Not really a B-Movie but it is a Sci-Fi. Alien Invasion film so I'll mention it anyway
Supposedly,
The Puppet Masters is loosely based on a Robert Heinlein book of the same name. I haven't read the book, though, so I can't compare them.
The plot to this one is ultra-basic sci-fi material. Something crashes in a field in rural Iowa and little alien slugs start infesting the local populace. The slugs take over the minds and will of their host body. Andrew Nivens (Donald Sutherland) leads a team of government personnel, mostly his son, Sam Nivens (Eric Thrall) and Mary Sefton (Julie Warner) to try to determine what's going on, and how to stop the spreading alien infestation. There are some standard cliches: The aliens are all one entity controlled from a single hive, half the movie is wondering who is under control and who can be trusted, etc...the obligatory 'one more was still alive' fight scene after the story is ostensibly over.
What I liked:No time wasted getting started: Scene one - aliens land, Scene two -Andrew and company on the scene, Scene 3 - first negative encounter between the heroes and the aliens. Right to the point, no messing around
The acting was pretty good. I always like Donald Sutherland (although it wasn't until seeing this with "Dark City" and "24" in mind, that I realized how much he resembles son Keifer in the teeth and mouth). Trall and Warner and the side characters also did well. It's hard to act seriously without going into farce when talking about alien parasite invasions
While the alien invasion cliche was strong, they avoided many subcliches that are usually annoying. Here teh government and military officials are professional and competent. The scientists, while professionally fascinated, are under no illusions as to the nature of this threat and the need to find a way to destroy it.. This is the way you hope people in these positions would truly react in such a situation; something I don't think I've really seen since "Them"
The writing had some very smart aspects which I liked:
In particular, Mary had two interesting parts. One was when she sorta laughed with Sam about her own career as an 'exo-biologist' correctly observing that studing potential alien life with, um...no alien life to study is rather a humourous career idea. I was also highly amused that Mary first suspects something's wrong with the towns folk because, as she telss Sam and Andrew, a woman is used to certain 'reactions' from men and when she didn't get the 'up-and-down lookover' when she meets a few local men, she's suspicious. She later tests this theory by loosening her blouse before leaning over a man's desk to get a pen and observing his...lack of interest. That's one heck of a way to test for alien mind control..or as the interaction between her and Sam went: "I didn't do that" "You're still doing it"
Other good writing bits included Sam's reaction to having been controlled and now being free. Like Picard and the Borg, he may be free from their influence, but it's still messing with his head. Also, the fact that Andrew and Sam have a negative past together, while surfacing in some dialog, is handled intelligently. Both act professionally and don't let the past interfere with the job. Sam doesn't like his dad, but professionally respects him. Both men at times do things that endanger the other, but only because it's needed for the greater good, and still try to do it in a way that doesn't kill the other, which could easily be done.
All in all, I thought the script was fairly well done in handling little details and in fleshing out the characters and interactions. In the wrong hands (say, anyone at U.F.O.) these personality backgrounds and story points could've been very badly handled
What I didn't likeWell, for a movie that spends much of it's tension on 'who can be trusted?' it telegraphs the answers fairly obviously. You can usually spot anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes in advance "oh...he's infected...this is not going to go well" Partially because the movie follows it's own formula so rigoursly that you can almost start predicting "he's gonna get infected" and partially because the characters start doing things that are so obvious to the viewer that you wonder why the characters don't figure it out much earlier than they do. this got really irritating The impact of finding out "he's been infected, oh no!" was diminished because as a viewer you already knew it
While for the most part, the heroes were compentent. Every now and then they did domething really stupid needed to move the plot along.
Such as 'this person has been in a situation to be infected, let's check them out before trusting them'. Considering that the slugs just physically attach to someon'es back and neck, this sorta spot check is really easy to do and while they do it regularly, the *don't* do it several conspicious instances.
I also sorta wondered why, since Sam was concious and aware the whole time he was controlled, he didn't later remember that he had intentionally infected a person that was not later accounted for and that person, even later, caused problems. When he was rescued from being infected and didn't immediately say "go get [this other guy]", I knew then that "oops..that was stupid...that's gonna be trouble later on" and it was.
Finally, once the good guys knew the scope and location of the infected populace, they could've stopped things right there. I kept asking myself "why don't they just gas the town and put everyone to sleep until they had a chance to remove the slugs?" Instead, they sent in Army troops (who seemed, naturally, to have a hard time shooting human children) and later a commando raid by Sam and his buddy (and, unfortunately, in keeping one cliche, Sam's buddy is black so I kept thinking "he's toast, let's start the deatch watch countdown now" and I was right))
So, considering how professionally smart the characters normal actions were, and considering how I thought the script got a lot of little things right. I was really disappointed that a few times, the script relied on momentary flashes of bad judgement at conspicious times.
In conclusionI would recommend this movie, the production, acting and writing is mostly good. It's not as tense as it probably wants to be because it gives it away too many times and you have to occasionally just let the good guys be dumb, but it handles a very cliched plot in some intelligent and well executed manners
At least part of this movie was filmed in Des Moines; the building I work in was in the movie for a few seconds
*SPOILERS*
I suspected Jarvis had been infected from the moment they ran out of the TV station, and I was right. From then on, it was obvious when someone was infected. I knew Sam was after he chased the lady and that the 'air vent' was a ruse. It was fairly obvious because nobody checked him as they had the previous time. Mary was pretty obvious too because you saw the other guy watching the house and the camera stayed with Sam so Mary was alone off camera for a few minutes. And of course, Andrew at then end was so obvious...hobbles in with a cane, walks out briskly with no cane...sheesh. But Sam should've rememeberd the apartment manager has been infected and they should've hunted him down before he had a chance to infect Mary. Even the lady in the conference room was fairly obvious. It became so formulaic that the only one that surprised me was that the helicopter (general and crew) picking Sam and Mary and the kids up from the building has *not* been infected
Post Edited (01-19-04 13:18)
