La invasión de los secuestradores de cuerpos

Invasion.Of.The.Pod.People should not make it to DVD.

The plot has major problems, the script couldn't get a D- in a high school film class, the camera had the finesse of a single chopstick, direction was completely absent, and the costumes made our heroine look like she just entered the third trimester. The dramatic tension came only from knowing it wasn't over yet. The effects consisted of a ginger root in a flower pot.

This is not a B movie, there is not one redeeming feature in this work, even the titillation, that started halfway through, was not erotic and the actress giving cunnilingus may have been asleep during filming.

I could go on, but please don't watch this film. It could made you feel like a pod.

First of all, the title of the movie is a clear indicator of what you are in for here. "Invasion of the Pod People" was very much a shameful rip-off of the classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", except it was just a horrible rendering of a classic movie.

I managed to sustain 42 minutes of the ordeal that is "Invasion of the Pod People" before I just gave up out of utter and complete boredom with the movie. Nothing happened throughout this time, unless you could women getting naked and making out and questionable acting as being worth mentioning of something happening.

The movie sounded like the audio was recorded from inside an empty metal barrel. The sound was just so annoying and poorly recorded. And more often than not that sound was serving as a nuisance and as an anchor around the movie.

Even the storyline was a blatant rip-off off the classic movie, but just don't less skillful. A meteor shower bring foreign celestial to Earth. And while the people see these objects as harmless, they harbor a darker purpose and a sinister ability to clone those in their vicinity.

The acting in the movie was wooden, rigid and questionable. It was obvious why most of the women on the cast list had been cast for this particular movie. Erica Kessler was actually doing a good enough performance from what I managed to witness, but then the script made her get naked as well. I am not a prude or anything, but the nudity in this movie was too excessive and didn't really serve the movie well.

"Invasion of the Pod People" was nowhere near to doing justice to the classic movie that the writers Ron Magid, Jay Marks and Leigh Scott so shamelessly had ripped off.

I have no intention of returning to finish watching "Invasion of the Pod People", and I would recommend that you watch the original movie over this at any time.

Can you remember "Debbie Does Dallas"? Well, the acting in this one is almost as good. Remember "Plan 9 From Outer Space"? Well, at least Ed Wood managed to make it so bad it's good. No such luck here.

I wouldn't even want to slur first-year film school by comparing this to the efforts of any beginner.

If I had to guess, I'd say somebody bought a HD camcorder, invited all his friends around for the weekend and let's see what happens when you press and hold the red button.

David Latt seems to be in the business of churning out no-budget video productions with non-actors, negligible plots and spaceships-on-strings special effects.

I beseech you, do not dignify any of these by contemplating watching them. Go watch some paint dry, or a game of cricket. Oh, wait. Same thing.

This movie had all the qualifications of a bad, bad movie; bad acting, bad dialog, poor plot progression, terrible soundtrack quality, bad set selection, scenes of people talking on cell phones, scenes of people in cars, stock footage and really bad special effects. When I see films like this I think, this was someone's film school project. The truth is it was probably an independent film festival project or made for Showtime.

To describe the acting as bad is using creative license on my part. There wasn't much acting in the film but there was a good bit of reading of cue cards or TelePrompter. The people in the film look at the side of the camera in every scene. The soundtrack had a lot of unexplained noise in a few scenes. The noise, which I figured out was supposed to be the pods multiplying, was so loud that the dialog was unintelligible.

The plot of the film would have been difficult to follow if I hadn't read the description on the DVD cover. The characters of the movie supposedly worked for a modeling agency. The story the film presents is; There's a company named Blockthorn that does something and one guy, the boss, wants something done and yells at his employees about getting it right. Then some of the employees become obsessed with a strange plant. One of the employees is attacked by a pod from the plant and then keeps sharing the plant with her coworkers. Yes, this movie was so bad that I wanted to turn away. But we suffered through to the end which left the plot open as if they intend to make a sequel.

Then there's the sex. Of course these pods from outer space know about seduction and use it to acquire their pod victims. There where at least four sex scenes with topless ladies. But these scenes were bad too cause only in low budget films to folks have sex without taking their pants and skirts off. Invasion of the Pod People is just bad. I wouldn't recommend that anyone watch this film.

Shame on anyone who gives this more than one star! (And that's generous.) This film is so cataclysmically dreadful that if the doctor tells you that you have two weeks to live, watch this film. You'll want the two weeks to end quickly.

The first couple of scenes start off well. Girl watches TV news report about mysterious meteorite shower, girl goes outside to see meteors blazing across the sky... nice. Then the camera cuts to her face and her reaction is precisely what I'd expect from someone who opened a carton of milk and found milk in it.

That was a clue to the standard of acting throughout. But it's still better than the lighting and audio.

As for the story... well, let's just say that what we have here is a porn script, complete with porn direction, but without the scenes you really paid your money for. Oh, there's soft porn, but it's as inept as everything else about this film.

And then there's the mysterious alien plant that's key to the pod people's invasion. Surely someone could have found some modeling clay and a bit of paint. But no, our prop is a piece of ginger. Not one character in the film recognized it as a piece of ginger. I'm not sure what offends me more: the fact that the prop is so dismally unimaginative, or the fact that no one on the production team seems to recognize a popular grocery item.

How do films this bad get made? It may be low budget but someone still had to put up the funds for this tripe. Did it make a profit? I need to go for a lie down.