Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Extra Terrestrial Visitors

On this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe venture into the wild world of Spanish b-movie cinema with Juan Piquer Simón’s “Extra Terrestrial Visitors,” in which a pair of aliens respond to drastically differing human encounters in the woods. MST3K fans know this one as "Pod People." (originally published 09/16/22)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and
of course a Weird House Cinema Rewind comes from the
vault of Weird House Cinema. This was originally published on
September sixteenth, twenty twenty two, and it is our episode
on Extraterrestrial Visitors aka pod People.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah. This one, of course is a film that was
featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the
day and is a richly enjoyable movie on its own.
But one of the issues in this episode back when
we recorded it is of course that we did not
have great film quality to go off of the best.

(00:46):
I think the best quality available was pretty grubby. We
complain about it a bit in the episode. But then
something magical happened. In the months following our release of
the original episode, several films put out an excellent restored
Blu ray edition of Extraterrestrial Visitors. I found out about

(01:06):
it months later ordered up a copy of it. I
have now viewed it and I have to say it
is beautiful. If you find any if you find anything
in this film beautiful, you will find this restored version
of it beautiful. You can actually make out details that
are lost otherwise. Like, for instance, there's the character that
has the I'm a Virgin T shirt. Well, now you

(01:28):
can read all the details on that shirt and see
that it's a Virgin Islands tourist T shirt. That's the
full story there. And just in general, like everything's in
just a richer quality. There's still a certain level of
grubbiness just because it is still, you know, a Spanish
genre picture of the nineteen eighties. But man, it's a

(01:48):
fun package. So I highly recommend it to anyone out
there who is a fan of extraterrestrial visitors, Spanish genre films,
or or of course if you're an MST completist and
you want a nice copy of this beloved film. And
one more thing, it also has a CD in it
that has the soundtrack on it, which which isn't much.

(02:09):
It has, you know, just a few of the synthy
bits that you hear, and then also that terrible pop
song that they're recording in the studio.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Oh yeah, hear the engines roar now, I think.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, So I actually got the experience of finding my
car's CD drive putting that CD in there, rolling down
all the windows and then you know, tearing around town
with that's with that song blasting.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Did you feel the wind in your eyes?

Speaker 1 (02:38):
I did, felt the wind right in my eyes. All
systems will go, all right, let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
This is right, and this is Joe McCormick, and we.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Are going to the year nineteen eighty three for this one.
We're going to be discussing a film that has many names.
Its primary title in the United States is Extraterrestrial Visitors,
but it is also widely known to Mystery Science Theater
three thousand fans as pod People.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Strangely, that title has nothing to do with the contents
of the movie and makes it sound like it's a
ripoff of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, when in fact,
it's a ripoff of ET but with much grizzlier elements.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, it's. My rough understanding of this film is that
it may have originally started as your basic killer creature
in the woods sort of fair, but this is the
year after ET. Cute aliens being befriended by children is
big business, and so this gets folded into the plot.
So it's one of these films that, much like the

(04:00):
much like the film Grimlins, it's totally inconsistent, Like one
second it's doing cute stuff and the next second it
is in horror mode. And at the end of the
by the end of the film, you're you're left wondering, like,
who is this for? Like, there are parts of this
film that I would show my child. There are other
parts that I would not show them. There are there

(04:21):
plenty of human characters I would not expose them to
in this Well.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
I'd say even the cute stuff in this movie is grotesque.
The scenes with Tommy, the child and his alien friend,
like playing around and doing telekinesis parties in the in
the bedroom and making like the toys dance on the
ceiling and stuff. Something about that is its own kind
of horror, even though I don't think that part is

(04:45):
intended to be scary.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Oh, I thought it was delightful. Tommy is absolute goodness
and sweetness, and so is Trumpy. Trumpy is the name
that Tommy gives to the childlike alien who comes into
his life.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
So so in a way, this movie is going to
be in the tradition of all the movies where a
child befriends a benevolent, fantastical being, you think about the
movie that was the direct inspiration for at least half
of this, Spielberg's et came out the year before. But
on the other hand, I think you can think of
this as part of a subgenre of though it's not

(05:22):
exactly correct in this movie, because the horror is being
done by just other aliens that look identical to the
one he's befriended, but it's part of the subgenre of
child to be friends a deadly monster movies, like I
think one of the core prototypes here is the original
nineteen thirty one Frankenstein, The Universal Monster Movie, where there

(05:44):
is a pivotal scene highlighting the creature's moral innocence as
well as his destructive power. After the creature escapes Frankenstein's lab,
he wanders the countryside where he encounters a child and
the creature, being innocent and childlike himself, they play games
together and they throw flowers in a lake until the
creature accidentally kills the child while in the midst of

(06:06):
a game because he doesn't understand cause and effect and
he doesn't understand his own strength. And it's that's sort
of what makes Frankenstein more of a grotesque tragedy than
a movie about a sidistic evil monster. I don't know
if that's exactly the case in Pod almost called it
pod people extraterrestrial visitors. It's I'm not sure if this

(06:28):
movie was trying to say anything about like the moral
complexity of the beings in the relationship to humans. The
child that in the movie does often say they just
want to be our friends. Yet we do see the
aliens totally unprovoked to just attacking humans.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I do well, I don't know if they're completely unprovoked.
Now to come back to Frankenstein, and I think Frankenstein
is a great comparison here because the other aspect of Frankenstein,
and this is president in the novel too, is that
Frankenstein in Frankenstein's Monster rather and you can call him Frankenstein.
It's it's fine, we checked, he's cool with it. The

(07:04):
monster encounters a humanity that is hostile to him, and
that fosters hostility, that fosters this this grudge against both
his creator uh and the creator's fellow human beings, and
so in this film, we kind of see the same
duality Like this, we also see that Frankenstein, you know,
with the with the child encountering the child or encountering

(07:27):
the blind man. Because we have these two aliens and
they both have they have different experiences with the humans
they encounter. The first alien encounters poachers and hunters and
vile band members and so forth. Like the first his
first encounters with humans are all murderous. Meanwhile, the second,

(07:49):
younger alien, his first encounter is Tommy, and Tommy like
hatches him from an egg. Tommy is nice to him
and feeds him and and they venture off to a
world of whimsy with each other. Where the other one,
the murderous alien, has none of that.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Oh, I think I see what you're saying. So like,
even though the other alien does like just randomly attack
like innocent people, like in a bathroom or in an RV,
it is because the other alien had previously encountered dangerous humans.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Right, Yeah, Like at that point he's like, this is
what humans are, and if I see one that, I
have no other choice but to kill them before they
hurt me. Like he's walking around with he has like
a crossbow bolt in his chest most of the time
because he's also been wounded by the humans. So yeah,
this was the for me, the most interesting thing about

(08:41):
this film watching it for the first time without any riffs,
without you know, the added layer of overt humor provided
by MST three K, because I seen this film multiple
times before via that ms TH three K episode, which
is one of my favorites. It's a classic MST episode.
But I'd never really given the film a chance to

(09:02):
succeed and fail on its own merits, and it does.
It does both. Now, I do want to come back
to the title of this film, because this is it's
it's interesting that it has had. It has so many titles.
So it was a French Spanish co production, and so
it was released in its respective countries with of course

(09:23):
French and Spanish names. I believe that the Spanish is
what los novos extraterrestris, which is the new extraterrestrials, and
then and then the French and French is not my
certainly not my my happy spot for pronunciation, but I
believe it is less monsters. So it's that's terrible, I know,

(09:45):
but but I love what it means. The hatching of monsters.
I think the Hatching of monsters might be the best
title for this film.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Because they do come from eggs. One egg is snuggled
by a child in his bed and the other egg
is is the other egg bashed opened by a poacher.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Multiple eggs are bashed open, ye by poachers, and we
have poachers who are seeking eggs in the forest, so
the egg trope goes pretty deep in this. But but yeah,
this has had a ton of titles that we mentioned
pod people. You can look up all sorts of crazy
posters and vhs box art for this thing. And like
I found one that just says a visitor and there's

(10:23):
a weird illustration of Tommy and there's the shadow of
something standing in a doorway, presumably the alien visitor, which
looks nothing like anything in the film.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Now, the shadow kind of looks like the silhouette of
the Guiver, you know, it's like it's like a kind
of robo alien humanoid shape with claws.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
And then there's another one I found and I love
this one. This is a black box video release and
this must be like this must be like us or Canadian.
I don't know. I didn't I didn't look this up.
But it has this wonderful, charming, childlike illustration of Tommy
and Trumpy, and it just says ETV in gold swirling letters.

