Horror and science fiction fans expected a lot more in the 1980's than your typical drive-on fair that this ends up being. Other than a few good moments of special effects, the build up this film is very boring and by the time the plot really gets going, you really have begun to see that it's too late. When the alien pulls off his human head, revealing his own look in the New York City skyscraper hotel room, it's gross but we'd already had better effects with several werewolf films that went further and create a genuine frights. It's like a mask kept on by super glue being pulled off so the ooze from it looks like slimy plasma, and there has to be more than just that to make a good science fiction or horror film.

The cast is pretty impressive for 80's character actors and a few who had minimal success as leads. Nancy Allen may be away from the Brian de Palma films for now, but it doesn't seem like she's learned much so she's barely adequate. Fiona Lewis is ravishing in red as an alien in human form, and she does provide a little bit of mystery, but there's not much to her part.

Same goes to Paul LeMat, Louise Fletcher, Wallace Shawn, Diana Scarwid and Michael Lerner. For fans of "Mommie Dearest", seeing Scarwid over acting in the typical soulless way just makes you wonder why Hollywood adopted her. The same goes for Fletcher who declares that nobody takes the train anymore after they decide to notify airlines and bus stations about the aliens, and of course you know that means that an alien will end up on the train.

This doesn't really gel in any way, flowing from alien to alien, and in my case, there wasn't enough entry to draw me in, and none of the ideas presented here were original in any way. It takes a lot of patience to wait for the cameos of "Lost in Space" actors June Lockhart and Mark Goddard, as well as legendary character actor Charles Lane. Talk about invasion of the time snatchers. It's 90 minutes I'll never get back again.

It's "Back to the Future" meets "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" when a woman goes to her hometown in the Midwest but doesn't return. Her husband (Paul LeMat) goes there and discovers that aliens took it over 25 years earlier with the government's complicity! To complicate things just a little further, we find out that "Men in Black" was right: the tabloids DO tell the truth (in this case, there's an article about a town getting taken over by aliens)! It's just neat seeing that when he goes there, everything still looks like the 1950s, and then no one believes him. But overall, how they develop the story is pretty interesting. Louise Fletcher seems to be channeling Nurse Ratched as the government bureaucrat trying to keep the alien takeover under wraps, and Nancy Allen plays her usual kind of role as the tabloid reporter who wrote about the alien takeover. But really neat is Michael Lerner as a man whose family got abducted by the aliens many years earlier.

Anyway, "Strange Invaders" shows that alien invasion movies can be really cool, especially since the aliens took on human form. You're sure to like it. Also starring Wallace Shawn and Charles Lane (who's now 101 years old and still going).

I reviewed this clever tribute to low-budget 1950s sci=fi flicks (most notably "Invaders From Mars") some years ago. Having just watched it again, I felt compelled to write it up one more time. The people who put this charming cult classic together definitely knew what they were doing: A big city college teacher (LeMat) goes searching for his missing ex-wife in a rural Midwest town, only to discover the town is populated by what appear to be very hostile aliens (for one thing, they love blowing up cars). The professor learns the aliens took over the town in the late 1950s, with our government's permission. One of the great gags in this delightful movie is that, 25 years later, nothing has changed in the occupied town. It's still full of hayseeds and sock hops and hideous American-made monster mobiles. A tabloid journalist (Allen) joins the professor in his search, and all hell breaks loose as the aliens attempt to keep their identity a secret. The supporting cast is populated by award-winning actors like Louise Fletcher, doing a variation on her legendary Nurse Wratchet (around the same time, she also appeared in a spoofy remake of "Invaders From Mars"),and Michael Lerner, whose woebegone character has lost his wife and kids to the aliens and has been locked away in the funny farm. The movie was clearly shot on a shoestring, with poor sound quality and way too many single takes (watch the little boy at the end put his right arm around his dad for a split second before dropping it and staring off-camera at what probably was one of his real-life parents). But the film also exhibits a unique charm and features some truly unnerving moments (dig the "Evil Dead" bit when the professor's dog, now a captive of the aliens, appears to rush back and forth past the professor on a lonely road, unseen but definitely there via incredible sound effects and unusual camera work. Also, some of the other effects are extremely satisfying in their crude way, such as a series of glowing orbs that hold the captive humans and the aliens' spaceship. Plus, the story's pace never slackens. There's something going on every second of this movie; there ain't no padding. The ending is utter hokum, but intentionally so, I suspect.