieces of garbage I've ever watched or he's intentionally created a master-class in "so bad it's good" filmmaking. While I suspect the former, there are so many aspects of the film that scrape the proverbial bottom-of-the-barrel that any breathing adult involved in making the film should have been able to see how horrid the whole thing was. There are so many examples of what I'm talking about that I could quite literally write pages about the direction, special effects, costuming, plot, and on and on. Instead, I'll focus on the acting and casting to try to make my point. I've written about poor acting in any number of movies. The Galaxy Invader, however, is on another level altogether. The acting here is so bad you really have ask yourself if it was done on purpose. Rarely do you hear the dialogue of an entire film delivered in such a stilted, unnatural fashion. I've seen elementary school plays with more believable acting. The casting only accentuates the poor acting. The family of hillbillys speaks with at least four different accents. Father has an over-the-top country sound. Mother sounds like she's from New England. Daughter sounds like she's straight out of Brooklyn. And the son speaks with very little noticeable accent - I don't believe that dopey isn't a regional dialect. Surely someone involved with the film noticed all this. Was it bad filmmaking or was it intentional and was Doher having a laugh?

In the end, The Galaxy Invader is bad - there's really no other way to look at it. The movie is horrible in every way a movie can be. However, it is not without some limited entertainment value - intentional or not. I'm rating it a 4/10.

Back in high school, one of our favorite six-pack stinkers was The Fiend (1980), in which a supernatural creature resembling a radioactive Twistie enters the grave of a recently deceased music teacher. He comes back from the dead, naturally craving blood, but more unnaturally, still giving home lessons on the violin. It was one of a string of low-budget genre movies from Don Dohler, a Baltimore filmmaker who may have turned out like his more famous Baltimore counterpart John Waters if he'd spent less time gluing together fanzines and devouring Famous Monsters Of Filmland, and more time huffing nitrous and shimmying around with perverts.

And just like a John Waters film, Dohler's movies are filled with would-be thespian matrons and blockheads with thickly nasal Baltimore twangs screaming at each other in garishly decorated sets. In the case of The Galaxy Invader from 1985, it's the family of a violent, gun-toting alcoholic hillbilly doing the screaming - dear old Paw discovers the crash site of an alien in a green rubber reptile suit, and decides bagging a spaceman before the CIA does means big bucks on the black market. He rustles up a hunting party of greedy Harleyville hicks while the Moon Man goes on a Human Hunt. One early victim of the reptilian rampage is George Stover, a Don Dohler standby who keen-eyed John Waters watchers will recognize as Mink Stole's father in Waters' Desperate Living (1977).

Compared to most shot-on-video garbage released these days, it's an unexpected treat - shot on film with a distinct style, albeit a Z-grade one, and with a real wide-eyed, earnest and straight-faced appreciation of the genre which gives Don's movies a genuine charm. Sadly Don passed away in December 2006 aged 60, but he leaves behind the legacy of his hardly misspent life. Don Dohler, wherever you are in the cosmos, I salute you.

There were a total of 3 effects in this movie: The first was the crappy animated "meteor" as it hit the earth. The second was the rubber suited alien (reminded me a lot of the creature from the black lagoon). Then there was the globe & gun thingy. Sadly, we didn't get to see a spaceship or even a hole in the ground---not even a studio cave.

The globe & gun contraption would have been fair had it been backed up by decent effects. The shots it fired and the dumb little firebursts were really lame.

Now the rubber mask wasn't bad. The first time it was shown it actually startled me (that's quite an accomplishment for a movie of this calibre). But from there it was all downhill.

Acting was just plain bad. And the only people in the whole cast who didn't look like they had just risen from a pigpen were the kid (David) and the alien. In my opinion the alien was the only decent actor in this mess---and that's probably cause he didn't have to talk. The kid would have been okay if he hadn't had that vacant expression on his face the whole time.

The story was dumb but had an unusual twist in that the alien was the one being chased instead of the usual opposite. But it seemed the story centred around the psychopathic Joe more than the alien. And occasionally you got the idea that maybe the producer had other things on his mind than the story at hand---I mean there were quite a few ass shots of those girls.

Brief recap of story: Alien crashes on earth. Crash is witnessed by college kid who tells his prof. But before prof can arrive, large group of morons (led by two even bigger morons) get together to hunt the alien. Constant bickering (and even killing) among the morons almost makes the viewer forget this is supposed to be a sci-fi movie. (Honestly, I really, really wanted that alien to off all those dopes except the boy & prof.---it would have been so satisfying.) The alien is captured, then gets away with help from boy & prof. But the hunt continues with several lives lost and a most unsatisfying ending. (You really feel sorry for that poor alien---not only because of the story, but because he had to be in the same movie with all those boneheads).

One other positive: it's in colour.

I gave this one a most generous 3 mostly because of the rubber suit & cause it was able to give me a little jump. Sci-fi night owls can probably endure thru this moronic mess without falling asleep---I did. Everyone else---don't waste your time.

It's so tempting to add this one to the coaster collection.

What a load of worse than cheesy crap but kinda semi-funny. I think the humor was completely intentional... sorta a spoof on the old alien horror sci-fi films of the 50s, 60s maybe the 70s I'm guessing. I don't recall this film, maybe it was because it was a direct-to-video.

The lame hillbillies are better than the actual creature. They get so annoying that you can't wait for the creature to get them but you kinda want all of them to stick around just to hear the next dumb thing they say and do.

I think the creature kinda looks like The Swamp Thing in away. And it carries what looks like an alien egg that flashes to red sometimes.

It's lame enough to get a couple of giggles out of at best.

3/10

Okay, I gotta admit that this is the ONLY redneck, white-trash sci-fi film I have ever seen--so by default it is the best. And with a very charitable score of 2, this isn't saying much! I UFO lands in the country and the alien that came from it was actually pretty good--with an interesting costume and makeup. Unfortunately, from this auspicious start, the film was all down hill from there. Why? Because then the action switched to a group of horrid actors who made up a family that looked like they'd escaped from a John Waters film, such as FEMALE TROUBLE or PINK FLAMINGOS. The two daughters and wife were all pretty stupid and awful but compared to Daddy, they were like charm school graduates. Daddy was the most pointlessly obnoxious and trashy person I've seen in film in a long time--spending practically every second in the film with alcohol in his hand, cursing, threatening or shooting. Plus, his costume was the ever-present white t-shirt that was like one giant hole! And, to assist Daddy in all his obnoxiousness was his cigar-chomping and rather psychotic friend. Together they decided that it was a good idea to capture the alien and get rich. This was pretty much the whole plot. Daddy and his inbred idiot friend chasing the poor alien. In fact, this duo was so obnoxious and awful that the rest of the white trash decided to help the alien! The film is full of amateur acting, bad filming and horrid dialog. In no way other than the alien's costume is this film superior to films like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. It honestly looks like someone's home movie starring their drinking buddies, though on this level it's good for an occasional laugh.

FYI--If anyone cares, this film was made in Maryland. As I saw some real similarities between this and some of the cheesier John Waters films I wonder if perhaps the writer/director Don Dohler wasn't perhaps a friend or associate of Waters or at least was seriously impacted by his work.