(11:05):
That's Extraterrestrial Visitors. But for the cool kids ETV, it's
like T two. Yeah, you know, I love it, Like,
how did they think they could get away with that?
Let's just call it ETV. Let's just cut straight to it.
The kids don't care.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
This is G two baby.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
But Trump is very cute on this. I would say
in general, we're talking about ET Trumpy. Trumpy is far
cuter than et. ET is just a flesh bag with
big eyes and a glowing finger. But meanwhile, Trumpy is
this delightful mix. He's like all the better aspects of
alf combined with snuffle up agains in a more bipedal form.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
What is the Star Wars character that Trumpy looks like
from the most nicely cantina that has a long Ardvark snout?

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Oh yeah, I forget his name, but yes, he does
look like him, especially at one point in the film
when Tommy puts a coat on him with.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
A hood garn Dan, Is that right?

Speaker 1 (11:59):
If you say so, I guess he also looks a
little bit, but like Max Rebo, the blue piano player
from Java's Barge. Yeah, of course trump he has hair.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yes, okay? So according to is this Wikipedia or some
kind of Star Wars wikie, this creature with the goggles,
the hood and the long snout is called garrin Dan,
also called long Snoot. It says he it was a Kubaz.
I think that is an alien species, and he is
considered to be the greatest spy in the most sicily

(12:31):
spaceport there.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
I mean, you barely notice him, you know, you have
to look up his name. That's the mark of a
good spy.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
But a big difference is that Trumpy is furry, whereas
Garindn is not.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Oh you don't want to carry all that fur with
you on Tatooine. Though perhaps sheared first?

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah yeah, what so. One of the human characters describes
the aliens as looking like a cross between I think
they're saying a pig and a bear, though it kind
of sounds like a pig and a pair either way.
I'm not sure. I don't really see the pig part.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, yeah, the snout doesn't look very pig like. It's
more it's more snuffle up agaus. That's what I think.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, I wonder if that line was written before the
creature design was finalized.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Maybe so, all right, at this point, we would would
normally give you a little taste of the trailer. But
I looked around for a while and I could not
find any trailers for this film in any language. I
was looking up the various releases. I was thinking, well, okay,
I can't find the English trailer. Maybe there wasn't one
or it's been lost, but surely I can find the
English or the original one that they used in Spain.

(13:35):
But I was not able to find anything. So I
thought we might just have some audio from the film.
Hopefully we'll get some of the charming synth music in
there as well. Hey, come back down, Tommy, What are

(14:04):
you doing? What was all that noise? Tommy? Did you
hear me? Tommy? In the own room? All right? And
a note on availability for this film. Sadly, this is

(14:26):
not one where you can find it. Seemed to be
able to find a better cut of the film, or
at least like better film quality. I ended up streaming
it via Prime and I know there are some some
other streams available out there. Again, if you look around
in the for the original Spanish and French titles for
the film, you can find I believe you can find

(14:47):
it in those languages, But in terms of finding like
any kind of their stored footage, we're not there yet.
So I don't know if this is a film where
this is as good as the video quality is ever
going to get, or if at some point we'll get
something a little easier to watch, because yeah, it's it's
kind of kind of brutal at times. It's a film
that already has a lot of fog machines and perhaps

(15:09):
some day for nights effects going on and things get
really muddy looking.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
The woods in this movie often look like the foggy
forest that Graham Chapman gets lost in and oh where
they find the Knights who say knee and Monty Python
on the Holy Grail. You remember that sequence?

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this film makes makes great use of
the fog machine. So sadly we're still waiting on I guess,
a proper restored cut of this film. I hope we
get there. I hope that it's out there somewhere just
waiting for someone to discover. But I think for now,
as far as I know, we don't really have a

(15:49):
superior example of video quality to steer you towards. I
know it came out on DVD, but I have no
reason to suspect that that has better video quality than
what's available elsewhere. All right, let's talk about the human
beings that made this film. So we've mentioned the director

(16:09):
of this film before. He's come up, because, especially when
we've talked about Spanish films, inevitably some of the people
involved in Spanish productions also worked on some of his films.
This is jue Picuerre Simone. He was the director, the writer,
and he also did visual effects on this film. He
lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eleven. Spanish b movie

(16:30):
director who became I'm going to say he became legendary
for such films as nineteen eighty eight Slugs the Movie,
which is a film that I distinctly remember seeing a
trailer for when I was a child, and it made
me afraid to use a toilet. It may be anxious
about sitting on a toilet. That's how terrifying the trailer was,

(16:52):
because there's a scene where you see slugs crawling on
a toilet.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Oh there's a toilet attack in it, or just slugs
on it toilet.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
I can't remember. I think you know, we've talked about
the trailer for Slugs of the movie at some point
for trailer talk back in the day, but I don't
think I could quite bring myself to watch it in full.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Is that one of the movies kind of like the
late seventies remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which
is fantastic where the hero is a member of the
local health inspection department.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Is that so okay?

Speaker 2 (17:26):
I have a vague memory of something like that. Could
be wrong.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Simone's other film of note is nineteen eighty two's Pieces.
This is a film that we've almost watched on Weird
House before. It's been almost cued up in the past.
It is a chainsaw movie with a lot of other
extra strange things added to it, but it has a
really fun cast.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
It's like, it seems kind of like if Texas Chainsaw
Massacre was not rural and Texan but was about like
an apartment building.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, like an apartment building in Madrid or something. Yeah,
it's kind of odd, so we may come back to
that one. Simone also directed the nineteen ninety underwater sci
fi film The Rift that one has Ray Wise and
r Lee Ermie in it. He also did nineteen seventy
nine Supersonic Man that has Cameron Mitchell in it. He
did nineteen eighty one's Mystery on Monster Island that has

(18:18):
Terrence Stamp and Peter Cushing in it. And he also
did nineteen ninety two's Cuthulhu Mansion.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Oh, I'd love to see what jan Pequerre Simone does
with Terrence Stamp General Zod.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, I'm curious. So there's also another writer credited on this,
Joaquin Grau, who's credited as Jack Gray on the US version,
a writer who worked He just worked with Simone on
a couple of his other films, So I couldn't find
out much about this individual. But let's get into the
cast a bit here. So really the most of these

(18:51):
cast members were people I was not familiar with. But
there's one that has come up on the show before,
and that is the character Bert, one of the Hunters,
one of the poach in the film, played by Frank Bronna,
who lived nineteen thirty four through twenty twelve. Not really
a major character in this film, but a regular player
in Simone's films, and he also turns up in a
ton of Spanish bee movies of the day, including Return

(19:14):
of the Blind Dead, which we previously covered on the show.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
He in this movie looks like a cross between Sam
the Eagle and Leslie Nielsen. He has a kind of
silver haired authority and yet he's just playing kind of
a scummy poacher.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah. I think he played a lot of heavies in
his time. He shows up spaghetti westerns and horror movies.
He has those really piercing eyes and often white hair,
and also seem to be able to grow a lot
of impressive facial hair. So if you look up just
images of Frank Bronna in different movies, Yeah, he's a
little chameleon like. He can play any kind of suspicious,

(19:55):
sort of handsome dude with really piercing evil eyes. It's
it looks like he made a career out of that.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Wait, who was he in Return of the Blind Dead?
Was he a was he like one of the corrupt
politicians or something?

