Thursday, October 19, 2023

EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITORS (1983)

 "TRUMPY!  I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT OF SIGHT!  NOBODY MUST SEE YOU!" 


Yeah, tell me about it.  So anyway, this is rightly called a cash grab grab Spanish/French co-production after the box office bonanza that was E.T.:  THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL.  And of course there's no doubt about that fact.  However, the movie starts lifting the opening of INVADERS FROM MARS i.e. there's a kid with a telescope in his bedroom and he sees a fiery object crash to earth nearby. 

There's also a heavy echo of IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE as we see the glowing extraterrestrial whatsit craft.  Then, of course, there are a bunch of alien eggs (insert ALIEN reference here) which some idiot wearing a hat that makes him look like Zippy decides to smash with a stick.  Fittingly, an Extraterrestrial catches him at it and kills the idiot.  Interestingly, when aforementioned little boy finds the Zippy guy's corpse in a cave, the Zippy guy has glowing dots on his forehead in the shape of the Big Dipper.  Or the Little Dipper.  It's difficult to tell which when they're embedded in a moron's forehead.  Said little kid (being ginger not only has he no soul but also has no brain since he) takes the only unsmashed alien egg home with him and sleeps with it in his bed.  Eventually the eggs hatches (exuding green goop) and the love child of Greedo and Cerebus the Aardvark pops out, drinks milk and grows to full adult size (one can only assume).  And yes, the kid names the creature 'Trumpy'.  There are a bunch of other people involved (but who the hell cares) including the movie god that is Ian Sera
Movie God Ian Sera

(from PIECES and MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND) but this time around he doesn't get his Lil Kendall out. 

He DOES, however, sing an awesome song or two and this brings up the awesome soundtrack which this year's new Severin blu rays includes as a separate CD.  The main theme by composers Michael Demer and Librado Pastor is excellent (in a non-sarcastic sense) while the song 'Sara' (I assume warbled by Ian Sera) will be played at my funeral!  Our director is Juan Piquer Simon (who gave us the masterpiece that we call PIECES as well as SLUGS and THE RIFT) and it's just as wacked-out goofy as you would expect it to be.  The dubbed dialogue is pricelessly odd and make all the inane dialogue scenes entertaining A.F.  At one point, the ginger kid tries to teach Trumpy how to do a jigsaw puzzle.  Is this kid nuts?!?!?!  Doesn't he know what happened in PIECES when a jigsaw puzzle was brought out?!?!?!  Besides milk, Trumpy also seems fond of Planter's peanuts (product placement); I guess the ginger kid can't afford Reese's Pieces, yo.  Trumpy also has a go on early eighties electronic game 'Simon'.  Beep boop boop.  Among Trumpy's other accomplishments are that he can stand on the ceiling (better than Lionel Wealthy OR Fred Astaire) and make everything in the room move around by themselves like Mary Poppins on a tidy tear.  One of the things Trumpy DOESN'T do, however, is disembowell the ginger kid -- but no movie's perfect.  Apparently this movie was an episode of MST3K which I somehow missed but it's entertaining as hell watching all on it's own.  Unfortunately, it does sag after the halfway point and never quite manages to become as good as the first half again.  The wackiness and zany dialogue mostly disappears at the halfway point of the film preventing EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITORS from being quite the bonkers-fest of something like PIECES.  



1 comment:

Cheeks DaBelly said...

"TRUMPY! I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT OF SIGHT! NOBODY MUST SEE YOU!"

Trust me, Trumpy IS out of sight. Mostly under the table doing things to Mommy with that elongated snoot. She's been wearing a lot of skirts lately.