SPACED INVADERS
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| Rated PG
| | Copyright 1989 Smart Egg Pictures
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 2 September 2003
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- Sheriff Hoxley - He just moved to this small town and already has an alien invasion on his hands.
- Mr. Wrenchmuller - Some of the farmer's lines are exceptional for a movie of this kind. When faced with losing his farm he morosely asks, "Why did I have to go and get old?"
- Mr. Klembecker - Total bastard who owns the liens on many farms in the area, including Wrenchmuller's.
- Kathy & Brian - She is the sheriff's daughter and the owner of an awesome "Alien" costume. He is dressed as a duck, but deadly with a trash can lid.
- Blaznee - Martian pilot who sounds and acts a lot like Jack Nicholson.
- Capt. Bipto - Senior officer aboard the Martian's ship. Limited duty? Yeah, you could say that.
- Lt. Giggywig - The gung-ho, kill them all, sort of alien invader. Lucky for us that he will not start shooting until someone notices him. Nobody pays the little guy much attention.
- Dr. Ziplock - Whatever those are embedded in his eyes, they look like they hurt.
- Cpl. Pez - As the FNG, he knows his place. Cowering behind the others is his only hope for survival.
- The Enforcer Drone - Remember the Russian political officer in "The Hunt for Red October?" Now turn him into a lethal robot. Blasted to smithereens.
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While the rest of their fleet gets its butt completely whipped during an ill conceived attack upon Arcturus, an asteroid patrol ship full of Martians intercepts a stray radio broadcast coming from Earth. As luck would have it, the station they tune to has "The War of the Worlds" playing. The little green menaces are ecstatic! Earth is nearby; they can join in the carnage! The patrol craft departs from the asteroid belt and heads pell-mell for Big Bean, Illinois.
I hope that all the "Invader ZIM" fanboys have taken notice at this point. Short aliens, really hyper, sort of goofy, with big heads and advanced technology (let alone the Martian's crest of arms and the little robot).
In Big Bean things are not entirely without strife. Klembecker is snatching the land from under poor farmers. The greedy twit wants to capitalize on the town's new highway off-ramp. One of Hoxley's first calls is to deal with Wrenchmuller. The elderly man was about to walk into the twit's office with a double barrel shotgun. The scattergun was unloaded, but Wrenchmuller begins looking for shells once Klembecker appears and starts acting like an evil banker. The situation is diffused. Later, the sheriff drops his daughter off at a Halloween party.
The patrol ship arrives on Earth with a bang; it crashes into Wrenchmuller's dilapidated barn. The old farmer, with the help of his trusty dog, expends a lot of effort trying to capture, or at least photograph, a Martian. Only Blaznee is left aboard though, because the others gleefully embark upon a campaign to crush humanity. Bipto quickly runs afoul of traffic. More precisely, a truck. He is pried from the grill of Klembecker's vehicle by the gas station attendant. No, no, no - he is not dead. In fact, the resourceful Martian clamps a mental control device onto Vern (the attendant). It turns the poor guy into a cross between Christopher Lloyd in "Back to the Future" and Christopher Lloyd in "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai." The two begin building a super weapon.
Elsewhere, Kathy, Brian, and the other Martians (a robot too - the Martians') are being chaperoned around town by a heavyset lady. Only on Earth a short while and already consigned to the back seat of a station wagon. Ha! Despite waving around deadly alien weaponry, the poor little Martians are treated like spoiled brats by the frazzled mother. Lt. Giggywig does not help either, he keeps threatening her with total annihilation. The woman finally throws all of the green invaders out of the car. Kathy and Brian bail too.
Blaznee continues fixing the ship, along with parrying moves by one annoyed deputy and Wrenchmuller. The little fellow has everything in hand until the radio station reveals that the broadcast is science fiction. The Enforcer Drone decides to eliminate the entire inept crew. It zaps Blaznee, but he survives. Knocked unconscious and toted into town by Wrenchmuller as proof that they are being invaded, but alive.