Speaker 1 (20:08):
He was? Memory serves he was the corrupt politicians henchman
who you think is decent for a while and not
as bad as the politician, but eventually reveals himself to
be a predatory villain as well, and then he's killed
by the dead. All right, other humans in this film
we have. We have the character Rick, who's the frontman

(20:29):
of a horrible band. This is played by Ian Sarah Dates,
unknown Spanish actor known mostly for this film for Pieces
for Mystery on Monster Island, so you know, he was
a regular player for Simone, but he's recently directed and
produced it looks like and yeah. In this he plays Rick,

(20:50):
a perfectionist lead singer of a terrible band that makes
everyone around him miserable.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
They're really it's like they're setting him up to be
the villain of the movie. He's like the jerk who
you know will finally get his come up and from
the monster in the end. But no, it seems like
in the end the movie you realize that he is
sort of the hero of the movie.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
It's very weird, but he doesn't really do much that's heroic, Like,
he doesn't really have an arc, he doesn't have a
redemption story. He doesn't realize that he was a jerk.
He just kind of by not he stops actively being terrible,
but he doesn't really do anything all that good. I
guess he's a little heroic, but for movie heroism, it's

(21:31):
very mild.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Oh no, I'm not saying he does anything qualitatively heroic.
I'm saying he fills the hero slot in the movie,
like he is the young guy who comes in at
the end, you know, and like shoots the monster and stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, in that regard, you could say he's
definitely filling the space that should be occupied by a
more heroic figure.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
But no, yeah, complete jerk of a character, essentially no
redeeming qualities. The only thing that changes really at the
end is he just sort of like stops having lines.
And yeah, I guess they're that.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
You know, Well, that's an eft is a blessing. Yeah,
let's see another human of note in this. There's Nina
Ferrer playing Sharon, a member of the band and Rick's girlfriend.

(22:25):
Date's unknown, a Spanish actor who appeared in a handful
of films, and this might be the best well known,
at least outside of Spain as far as I can tell.
Then there's also Susanna Biquerer, who plays Lara, a fan
of the band. Lara is also a Miles spoiler. She
will be one of the early victims in the film,

(22:46):
but kind of a victim of both human more of
a victim of the humans right as opposed to the
aliens at any rate.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, yeah, it's confusing because I thought that her death
is caused by humans, but then she gets the little
like the Big Dipper inscribed on her forehead, which suggests
she was killed by the alien.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
So I don't know, m all right, we'll have to
suss that out at any rate. Beaker here a Spanish actor,
mostly active and still active on television. For instance, she's
currently in a show called Now and Then, which is
apparently on Apple TV Plus. And she had a small
role in Hostile Too as an Italian translator. And she is,
according to her online acting profile, fluent in English, Italian

(23:29):
and French.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Oh, speaking of do do you have any idea whether
the actors who appear on screen also provide the voices
in the audio dub I wondered if there was any
difference there, because I think I think most or all
of this movie does not have live sound. The dialogue
is dubbed.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
In right, So yeah, my understanding and I could be
wrong on this is that again, it was a French
Spanish co production, and I think lines were recorded for
both a French version and a Spanish version, but I
don't know I have both of those. If we're talking
about two different takes in two different languages, I don't
know if we're talking about one is the live take
and the other is the dub or as is sometimes

(24:09):
the case with films of this caliber, if both were
dubbed and they just and they didn't do sound, I
don't know. All right. We mentioned Tommy already, Tommy, the
heart and soul of this film, the sweetness of this film,
this film's hope for humanity, played by Oscar Martin born
nineteen seventy two, a French child actor who I think
would have been like ten or eleven at the time

(24:30):
of filming, which coincidentally is the age of my son.
So I think that's why this film had more of
an effect on me watching it this as opposed to
the past, because like, here's here's this child that is,
you know, that still has all of this innocence in him,
and he's you know, he's into cute animals and caring

(24:51):
for animals and nature, and he has his goodness in him,
and you know, there's a lot of that that reminds
me of my own son. And there's also this, you know,
this fear of them growing ever older, getting closer and
closer to that world of teenagedness in adulthood, and all
of the complexities of all of that. So I think

(25:12):
all of this made me think a little bit deeper
about this film and read more into this film than
I did in the past.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh, okay, this is explaining a lot. Yeah, I suspect
your son would make better decisions than Tommy does.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Well, I don't know. We'll see what is tom We'll
get into it. I'm trying to remember what Tommy's worst
decisions are.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Well, I don't know, now that I think about it.
I mean, maybe Tommy. It's hard to blame Tommy too much.
I think if him is essentially kind of unleashing an
alien horror on everyone, but he doesn't, it's not so
much his fault.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, I would say he increases the amount of entanglement
between the people and the aliens, but maybe that was inevitable.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah. Martin here playing Tommy is good. I enjoy him.
I feel like he's a good He does a good
job as a child actor in this and in the
English dub. I don't know for certain, but we kind
of have that same thing going on that we had
with the House by the Cemetery, where I think we
might have an adult woman dubbing the voice for Tommy,

(26:17):
which adds to the sort of weirdness of the whole situation.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yep, yep, yep. What was the kid in the house
by the cemetery was up?

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Bob? Bob? Yes, at least this time a proper child's name, right, Tommy.
That sounds like a child's name. Bob. That's a grown
up's name, right, all right. A couple of other actors
have not there is there are a numerous actors. There
are really too many human characters in this because the
band and has just multiple members and hangers on, some

(26:44):
of which have no real impact on the plot. But Tommy,
as we learned, Tommy lives with his mom, whose name
is Molly, played by Concha Queitos born nineteen forty four,
Spanish actor who worked mostly in TV and was also
in Slug And then we have and then Tommy's uncle

(27:05):
Bill lives with them. Uncle Bill is played by Manuel
Perero who was born in nineteen twenty seven, a Cuban
born Spanish actor I believe, who has a fairly diverse filmography,
having appeared in movies that also feature the likes of
John Finch, Steve Guttenberg, Alan Arkin, Leonard Nimoy, Julian Sands,

(27:26):
Paul McGann and Paul Nashy.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Of course, Paul Nashy.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
I oh, man, I'm gonna get tripped up a lot
when we're talking about the plot because this is uncle Bill.
But I was definitely just thinking of him as grandpa.
So he is grandpa to me.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, and he's oh, he's awful. He's just a grumpy
man who distrusts everyone, hates animals.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, he really hates Carl and asc Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Oh yeah, so we'll discuss Bill. Uncle Bill is not
a likable character, all right. And finally, the music. The
music is definitely I think one of the best attributes
of the film. The music here was done by Libra Pastor.
Pastor worked on a handful of Simone films, including pieces
a Spanish organ player and composer. He was apparently a

(28:18):
member of the band Los Roberts and the soundtrack was
released on vinyl in Spain. So some of these films
we end up talking about were like, oh, what if
they ever put this out on vinyl, wouldn't that be cool?
This is one where it came out on vinyl originally.
I don't think anybody's put it back out on vinyl.
I don't know that it's available anywhere officially, Like it's
a digital and it's a digital version. I don't think

