I saw this film on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Suffice to say, it is one of my favorite episodes of the show as it is a very bad film that is a complete mess and deserving of the riffs it receives. The film apparently was going to be yet another film that tried to copy the success of Alien by having people in the woods being terrorized by an alien. Then, E.T. happened and thus a switch in gears and the alien was now friendly. Well, not entirely, there are two aliens present in the film, one mean and the other friendly so they kind of do a mash up of both films and thus these film was born. I cannot say if the alien was going to look like it did in the final product initially when the film was being made though. The way it looks in this film, I almost have to wonder if the people would would create the semi hit television show Alf saw this film as it does sort of resemble the alien from that show. The version I saw of this film was called Pod People and I am almost positive that the people who released it under the Pod People title are the same ones that did Cave Dwellers as they do the same thing with the credits, having a totally different film run during the opening and ending credits. Here it is a film called Galaxy Invader and from the looks of it, I am going to guess it is not much better than this one.
The story has poachers in the woods and then a little boy in a cabin in the woods and then a singer in a studio and we get introduced to all the principal cast members, thus making this one feel more like a horror at the beginning. A comet or meteor or something crashes and one of the poachers goes into a cave with huge eggs or pods and immediately begins bashing them! The mother returns and dispatches him and later the kid will find a surviving egg and hatch it and raise an alien of his own, all while the mother goes on a kill spree. The film is a mess as it goes all over the place. The singer and his back up singers go camping with a fan of his who falls off a cliff and this leads them to the boy in the cabin's cabin where his mother and cranky uncle resides. Can they get help before all are killed, will the boy get to play with his alien or will this film remain completely uneven?
This made for a wonderful episode of MST3K, in fact, it is my favorite Joel hosted episode. I prefer Mike, but Joel was on fire with this one as it played to his strengths. I never understood the people who claimed Manos was his best episode as to me that one was dull in a lot of places and this one was entertaining throughout. I actually own this film without the riffs on a collection of science fiction films and one day I may try to watch it and see how much was left out due to the show's time constraints; however, I do not see this one becoming vastly better. Unless there is some nudity or something...which brings up another point. What was the deal with the one girl that supposedly was not attractive. Sure, she was the least attractive of the backup singers and the groupie, but she was not exactly ugly either.
So, this film is a movie that wanted to be one thing and then became something else entirely. Kind of like a film from the 70's called The Dark. It started out being about a zombie roaming the streets of L.A, but they turned it into an alien due to the success of the film Alien. This one was trying to copy Alien, but due to the success of E.T it changed. Though the horror elements are still there as the mother alien knocks people off left and right while the boy tries to feed and hide his buddy alien. Strange how the friendly alien had all this magical abilities, but the mother only seem gifted with on hell of a karate chop!
