Annihilator

In watching this film, I never got the sense they were aliens. The constant shots of churches and crosses made me think of something else. They called themselves Dynamitards. (This was an actual 1800s secret society in Europe.) I would have loved a sequel. Or maybe a look at the original script. I did wonder why the Dynamitards would leave an assault rifle and ammo laying around at their camp. Especially since they'd already bent the barrel on his handgun while he was away from his room. The film isn't available on DVD, which would be great. I think "Otherworld" is available in a boxed set (another fantasy series from the same producer).

Dated 1980's shlock, except for one brilliant throwaway scene near the end.

I wouldn't recommend buying the VHS, and pretty sure this never made it to DVD or Blu Ray, but with a little digging you can probably find it on YouTube. Be ready to skip forward to this scene (a little less than an hour and a half into the movie) if you don't find the movie watchable.

A momentary nice touch, completely unnecessary to the story or plot.

A malfunctioning android. The WAY it malfunctions is nothing short of genius!

It's only a couple of minutes, midway into the climax. I don't want to spoil with any more detail. All I can say is that 30-odd years later, it's every bit as good as I remember.

Just seen this film on tv......and well the plot had promise but never delivered on it-we never found out why all this was happening and how.The way the film ends you think there may be a sequel-leaves a lot of unanswered questions.......

I first saw this TV movie on late-night British TV in the late eighties and was thrilled with it's simple, yet effective sci-fi edge; obviously, the film was made for a prospective television series that never happened - Which is a shame as the end result was far better than many of the series' that were approved and syndicated at the time.

Synopsis: Mark Lyndsay Chapman plays Richard Armour, a likable reporter whose life changes after his girlfriend, Angela (Catherine Mary Stewart) returns from a holiday in Hawaii with a female friend (Lisa Blount). Their return sees them change into emotionless cyborgs (like that of Terminator, complete with robotic red eyes under their lifelike human skin masks! In fact, so close is the analogy to "Terminator", that the "Annihilator" also stars Earl Boen (whom played Dr Silberman in both movies!) in a supporting role as fellow reporter, Sid!)).

These cyborgs (or Dynamitards as they are later revealed to be known as) exhibit calculated and unsympathetic views of animals, at one point referring to a dog as being 'One of these lesser animals', before disposing of the poor canine in a dumpster! Angela's lack of 'humanity', soon gives Richard just cause to think that something is up and is easily convinced that a dirty weekend away to a remote log cabin would be the ideal solution to rekindle and reconnect! It is here that Angela reveals her deadly intentions and Richard gets more than he bargained for as he barely escapes with his life and is forced to go on the run...

Richard soon discovers that the Hawaii passenger manifest is something of a Dynamitard 'hit list' and tries to find other passengers in hope of finding answers - And possibly the whereabouts of the real Angela - Before running into more deadly Dynamitards! The film is punctuated with Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" soundtrack, using this now classic song to great effect as our hero staggers around, disillusioned and helpless; armed with a pump action shotgun, an English accent and some attitude, Richard's quest for the truth is soon accompanied by female friend and convert, Layla (Susan Blakely) as she convinces him to seek additional help and advice from Professor Alan Jeffries (Geoffrey Lewis), with disastrous consequences of betrayal...

Truly could have been a great TV series ( Personal Rating 8 / 10 )

I think this aired in 1986, on the old NBC Monday Night Movie, in the summer when it was usual to see lost TV pilots aired as movie-of-the-weeks. Told the tale of a newspaper reporter(Chapman) who has to miss a vacation(having won a "contest")with his girlfriend Angela, a scenario which, in the style it was filmed starts off very prosaic and normal until, as he narrates the entire film as a flashback, he finds her return plane had "gone off the radar" for 90 minutes, and returns, but delayed. He gets unnerved watching Angela speaking to a mysterious man in sunglasses,who seems to be watching the passengers leave the plane, asks who it was- and she denies having spoken to anyone. She is also unaware the plane was "delayed and missing". She begins acting strangely and having odd meetings with unknown people, and as the reporter begins to investigate things and ask more questions, she tries to kill him and he finds she's now a terminator-like robot(complete with the same kind of eye-tracking visuals from that film). Truly panicked he finds himself a wanted man, framed, and on the run with nothing more than the passenger list he got after dispatching the Angela robot. The only hint or clue we're ever given is one passenger who appears to be normal who claims "nothing went wrong on the flight, I slept, then felt a bump..and I had that awful nightmare.." . The reporter asks "What kind of nightmare?" and before she can say more, she's killed by another one of these robots. He finds out a little more, from another,older passenger who seems to be in charge of a localized group of these beings-he manages after a fight,to damage the mechanical brain and he begins talking incoherently about "Dynamitards...are the collective of Dymogeny" and how they intend to fully take over. We learn nothing else, other than he sets off,alone, in Fugtive-like fashion to find other normal passengers from the list-who were apparently checked off for termination-before the robots do. Obviously it was intended to be a series along the lines of Nowhere Man or The Fugitive, finding more clues along the way.

The film had some interesting "rock video" sequences,very much of the time-dissolves and used a perpetual "Los Angeles Sunset/Sunrise" for lighting. The use of Bowie's Ashes to Ashes and visual references to religious buildings and at one point, the hero seems to be standing in front of painted angel's wings, lead one to think these were possibly not aliens but something darker or even homegrown on earth.