The pilot wakes up just in time to crawl out of the truck bed. The excited citizens are further distracted from looking for him when the rest of the crew broadcasts an ultimatum. Surrender now Earth scum! The Martians heroically blast a silo with their portable cannon. What results is a deluge of popcorn, which has the positive effect of temporarily swamping the Enforcer Drone (it had been closing in for the kill). Blaznee dashes back to the ship as several truckloads of shotgun wielding hicks converge on the destroyed silo.
Did I mention that the aliens are inept? Oh, also be it known that Kathy and the little robot become friends.
Faced with numerous American bred fans of the Second Amendment, Dr. Ziplock activates the "distress-o-matic." The device should summon the ship to the beacon's location. However, the ship is still not fully repaired. It goes hopping across empty fields with Blaznee struggling to kill the autopilot. It crashes to a halt at the terminus of a dead end road. The Martians (all of them) pile inside, then the angry locals arrive and start shooting at the ship. Idiots! It flies through an asteroid belt! Your weapons are useless! Bunch of dolts (apply to either group, as you desire).
The sheriff tries to calm everyone down. Then the Martians emerge from their patrol ship. They are surrounded by a metal ring. It is none other than the "Donut of Destruction!" (DOD for short.) This device will obliterate a sphere one million miles in diameter, but leave what is inside the donut unharmed. The exact usefulness of the DOD is called into question by everyone present. Sure, the invaders will be unscathed. In the middle of a rapidly expanding ball of plasma, but unharmed. Unfortunately, this means they will be left "unscathed" in the middle of space once the planet and everything around them (ship included) is gone. Fat lot of good that thing is.
The Martians wisely decide to run away and rethink their plan.
As silly invasion movies go, this is pretty good. The costumes are better than average and you can quickly begin to identify individual Martians by their voices. Besides, what could be more fun than a bunch of enthusiastic, but hopelessly inept, invaders from Mars? Armed with lethal weaponry, I might add. |
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- There is such a thing as too many pockets when you are looking for your shotgun shells.
- Police radar guns go up to 3,000 mph.
- Nose cone art is alive and well on other planets.
- Too much chocolate is bad for anybody, regardless of physiology.
- Extreme speed limit infractions are punished with the death penalty in some states.
- Never fire a plasma cannon at a silo full of unpopped popcorn.
- Dynamite is a farmer's best friend.
- The aurora borealis are caused by spacecraft dumping their toilet systems into Earth's stratosphere.
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- 2 mins - That would be a CR-1398977 "Cactus" heavy assault cruiser.
- 20 mins - Captain, you really should look both ways before... ...never mind.
- 25 mins - What does he think it is, a potato bug?
- 45 mins - Ten feet of rope could have saved you a lot of trouble.
- 50 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST AN OFF-RAMP!
- 53 mins - Humans: 1, Martians: 0, Cats: -1
- 63 mins - You know, the Martians' heads look a lot like watermelons. I wonder what they taste like? (I am, after all, an unevolved savage.)
- 74 mins - The little scout ship can implode and take the universe with it? Sounds like cause for a recall.
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- Kathy: "But dad, they're not really bad. They're just stupid."
- Giggywig: "Let me explain the who situation in a nutshell: there are five of us and four billion of them!"
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | spacedinv1.wav
| Wrenchmuller: "It looks as if me and you is the Earth's only hope. That's kind of sad, ain't it?"
| | spacedinv2.wav
| The Martians arguing about terrestrial nuances.
| | spacedinv3.wav
| Giggywig: "Look, when a vastly superior alien culture comes all this way to take over your world, certain basic laws of planetary conquest apply. For example, when someone points a quad-vected hypothermic cosmo-blaster at you, it's a fair bet you are about to become toast."
| | spacedinv4.wav
| Hoxley: "Where is Kathy?"
Mrs. Vanderspool: "She got out with your Martian surfer nephews."
Hoxley: "Mrs. Vanderspool, do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?"
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | spacedinv1.mpg
- 2.2m
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| The townsfolk are on the warpath. The Martians are making popcorn.
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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