(28:40):
it ever came out on like cassette or CD, but
it came out on vinyl. And the cover is pretty
great because it has this wonderful illustration of Tommy looking
up into the sky and there's like a halo of
light behind him.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Los Nuevo's Extra Terrestrace. So comb your local used record
store if you find a copy right in.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
This has got to be worth a fortune, at least
to certain very specific individuals. But anyway, the music in
this is pretty fun that the score anyway, lots of synth,
very atmospheric at times, also very goofy and carnival ask
at times. I remember in the MST three K episode
they distinctly made I think they made of music from

(29:20):
the Hearts of Space joke in there, because it does
have that kind of feel at times.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Did this person THO Will also write the pop song
that is that is diegetic music within the movie. It
is the band the song the band sings in the studio.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
I do not know about that. I don't think that
awful track which is known as idiot Control now among
MST three k fans, I don't think that's on the
score album here. And I did note that on IMDb
there's another individual credited as well for music, and so

(29:58):
perhaps that individual had something to do with creation of
that track. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
I think outside the context of MST the song is
actually called Burning Rubber Tires, which is a really wonderfully
attractive name. But I would say this is actually it
makes for one of the all time great MST skits.
You know, you watch MST like a lot of times
the skits are aren't the best part, but the skit

(30:23):
in the pod People episode where they sing a parody
of this song is it's got to be top three
ever on the show.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Oh yeah, yeah. Joel does a spoof of it and
it's it's tremendous. Definitely. This is a situation where were
watching it unriffed. I still had the echo of a
number of the rifts in my mind as I was
watching it.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Steady as she goes we're flying over trout.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Except the weird thing is I thought some of the
lines they sang in their version that we're just that
I assumed we're just straight parody are literally the lines
in the real song, Like I think all I want
to feel is the wind in my eyes, which is hilarious.
Is actually the lyric.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
I think it is? Yeah, that just sounds insane, Like,
if I'm feeling the wind in my eyes, I probably
need some goggles. Yeah, that's going to dislogic contact lens.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Okay, you ready to talk about the plot.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Let's get into the plot, all right.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
We get how many movies have we watched recently? I
feel like this is a really common opening motif we
open on a starfield, we're just looking at space. It's
got to be, like, I don't know, at least four
out of the last seven movies we've done.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, Yeah, And I feel like this one especially is
kind of an example of how not to do it logically.
I feel like, if you want a logical example of
how to do it, look at something like John Carpenter's
The Thing right where we have starfield object entering Earth's
atmosphere and then we pretty much cut to stuff on Earth.
We don't go back to space. We were never just

(31:53):
stuck in space without any hint of action going on.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
But there's something I do like about this opening, actually
that's a little more stylish than I think most of
the film is, which is the base beat Star. There
is like there's kind of a pulse a beat in
the soundtrack that is synchronized to the flaring of a
star in the middle of the void. And then of
course we see after that there's a big explosion. I

(32:20):
guess that's supposed to be a super nova or something.
I don't know, But then there's like a hunk of
something flying through space toward the camera. And I got
to say, from what I recall, this is completely different
from the opening that I remember from the version of
the movie that's used in the Mystery Science Theater episode,
which I recall was grainy slow mo footage from a

(32:42):
totally unrelated movie.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, the film Ventures International version, which that's where we
got the title Pod People, that was based out of
Atlanta by the way back in the seventies. But the
version they put out on I assume VHS that they
used footage from Don dollars nineteen eighty five film Galaxy Invader.
In the opening, Don Dahler, of course, is the guy
did Night Beast?

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, I've seen Galaxy Invader. Galaxy Invader and Night Beast
have some things in common. Both of them are about
a an alien that crash lands somewhere in like rural
Maryland and then runs around scaring people.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, yeah, we really need to do one of his
films at some point. They're all basically all the alien
films anyway, and he has like what three or four
of them. They're all essentially the same plot. They have
different and different alien or different aliens in them, but
they're they're always enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
One thing I remember about Night Beast is the the
the titular Beast has a really cool, like like shiny suit.
It almost looks like a like a suit like a
cool like singer from the seventies would wear, like in
a disco band or something.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Oh yeah, yeah, he does have a shiny suit, doesn't he.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
But Okay, that's the opening of what wait, which one?
Which name are we even using to call it? Extraterrestrial Visitors?
And then we go down to Earth and we're looking
at the woods of Fog and Bog. We're in Fog
and Bog territory. The atmosphere again, it kind of reminds
me of those misty woods with the knights who say, Nie,
it's very atmospheric. In fact, like you could imagine some

(34:13):
of these environmental shots being kind of cool in a
better movie. Like the atmosphere is not bad, it just
doesn't segue into very compelling action instead of what we
get is like three poachers kind of bumbling about, arguing
with each other, and it's like, are we here? Are
you sure?

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Are you sure? You're sure?

Speaker 2 (34:33):
And I think they're trying to steal eagle eggs or something.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, they're like fumbling around for a ladder, they're scaling
a tree, and they have what they claim to be
like three grand worth of eggs that they've stolen, like
three thousand dollars worth of eggs they're gonna sell in
the black market. I was wondering if they might be fabergets.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
I don't know what is the market for eagle eggs.
Do people want to cook them and make eagle omelets
or people trying to hatch eagles? What's the deal?

Speaker 1 (35:00):
I don't know, but the bottom line is the very least.
When we meet these three poachers, they have no respect
for nature. All they see is profit and they're gonna
break the break the rules. They're gonna break all rules
of law and man and alien to get what they want.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
They are bad dudes. And then we zoom out again.
It's like, I'm tired of Earth. Let's go back to space.
So we just see like auroras of weird energy in space,
and we see the Earth from orbit and all kinds
of stuff going on, and then we come back and
then they're like, Okay, you saw that. Now, let's go
back to Earth. Here's a kid in bed and he

(35:36):
gets up out of bed to scold his cat. He's
talking about, like, naughty kitty. I don't remember why the
kitty is naughty.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
I gues it's just where it's not supposed to be.
I think it got up to move around. Okay. He's like,
all right, I'm going to take the kitten back to bed. Yeah.
This is our introduction to Tommy, a child of absolute
goodness who loves animals in nature, whose room is home
to roughly one hundred different species that he's carrying or
they are, and they're not only his charge, they are
his friends. Oh he's just he is just childhood innocence.

(36:07):
He is biophilia incarnate. He's he's just uttersweetness in an
example of what humanity could be on this world or
in the universe at large. Only likable human in the picture.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, beautiful, wide eyed innocence and curiosity. I start contrast
to the to the grumbling evil of the poachers. And
then but let's go, let's go check in with the
poachers again. So something crashes to earth. The poachers I
think they're hanging out at a campfire where they're like, well,
let's go investigate. And one of them stumbles into the
crash site and it is a cave of glowing red fog.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
That's kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
But he goes inside. In the cave is full of eggs.
I don't know why, but for some reason, he's like,
I gotta bash all these eggs. I gotta smash them.
So he gets a stick or is it a stick
or a hammer. He's just start bashing all the eggs
for no reason.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Yeah. Yeah, it's awful because he happens upon this holy
grotto of extraterrestrial eggs, and his immediate reaction is just
to start smashing them all, just like, must destroy all
of these eggs, and you're like, no, don't do it,
and he just keeps doing it.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
But oh no, there is something in the cave of
glowing fog that does not like the egg bashing endeavor.
We get a POV of some kind of creature that
comes out from around a corner and attacks and kills
the poacher.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Dude. Yeah, this is creature number one, which I guess
we're to think of as an adult creature or a
mature creature of this species that was maybe already aboard
this ship or this or whatever, or this piece of
its planet, whatever the details may be concerning this thing
that is crashed with eggs on it. But it's kind of,

