It's Not Easy Being a Saucer-Man

Invasion of the Saucer Men has been part of my life since I was old enough to crawl. It's tattooed onto my psyche. And will remain there, I'm sure, until the day (or night) I die.

Like The Man From Planet X, these guys get my sympathy rather than my outrage.  Although they appear to be bent on invading the world and, more importantly, enslaving women, I was never convinced that they were fair dinkum about it. Not with looks like that. Even if they could get a woman into the sack, do you really think she'd juice up for them? -- for such puny, sickly looking jokers with faces full of veins and skin a permanent shade of jaundice? Not likely. If they were rich, maybe... but my sources assure me that these dudes don't have two dimes to rub together. 

Aliens like this can only be rapists, I suppose. They're destined to spend their nights applying lube to places they're not exactly welcome to enter, and employing bowie knives as instruments of foreplay. Even lube dries up eventually, and a guy's gotta get tired of constantly re-applying it. And what about chaffing? Pushing your extraterrestrial johnson into an earth woman's dry, unyielding vagina, lube or no lube, is going to take its toll eventually. When you insist on raping outside your species, you do pay a steep price. Ask any zoophile!

  

This great still has always been a favorite of mine. It tells us that these guys are no fans of human romance. They're no suckers for the Valentine's Day bullshit that every man dreads each year. In fact, when these intergalactic yahoos see examples of  it, they want to fuck it up. And who can blame them!? In this documentary image, it's hard to tell if that clawed hand with the pointy fingers is getting ready for a grope, or itching to strangle the stuffing out of the bloke because he's wearing a suit and tie at the drive-in (surely a hangable offense in anybody's book). Aliens are definitely jealous bastards. They can't stand it when earth men (in suits!) dare to snuggle with earth women (in next to nothing). It really gets their goat. Unleashes the Green-Eyed Monster. Come to think of it, the original Green-Eyed Monster was probably an alien, and that's where the expression came from.

This little green pervert is really taking his chances, though. What if he gropes the bloke instead of the dame? How can he see where that hand's going? Does it have its own set of built-in eyes? Well, yeah, it does, but I'm not so sure the view was clear. I reckon the guy's a gambler, and he knows his odds are even. He's getting off on not knowing whether he's about to become a fiend or a fag.

   

Speaking of fags...

I've always had my suspicions about the Liberace lookalike above -- he's wearing black lipstick by Crikey! He's very well dressed, too, and his Dracula hairstyle looks a little too camped for my liking. Sir Christopher Lee was never this poofy.

So why then is Saucer-Face strangling him? Do Saucer-Men hate fags? According to a certain Baptist church in the South, God hates fags, but is it fair to assume that because God hates them, aliens do, too? Is our tall, green friend strangling Liberace with the intention of killing him, or is he strangling the late, great piano player in order to help him achieve orgasm? If the latter is the case, aliens are clearly attuned to the needs of fags, and ought to be acknowledged for the contribution they're making to queer culture.

 

Finally, let's address the issue of the name 'Saucer-Men'. If you were an invader from space with a penchant for the orifices of both sexes, a homicidal contempt for romance, and a psychotic desire for the destruction of entire planets, would you be cool with being called a 'Saucer-Man'? It's not the most masculine name, is it? It doesn't grab you by the throat and make you shit your pants.

Saucer. Man. 

Oh, let's give the little green man his saucer and milk, children. 

Hey mom, look at that cute little flyer saucer and the funny green man inside it. 

Speaking for these aliens, I wouldn't be too happy with the name. It definitely demeans my ambitions. How can I be expected to instil fear in Earth women when my name makes them think of something you place a cup of tea on?

How can I rape with a mean spirit when my crib is a fucking saucer? A saucer!!! At least call it a spaceship. A spacecraft. A star destroyer! I like that one. Invasion of the Men From The Star Destroyer. Yes, that carries weight! It creates a picture of fearsome beings traveling with big guns.

Some alien invaders get the good names. Xtro, for example.  If an Earth woman were to receive an email telling her that "Xtro is Coming", she'd be locking the doors and windows and calling the police. On the other hand, if she got word that a visit from a Saucer-Man was imminent, she'd stay in her chair for a while, get up slowly, then open the window to let him in for a laugh. 