(37:49):
I guess, kind of an egg guardian. It does. I
don't think it's supposed to be the mother, because we
later get some testimony from from Trumpy creature number two
in which he's asked where its mother is, He like
points to the stars or points at a constellation on
a map or something. So it's just another creature, a
mature individual from this species.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
It may be Trumpy's brother or sister, but it is
not his parent. But we're getting ahead of ourselves because
we haven't met Trumpy yet, right.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Trump, he's still so egg because not all of the
eggs are smashed. It'll it will turn out later.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Right, most of them are smashed. So then we follow
the poacher some more. And I'm confused about what they're
doing at this point because at first they were stealing
eagle eggs, but then it shows them like aiming rifles
at deer, so they just also happened to be hunting
deer at the same time they are poaching eggs.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
It's confusing because it at first I thought, oh, I
guess they're gonna shoot deer, because they at one point
they're like the white haired one, the frank brown character,
He's like, we got to get out of here. This
feels weird. There's something weird in the forest. Let's move.
But then they seem to stop to consider shooting some deer,
so maybe they're not in that big of a hurry.
And then they stopped a camp, not in a huge

(39:00):
hurry after all. And then there are all these scenes
where Brona is using the rifle to just look at
things and look at people, doing things. So he's like
aiming his high powered hunting rifle. I just random people
in the forest.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
It's like the cop and Plan nine from outer space,
who just points his gun at people whenever he's talking
to them. Yeah, but let's go back to the house,
so we check in with Tommy. He is we find more.

(39:34):
We find out more about his innate curiosity because he
is examining a centipede under a microscope and he's looking
at all the little legs and the overlapping plates and
the body segments and the parts, and you can tell
how much he just loves learning about the natural world.
But uh oh, the fact that he's looking at at
a creature under a microscope, this leads to conflict with

(39:55):
the guy I was thinking of his grandpa. But this
is uncle Bill. Uncle Bill. Apparently he does not like
the book Learning It is Witchcraft.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, that's right. It's mentioned that it's the centipede, and
Tommy gives the what is supposedly the scientific classification for
the species, and Uncle Bill just hates this. He's like, no,
it's a centipede to me. We call that a centipede.
And it's just heated over it heated this man is awful,

(40:24):
and even Mom is not much help. She's like, well,
it's dirty. It's like it shouldn't be in here, Like
there's just Tommy has all this sweetness and innocence and curiosity,
and it's just like Uncle Bill's just just pounding it
into the dirt as to the best of his ability.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
There is far more bacteria on Uncle Bill than there
is on the centipede.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Come on, yeah, Plus, you should be so lucky as
to have this beautiful predator in your house hunting other pets,
especially if it were a house centipede, which you know
has spread with humanity around the world, and there a
specially known for praying on all sorts of things you
don't want in your house, like like like bedbugs, for example, cockroaches.

(41:07):
So yeah, like you want a house centipede around.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Okay, Finally we get to the band or the what
do you call that? I guess when I think of
a band, I think of people who play instruments. This
is a singing group, a group of singers.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Oh yeah, none of them are actually playing an instrument, right,
there's just right.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
They're just singing over a pre recorded track. So we
see them recording in the studio, they're flying over Trout
and by this point we've essentially established the three movie formula.
I know Mystery Science Theater also thought about the movie
this way, but it makes a lot of sense. You
got movie A, which is the Poacher's, Movie B, which

(41:44):
is the Child with Pets, and then movie C, which
is the singing Group.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, this toxic bunch of band members, and they're various
hangers on and producers. They're just they're just awful, Like
this whole scene, like they're doing this terrible number, and
Rick is just a perfectionist, an abusive perfectionist about the
whole thing. He's like, it's awful, it stinks. We're taking
it from the top. Like you get the impression that
he's one of these guys who's like, we're gonna do

(42:09):
five hundred takes of this scene until we get it.
We're gonna keep doing this track until we're exhausted, until
we get it right. And of course they're not scaling
Mount Everest here. We heard the song. We know that
it is absolutely garbage.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, thinking of other people who do ridiculous excessive numbers
of takes, I think of like Stanley Kubrick or something
and not that this makes that behavior acceptable, because I mean,
even then, I think it could be considered wildly excessive,
abusive to the cast and stuff. But at least with Kubrick,
you end up with a good movie.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, it's one thing if you're talking about someone who
has also has a reputation for high quality work, Like
I want to say that there are similar tales about
Doctor dre being very perfectionists when it comes to producing
tracks and all. Yeah, but at the end of the
end of the day, do you have a Doctor Dre
produced track, do you have a Stanley Kubrick directed film?
You have idiot control?

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Now this is the wind in my eyes. But okay,
So they sing the song and then Rick, the lead singer,
is hideously abusive to all of the other singers. And
then they're all going to pile into an RV and
go up to the mountains for the weekend.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah. Perfect, everybody getting along. Great, let's take this to
a crowded camper and head out to a crowded gabin somewhere.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Oh, and then there's conflict over the fact that so
they like open up the door to the RV. It's like, well,
we all hate each other and we've been fighting. So
let's let's go on to you know, spend the weekend
in the woods. And they open the door to the
r V and then here is like a lady who
introduces herself as Laura. They say that she is the
daughter of the boss of the record label. I think,

(43:46):
so it's like they've got to be nice to her
because you know, her dad is deciding their musical fate.
But immediately this causes problems between Rick the Jerk and
his girlfriend Sharon, because it's for some reason immediately clear
that Rick and Laura this other lady are gonna, you know,
they're gonna get together. And this other guy goes up,

(44:10):
like the nice guy. I think his name is Brian.
He goes up to the girlfriend Sharon, and he's like,
don't worry about it. He says, this is a quote
making out with chicks is part of his act as
an artist. Smooth, very smooth.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Just every everyone in this group is awful or they're
enabling of awfulness. It's yeah, but also it works.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
He says that, and she's like, yeah, you're right, but okay,
you know, so let's go on a road trip with
people we hate and then there's a lot of driving scenes.
We see them going up and down roads and the
RV and winding along while the music plays.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, more time is spent getting these characters to the
countryside than getting that space rock from its origin to
the Earth.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Meanwhile, we got to check in with Tommy. And here's
where things really start to cook, because Tommy runs off
into the woods and he stumbles across the glowing red
cave and he goes inside into the red fog and
he sees a dead man with led lights on his
forehead in the pattern of the shape of the Big Dipper.

(45:17):
And then Tommy's like, oh, it was a dead man
with the Big Dipper on his head. Better steal one
of these alien eggs.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Now.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
I want to ask this is a recurring motif where
people in the movie who are killed by the aliens
end up with the Big Dipper on their forehead in lights,
And I'm wondering, number one, why does that happen? And
number two, how does that happen?

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah, I have a lot of questions about this too.
Later on Trump he indicates that this is his home constellation,
like this is where his mother is. So I guess
Alien number one the non trumpye is killing people, or
in some cases, perhaps finding dead people and riding the
constellation on their forehead or making it appear with phosphorescent

(46:02):
spores or something. Who knows what the xenobiological rationale is here,
But I'm not sure why it would do. This is
like it would be like us riding earth on dead
aliens that we killed. It. I mean, I understand they
want to go home, but you're not going to achieve
that by just riding home on the forehead of your victims.
So I'm not sure. I guess it's one of these

(46:24):
things that don't overthink it. It looks kind of cool,
it's kind of a neat effect. It just doesn't make
a tremendous amount of sense.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
All Right, I won't overthink it from now on. That's
just what happens. So, yeah, Tommy grabs one of these eggs.
He's like, well, I'm going to take this back home.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Maybe it's religious. Maybe it's like, oh, like we're thinking
it's something bad, but as we as we later look
like these these aliens they just want to be our friends.
Maybe this is like last rites for them. Huh.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, Well, so here's a thing we're thinking about an
alien from the direction of the constellation of the Big
Dipper would not see like it itself, would not look
up into the sky and see the Big Dipper as
the Big Dipper. That is a feature of our perspective
from Earth. So if it were doing this in some
ritual way, it would have to be sort of for

(47:16):
our benefit or in an earth directed sense, you know
what I mean, Like that wouldn't be a native piece
of imagery for them.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Hmm yeah, well in that case it doesn't make any sense. Sorry, Trumpy,
I can't help you.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
But anyway, So Tommy takes the boy home and we're
gonna have some some good times with the egg. He
sneaks the egg into his bedroom. He you know, he
talks to his animals. I think his mom's like, Tommy,
what were you out you know, what were you doing
out there? And Tommy lies, he says, kitty was me owing.
I thought he was hungry. But then after mom goes away,

(47:51):
Tommy tells all of his other animals, you just wait
and see, you're gonna have a new friend soon. And
then the kid goes to sleep.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Hugging the egg.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
So so sweet. Now back to the kids, the not
the kids. I mean the I don't know, the people
in the RV, the singers, they're up to no good.
They're just again just being nasty. Like the record executive's
daughter Laura. She goes up to Rick the jerk in
the woods, and she's like kiss me Rick, and he's like, well, okay,

(48:21):
and then she immediately in the next scene, they're like
sitting around a campfire and she's taunting Rick's girlfriend, like,
tell her what we did in the woods. Rick, And
I don't know why. They're just like absolutely unnecessarily cruel
to each other in a way that doesn't even make
sense as like normal types of cruelty. It just it's weird.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, it just left feeling like these are all just
horrible people and I don't care if an alien kills
them in the woods.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
But this leads to this leads to Sharon like throwing
water in Laura's face or something, and then Laura runs
away and then what did you think happened here? What
I thought happened was she like saw the poachers and
then got scared and fell off the edge of a cliff.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
But oh, not only saw the poachers, but one of
the poachers, the non Frank Bronna poacher and the non
egg smasher one who's dead of course, you know, the
non Frank Brona attempts to grab her and like abduct
her or assault her or something, and so he runs
away from from him, and then she runs off the
side of a cliff and falls seems like quite a distance.

(49:30):
She falls enough to where she's not completely unconscious at least.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, And so they eventually the RV people come and
find her, and they take her back to the RV
and they try to I don't know what does this
medical scene.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah, they're like, okay, she at least has a severe concussion,
so let's tuck her into bed and pour liquor down
her throat. So they get a bottle of Jack Daniels
or something, and they're treating it like it's a potion
of greater healing or something.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
But so they eventually they're gonna they're gonna show up
at the house, right, So they arrive at the house
of Tommy's family asking to use a phone. You know,
our friend is hurt. We need to call for help.
Uh and uh, And how does the family react. Uncle
Bill doesn't take kindly to strangers of course.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah, he grabs a gun. That's his first reaction to
the strangers at his door pleading for help, and his
attitude does not improve much at all when he finds
out that they're in trouble. He's just like, all right,
I guess we let him in the house. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah, but the phones of course are out. Uh they
say because of the storm. But I don't think we've
seen a storm.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
It's just I guess all that fog, that just hideous
fog bank that's rolled in. It's just destroying phone lines
and everything else.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Here's a metal band name Storm of Fog.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
There you go. I like it. Oh.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Also, the road is blocked so they can't leave, so
they're just stuck here at the house, and they realize
they're gonna have to spend the night and tomorrow they'll
go find a radio in the ranger's cabin and then
use that to call for help. So this place must
be very seclude.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
I noticed that they didn't make much use of it.
But they had a bar in this film, in the
in this environment, in this cabin that reminded me a
lot of the bar in The Devil Girl from Mars.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Yes, really well stocked lots of brown liquors.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
Yeah, yeah, multiple shelves, Like that's an extensive liquor collection.
But I don't know, we don't really see people sitting
around enjoying it. I guess they just didn't have time
with all that's happening here.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Meanwhile, the poachers are out camping in the woods, and
if they're having a hard time, I thought they were
going to be getting out of there, but they're just
hanging around for some reason. I don't understand what the
poachers are doing.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Yeah, they at first they acted like they realized something
was wrong and they needed to get the heck out
of Dodge, But then they're not. There's no real rush.
Later on they're like, all right, well, I guess we're
walking out of here. They seem concerned about the fact
that their truck is gone, but they don't really do
anything about it. They accept that. The really bad poacher says, well,
couldn't we steal those kids camper? And he's like, like,

(51:57):
you idiot, you can't do that. Were already doing enough
crimes here, we don't need more crimes.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, it's the bearded one that wants to take the RV.
The other guys Frank Burana is more like, that'll get
us into more trouble.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, we're just here to poach eggs. We're not here
to kidnap, we're not here to steal vehicles. And the
bearded guys like, well, we could do all those things.
We have time, let's do those things.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
But so they're camping out in the woods and they, oh,
they encounter an alien. And I think this is the
first time we actually get a look at what the
alien body forms are like in this movie. So the
alien is like because sort of a furry squat Chewbacca
style body, but much shorter, and then the head has

(52:42):
like a pointy apex on top, and then long ardvark
snout and then pointy l fears.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
I thought this scene was rather effective because when we
see the creature here, and granted we have some context
as well, we've seen presumably we've seen it kill already,
but you know, it looks a little bit cute. There's
some cuteness here. It's not just completely monstrous, but there's
an uncanniness to it as well. And then also the
lighting is very dark. The human characters here are being

(53:15):
very cautious around it. And then another thing that I
really like about the extraterrestrials in this film is the
eyes they created for them are very expressive. They're very glassy,
like living looking eyes that I think give them a
lot of character.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
But to keep up with your theory that the alien
only turns murderous because it is repeatedly exposed to aggression
from humans early on, So it walks up to the campfire.
I don't know what its original plan is, but they
start shooting it with a crossbow.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah, they're kind of like the bearded guy, he kind
of he's like, hey, come on in. He's trying to
small talk the alien. He's offering it a big grotesque
piece of meat that they've been cooking over the fire.
You know, just already kind of an unsettling display. But
then Frank Brona tries to net it. They fire a
crossbow bolt at it, and the bolt hits it in
the hits the alien in the chest. So yeah, these

(54:06):
are not good ambassadors of humanity.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Meanwhile, back at the house, uh oh, that egg's hatching.
It pops open. There's a little kind of greasy, slimy
little alien in there.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
So cute. So it's not cute yet it's already cute.
It's already cute. It's the slimy little like like fetal
elephant creature. And yeah, I don't know, I thought it
was cute.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Okay, I won't argue with you. He starts feeding the
alien food. It's eating a lot. It really enjoys vacuuming
up milk with its snout. He names it Trumpy. I
assume that's because it has a long snout, and so
that is like a trump beet. I don't think that's
ever made explicit, but that's what I guess.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
I don't know. It could also originate in one of
the two original languages for the film. I don't know.
Maybe it makes even more sense in French or in Spanish.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
But the kids like, oh, we're going to play now
that you're getting bigger. Do you know what playing is? Trumpy?
And Trumpy does not know, but Trumpy will find out.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
So this is the world that Trumpy is introduced to.
This is the human world that he's introduced to, a
world of copious amounts of food. A lot of it
is breakfast, cereals, toys, play, friendship, all the things that
were denied to extraterrestrial one.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
But remember now this is all taking place in the
same house where the RV singers are staying overnight, and
apparently Laura, the record executive's daughter who fell off the cliff,
she dies overnight and they come and see her, and
they see something is horrible about her face. We already
know what it is. It's going to be the Big
Dipper with the lights. But I guess overnight, also Trumpy

(55:59):
becomes much bigger. He grows from like the size of
a little toy on the on the shelf to basically
the same size as Tommy. And we see that this
great scene that is hilarious in the Mystery Science Theater
version where Trumpy is just surveying the buffet of Tommy's pets,
panting over the rabbits and the hamsters and the cat
and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, they make some great riffs in that episode about
him considering eating all these animals. But in the original
film he does not eat any of the animals. And
I kind of get the sense that these are vegetarians,
that they don't eat meat, which makes the earlier offering
of the grotesque meat by the bearded poacher even more fitting.