No woman (or man) calls 911 when a Saucer-Man's at the door.

If you do, however, you're a goddamned Saucer-Pussy (Yes, you, too, ladies!)

Movie Ad Mat Explosion

I was there, at Hoyts Burwood Drive-in, to see this double.

It was my virgin screening of Argento's flick and I sure had a great time. Will always remember the underwater cavern sequence (directed and shot by Bava, some scribes say).

Richard Pearce's Heartland ('79) featured an amazing Rip Torn performance. A prairie survival tale with a rich script, it bowled me over with its subtlety (which sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it?)

Pearce also directed the searing medical drama Threshold ('81), with Donald Sutherland, and the Richards Gere actioner No Mercy ('86). Country ('84) is another of his achievements.

Melbourne's The 69 Adult Cinema was a rebadged commercial venue.

I suspect Pro Ball Hookers was a retitling of the '79 Jack Mathew's Pro Ball Cheerleaders with Candida Royalle, Lisa de Leeuw, Suzanna Nero, and Jennifer West. Since cheerleading, a very American tradition, is foreign to Aussie audiences, the change is understandable.

Was the producer (Mathews also) arrested? I can't find any evidence of that.

Pro Ball Cheerleaders was a Debbie Does Dallas clone, only it was much better.

Very worthwhile triple that I begged and pleaded with my parents to see.

I came off worse than a biker's moll.

I've always been partial to Frank Laloggia's Fear No Evil ('81), one of the artier horror flicks of the period.

But let's be frank about Final Exam ('81 also), a slasher (?) I actually saw at a Detroit cinema (the Showcase Sterling Heights). It is an appalling piece of excruciatingly boring fecal matter.

It boggled my mind recently reading new reviews of the film after it was released on DVD. Some pundits actually founds merit in it. Trouble was, their arguments held no water. It's easily one of the worst films ever made. Just because a film is out on DVD doesn't mean it's good.

I lined up for the first session of this film at the Adams in downtown Detroit. The cinema's vibe was scarier than the movie.

The book is so much better, but it (the film) is not terrible.

Another classic Adams screening for me. During the "Piss your pants!" sequence in Last House, a semi-drunk guy got up and pissed in the corner beside the screen. The smell began wafting through the musky darkness five minutes later. You never forget fun times like that.

An early example of PG-13 horror before PG-13 existed. Very light-on horror flick with almost no violence.

I enjoyed the first Penitentiary almost thirty years ago, but I saw it again recently and thought Leon Isaac Kennedy's appalling performance murdered every dramatic moment.

I drove down to the Adams to see Slammer actually, a Bruce Davison film, directed by Robert Young, originally titled Short Eyes ('77). In prison, "short eyes" used to be a term for "child molester".

Davison is thrown in the clink for a crime against a child, but he's determined to prove his innocence.

Based on a play by Miguel Pinero, who spent time in prison. The film did well upon its release and is well worth catching today.

This ad mat for Downstairs Upstairs, a parody of the British Upstairs Downstairs TV show, does not distinguish it from its mostly shoddy ilk. The film was a terrific XXX'er with a great Kay Parker performance and an authentic plot. Some bizarre sexuality, too, with a half-pinter.

One of my favorite comedies of all time.

Bill Forsythe followed up with Local Hero, Comfort and Joy, and Housekeeping, his first American outing (and a disappointment).

His first film was That Sinking Feeling with Robert Buchanan, the actor who played 'Andy' in Gregory's Girl. It was/still is a classic.

I find both films to be models of understatement and comedy so unforced, it makes one of the hardest things to do in the world (make people laugh) look like a cinch.

A poor sequel, Gregory's Two Girls, appeared in '99.

Saw Xtro and Tony Scott's debut feature, The Hunger, on the same afternoon in Detroit.

I liked The Hunger much more, but I respected the crazy audacity of Xtro. The scene in which the woman gives birth to an adult male deserves mention. The woman deserved a month of rest and stitches.

Fantastic screenplay adaptation of his own play by Howard Pinter.

Betrayal tells the shattering story of a marital break-up in reverse.

It's a superb drama.

Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley are in top form.

The decision to tell the tale in reverse adds such tragic weight to every scene.