(56:41):
You know, he's like, like, come here, organism. Would you
like some organism?

Speaker 2 (56:45):
But in the scene we also discover via interactions with
a toy robot that Trumpy has telekinesis.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Oh yes, like not even just a little bit, like
not just a little bit of carry white, but like
full power carry white, like full almost godline telekinetic powers. Well.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
ET does too. I think this is an ET touch
from ET.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah, does E t like bring the whole room to life?
It's been so long since I've seen ET.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
I think so.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
I think there's a scene where ET does basically the
same thing Trump. He does, like makes all the you know,
the toys fly around and stuff.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
I feel like Trump he probably does it better. I
feel like I'm If I were to watch ET again,
I would side with the Trumpy got because Trumpy basically
uses a Simon game to cut a synth track like
this Carnival synth track that starts playing like Trumpy does
this by manipulating the Simon software.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
I did not expect your take on this movie to
be so anti ET.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
I mean, ET's fine, you can't hate ET, but but
I also I don't. I've also I've seen ET like
once in my life. I've seen pod people or extraterrestrial
visitors multiple multiple times.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
What else does Trumpy eat? So I'm trying to think
do they ever feed him meat? Him suck up a
bunch of milk. We see Tommy bring him, oh, a
big old thing of Planters peanuts and you can see
the label, So, I mean Planters surely they paid for
that place.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
You know they did this the Reese's treatment, right.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
And they do a special effect where you know, Trumpy's
snout is like a vacuum cleaner and it's sucking up
all the peanuts. When we in this scene, we get
some really good looks at Trumpy's eyes. I notice Trumpy
has a vertical slit pupils cat ooh nice.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yeah again, these are lovely eyes. You know, whoever did
this this costume? I feel like they they kind of
knocked it out of the park. I like it.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
But Trumpy learns puzzles and games. He telekinetically solves a
puzzle and manipulates a Simon says thing, Uh, there's a
there's a bonding scene where Tommy is drawing and he
draws this hideous picture and says, that's my mommy. Do
you have a mommy.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Yeah, his picture of his mom looks like a rick
Flare Paz to Spencer, Yep.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
It Also it looks absolutely nothing like his mommy, Like
it's not even close, not even the same hair color.
But anyway, this is the Trumpy. You can do magic
things here the scene, and Trumpy turns the child's bedroom
into a living nightmare of carnival music, flickering lights, dancing toys,
terrorizing the pets. He sticks to the ceiling like Baron Harkoneen.

(59:27):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Yeah. And also his eyes glow like stars. It's it's
pretty great.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Now. Is this the scene where Trumpy says where his
mommy is and points out the constellation?

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I think so, because I think he shows in the
picture Tommy's picture of his own mommy, and he says,
where's your mommy? And He's like he points, and Tommy's like, oh,
your mommy, You mean the trees. Your mommy's in the
trees And he's like, no, Trump, He points that the
map of the constellations and causes one of the constellations,
the one of the dip, to glow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Yeah, now, exactly like an et. Also, there's a whole
thing of Tommy trying to hide Trumpy from his family,
like hiding him in the closet and stuff. Obviously this
is more difficult. Well, while Trumpy is playing DJ in
the bedroom.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
But there's the distraction of a dead woman downstairs, so
I guess that probably helps cover things up. They're not
as concerned about what new animal Tommy has a snuck
into the house. But at one point, maybe later, but
Mom gets short with Tommy and she's like, like, oh,
more animals. They're all going out tomorrow. Yeah, that sounds
kind of kind of harsh, Mom. You know, he loves

(01:00:37):
these animals even don't get you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Come on, that's an empty threat. But meanwhile, speaking of
Grizzly murders, Grandpa and one of the r V kids
they go off looking for the ranger station. I think
this is the guy Brian who earlier was like, hey,
you know, don't worry about Rick making out with other girls.
That's just part of his act. Brian and Uncle Bill

(01:01:00):
they go to the ranger station. Uncle Bill just walks
around pointing his gun at everything, and they find one
of the poachers inside, but he is dead and he's
got a big dipper in lights on his forehead, just
like everybody else, and then one of the aliens attacks them.
It seemingly kills the RV dude, and Grandpa escapes. Now
here's a question I wonder about. Are we are we

(01:01:26):
as the audience, supposed to be wondering if this is
Trumpy doing the killing since in the scene right before this,
Trumpy sneaks off and disappears. Or are we supposed to
assume that this is a different alien that just looks
identical to Trumpy. I think we discover it is a
different alien, but I don't know if that's intentionally supposed

(01:01:46):
to be an open question or not.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah, I'm not sure on this because it seems like,
on one hand, the killing started before Trump be hatched,
So if we're just looking at the timeline of events,
we can't pin all the murders on Trump. There has
to be another a primary alien out there, extraterrestrial one.

(01:02:09):
So I don't I have a hard time understanding how
we the viewer are supposed to think Trumpy might be
doing this. But also it's hard to reflect on this
because it's been so long since I had a fresh
viewing of this, Like it seems like I've always known
that Trumpy was innocent and incapable of murder.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
He is blameless. Did you notice the Ranger cabin in
the woods here has framed portraits of Ronald Reagan on
the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Yeah, yeah, that made me laugh. I feel like there
was after I saw it. I have a vague recollection
of there being a riff about the Gipper or something
in the most two three K episode. But it is
an odd inclusion because this again is Spain. It's supposed
to be Spain, and it's filmed in Spain. I don't
know why Ronald Reagan's on the wall.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
So we see the alien kill another one of the
band members. This is the singer Tracy. He just he
kills her in the r V and uh oh. This
time Tommy happens to be looking through the telescope down
at the RV outside I guess to witness this, and
because the aliens look the same, he thinks Trumpy is
the killer. Oh no, there is a rift between them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Now. Now, this is definitely the point at which, yeah,
it's hard to imagine that this particular murder was itself on,
that it was provoked in anyway. This seemed to be
an unprovoked killing by extraterrestrial one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Sure, yeah, Tracy, what you think Tracy attacked the alien?

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
I mean Tracy's just Jesus chilling.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Anyway, the rest of the survivors are all hold up
in the cabin, oh except Tommy for some reason, like
he runs off into the bog and fog to find Trumpy.
And here there is a really weird scene where there's
a standoff between Uncle Bill and Rick, the jerk lead singer,
where Uncle Bill's like, have you ever used a gun before?

(01:03:57):
And Rick says, I don't need a gun to defend myself,
and then Uncle Bill says, yeah, you probably pay others
to defend you. And then Rick aims the rifle at
Grandpa here at Uncle Bill and then shoots in his
direction without hitting him. He like shoots a glass beside
him on the bar, and then everybody's like, why are
you shooting at Uncle Bill? And he goes, I don't

(01:04:18):
like anyone bugging me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Yeah, this is the act of a rational character that
we're supposed to greet.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
For now, Tommy comes back to so he ran off
into the woods. Then he comes back and he finds
Trumpy in his bedroom and playful happy music is chiming.
But then there it begins this mad exchange between Tommy's
a voice again, this is dubbed by like an adult woman,
I think, and Trumpy's various like head nods and headshakes

(01:04:44):
to communicate. So the kid is saying, Trumpy, no, stay there,
stay away. Why did you kill that girl? Why did
you kill that girl? Why did you do that? Now
I can't be your friend anymore. Naughty, Trumpy, very naughty.
Now they'll kill you. But Trumpy, I think, is able
to explain himself with head nods somehow. He's like, no, no,

(01:05:06):
it wasn't me, shaking his head. And then the kid's
like was it someone else? Did another one do this?
And Trumpy nods. He's protesting his innocence, and so eventually
I think Tommy is convinced that Trumpy is innocent, and
for some reason he dresses Trumpy up like a Jawa like,
he puts a coat with a hood on over him.
I'm not sure what the purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Of that is. I guess to sneak him out of
the house. But there are no other children anywhere in
the vicinity in the film at all, so I don't
know exactly what Tommy was hoping to pull off with this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
This is just my friend, the bipedal ardvark who wears
a raincoat. Yeah, so we get another random alien attack.
The other Trumpy species alien attacks one of the RV
ladies in the bathroom. We get a mirror scare where
she wipes the fog off of the bathroom mirror and
it's standing behind her, and then it attacks. There are

(01:05:58):
more scenes of Tommy and Trumpy arguing to Tommy saying
that you have to hide or they'll kill you. And
eventually this all comes to a head when the mother
and Sharon I think see Trumpy like the kids trying
to sneak him through the house and they're like, there,
it's that monster. And Tommy tries to explain. He says, no,

(01:06:19):
it wants to be our friend. He's good, he's good.
They all want to be our friends, but we won't
let them. And of course the mother doesn't believe that,
so Tommy and Trumpy really have no choice. They flee
into the woods, and here in the woods, you think
the other alien is about to sneak up on Tommy
and give him what for, but Trumpy intervenes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Yeah, we finally have Extraterrestrial one and Extraterrestrial two aka
Trumpy meeting up in the woods.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Now, eventually there's a big showdown Uncle Bill and Rick
that they shoot the other alien, the non Trumpy alien.
Grandpa is killed in this scuffle, but Rick blasts the
alien to death and then it, like turbo, buries its
own body telekinetically.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Yeah, we have another self burying monster, kind of like
some of the creatures in Crawl. Yeah, a great effect.
I like it. I'd like to see more of it
in my monster films.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
And there's a tearful goodbye between Tommy and Trumpy. You know,
it's like they'll never accept you, Trumpy, we cannot be together.
And the humans all walk off together, and Trumpy is
left behind in the woods, and finally he wanders away
into the mist. You never know if he gets back
to his home planet or not, or what happens to him.
He just wanders away, and then roll credits and Rick survives.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Yeah, that's the weird choice, perhaps a product of this
film probably changing its direction and priorities at some point
in production they're like, oh, we forgot to do anything
with Rick. Well it's all right, but I have to
say that the ending to this film. It got me.
I teared up a that, you know, because the aliens,

(01:07:58):
it turns out, you know, they are good. And in fact,
it's not just a matter where Okay, Trump is good,
but the other one is purely evil. Like we have
that moment where Trumpy is able to communicate with its
fellow alien, and that seems to maybe even convince him
of some of this stuff, like, no, okay, a lot
of these humans are bad, but Tommy's cool. They have
this moment, so the aliens are good, Tommy's good. Humanity

(01:08:22):
itself is just hostile and violent and mean spirited, and
Tommy and Trumpy are just too good for the world.
And so, but what happens. Tommy has to push Trumpy away,
He has to send him off into the woods where,
you know, either he does find a way back to
his home Planner, or he just lives in the woods
as like a wild being, like a sasquatch, for the
rest of his life. And we're left wondering, like, can

(01:08:45):
Tommy retain his sweetness and goodness as he continues on
in this world? Is he or is he saying goodbye
not only to his friend Trump? Is he not only
pushing Trumpy away from him? But is he pushing away
his own innocence and his own hope for a sweeter world?
And I think that's that's that was all going through
my head here as I was, I was tearing up
watching this. Uh, this, this poor extraterrestrial being left in

(01:09:09):
the foggy woods and then walking off into the wilderness.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Wow, the gospel of Trumpy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Yeah. And we also we have some some very potent
synth music playing over all this, so that that also helped. So,
like like I said, I'm I know, I'm reading a
lot into this film. And also this film is you know,
it's coming in the wake of ET. It's patterning itself
off of existing media, and in doing so, it's retaining

(01:09:36):
some of the inherent messages in those in those pictures.
But I don't know. Also, maybe someone here, you know,
he was he was trying to to to get this
message across. Maybe he was trying to say something about
about the world and about childhood innocence. I don't know.
I feel like the film does have a heart, you know,
there's still there's still some heart there. And what heart

(01:09:58):
is there is genuine I.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Wonder what, you know, what kind of new themes and
possibilities emerge from a sort of patch over job like this.
Because I can't remember if we already said this, I
at least read about this movie. I think you may
have alluded to this that it was originally intended to
be just more of a heartless kind of like alien

(01:10:20):
slasher movies, just more like Night Beast or something. It's
just about an alien that runs around killing people. And
then ET came out and they were like, oh, we
got to make this a sweet story about the bond
between a child and an alien and a child's love
and friendship from the hearts of space and trying to
smash those two things together makes for such a weird product,

(01:10:44):
but maybe also having some elements that would not have
have been achieved had it just been an attempt to
create an ET ripoff from the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Yeah, that's a great question because it kind of reminds
me again of Gremlins, where the original Gremlins movie, by
being totally inconsistent, seen to have a core message of haye, kids,
monsters exist, and there's no Santa Claus, you know, which
which clearly was nobody's key intention. But I think that's
probably what comes comes. This is the kind of thing
that emerges when priorities shift and the tone changes, and

(01:11:15):
the tone is inconsistent throughout a picture.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
Every day I feel closer to doing Grimlins too.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Oh yeah, I think it's it's a grand idea. I
think we should. We should make it be our Christmas
episode this year. Having done ETV, we have to do
G two no stopping it all right, well that is
extraterrestrial visitors or visitors or EVP, or of course the
hatching of monsters. I think the hatching of monsters is

(01:11:43):
really good because it also because we have different types
of monsters. We have the alien monster and we have
the human monsters. I think it's a good title. I
wish I kind of wish it's stuck with that across
translations mm hm. As always, we'd love to hear from
anyone out there if you have particular thoughts and memories
insight about this picture. You know, perhaps you know like us,

(01:12:04):
grew up watching the ms T three K episode, perhaps
you have prior experience with pod people or extraterrestrial visitors.
Definitely write in and let us know. And hey, if
you do find a superior copy of the film, out
there that we're not aware of. Let us know. I'm
hoping that if it doesn't exist now, at some point

(01:12:25):
in the future, that'll be the next big one, because
there are a lot of worse films that get the
restoration treatment, and I'm not saying that that's bad. It's
probably just a case of nobody's found superior footage from
extraterrestrial visitors yet, but I hope they do. Maybe it's
self buried itself in the Spanish forest somewhere it wants

(01:12:47):
to be found. All right, till next time. Weird House
Cinema publishes every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your
Mind podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast, with core
episodes on Monday, No no core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday,
sorry Mondays, that's a listener mail. Wednesday that's Artifact or
Monster Factor short form episode, and on the weekends we

(01:13:07):
do a rerun.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff
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(01:13:30):
Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my
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Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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