Weirdhouse Cinema: Extra Terrestrial Visitors

Once more on 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and we are
going to the year three for this one. We're going
to be discussing a film that has many names. It's

(00:27):
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. Strangely, that title has nothing
to do with the contents of the movie and makes
it sound like it's a rip off of Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, when in fact it's a rip off

(00:49):
of ET but with much grizzlier elements. Yeah, it's. My
rough understanding of this film is that it may have
originally started as your as Your Basic Error, Creature in
the Woods sort of fair, but this is the year
after e T Cute aliens being befriended by children is
big business, and so this gets folded into the plot.

(01:12):
So it's one of these films that much like much
like the film Gremlin's, it's totally inconsistent, like it 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, your your loft wondering
like who is this for? Like they are parts of
this film that I would show my child. There are

(01:33):
other parts that I would not show them. There are
there plenty of human characters I would not expose them
to in this Well, I would say even the cute
stuff in this movie is grotesque. Uh. The scenes with Tommy,
the child and his alien friend, like playing around and
doing telekinesis parties in in uh, in the in the
bedroom and making like the toys dance on the ceiling

(01:54):
and stuff. Uh. Something about that is its own kind
of horror, even though I don't think that part is
intended to be scary. Oh, I thought it was delightful.
Tommy is is absolute goodness and sweetness, and so is
Trumpy Trump. He is the name that Tommy gives UH
to the childlike alien who comes into his life. So

(02:15):
in a way, this movie is going to be in
the tradition of you know, all the movies where a
child to be friends a benevolent, fantastical being. Think about
the movie that was the direct inspiration for at least
half of this spielberg ZT came out the year before UM.
But on the other hand, I think you can think
of this as part of a sub genre of It's

(02:37):
not 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 sub
genre of child to be friends a deadly monster movies
like UM. I think one of the core prototypes here
is the original UH ninety one Frankenstein, the Universal monster movie,

(02:59):
where there is a pivot all seen highlighting the creatures
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

(03:21):
the midst of 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 sadistic evil monster. UM.
I don't know if that's exactly the case in Pod
almost called it Pod people extraterrestrial visitors. It's I'm not

(03:42):
sure if this movie was trying to say anything about
like the moral complexity of the beings in the relationship
to humans. The child at the in the movie does
often say they just want to be our friends. Uh.
Yet we do see the aliens totally unprovoked to just
attacking humans. I don't well, I don't I don't know
if they're completely unprovoked. Now to come back to Frankenstein,

(04:05):
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 and Frankenstein's monster rather uh.
And you can call him Frankenstein. It's it's fine, we checked. Uh,
he's cool with it. The monster encounters a humanity that
is hostile to him, and that foster's hostility that fosters

(04:27):
this this grudge against both his creator uh and uh
and the creator's fellow human beings. Uh. And so in
this film we 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 the
blind man. Because we have these two aliens, and they
both have they have different experiences with the humans they encounter.

(04:51):
The first alien encounters poachers and hunters and and vile
band members and so forth. Like the first his first
encounters with humans are all murderous. Meanwhile, the second, younger alien,
his first encounter is Tommy, and Tommy like hatches him
from an egg. Tommy is nice to him and feeds

(05:13):
him and and they venture off into a world of
whimsy with each other. Uh where the the other one,
the murderous alien, has none of that. Oh, I think
I see what you're saying. So like, even though the
other alien does like just randomly attacked like innocent people,
like in a bathroom or in an RV, it is
because the other alien had previously encountered dangerous humans, right, Yeah,

(05:37):
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 a he has like a crossbow
bolt in his um in his chest most of the
time because he's also been wounded by the humans. Uh So, yeah,
this was the for me the most interesting thing about

(05:57):
this film watching it for the first time without any riffs,
without you know, the added layer of of overt humor
provided by ms T three K, because I've seen this
film multiple times before via that ms T three K episode,
which is one of my favorites. It's a classic MST episode.
But I've never really given the film a chance to

(06:17):
succeed and fail on its own merits, and it does.
It does both. Now, I do want to come back
to the title UH in the 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 French and Spanish names. Um. I

(06:41):
believe the Spanish is what Los novos extras arrest says,
which is the new extraterrestrials, and then uh, and then
the French and French is not my certainly not my
my happy spot for pronunciation, but I believe it is
Clason monsters. So it's um. That's terrible, I know, but
but I love what it means, the hatching of monsters.

(07:04):
I think the hatching of monsters might be the best
title for this film 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
open by a poacher. I'm not sure multiple eggs are
bashed open by poachers. We and we have poachers who
are seeking eggs in the forest. So the egg trope

(07:24):
goes pretty deep in this um. 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 a weird
illustration of Tommy and there's the shadow of something standing
in a doorway, presumably the alien visitor, which looks nothing

(07:47):
like anything in the film. Now, the shadow kind of
looks like the silhouette of the Diiver, you know, it's
like a it's like a kind of robo alien humanoid
shape with with claws. And there's another one I found
and I love this one. Uh this is a black
box video release and this must be like this must
be like the US or Canadian I don't know, I

(08:09):
didn't I didn't look this up, but it has this wonderful, charming,
childlike illustration of Tommy and Trumpy, and it just says
E t V and gold swirling letters. That's extraterrestrial visitors.
But for the cool kids E t V. It's like
T two. Yeah, you know, I love it, Like, how
did they think they could get away with that? Let's

(08:30):
just call it E t V. Let's just cut straight
to it. The kids don't care. This is G two baby.
But Trump is very cute on this. I would say
in general, we're talking about ET Trumpy. Trumpy is far
cuter than ET. E t 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

(08:53):
of alf combined with snuffle up. I guess in a
more bipedal form. What is the Star Wars character that
Trump looks like from the most icely cantina that has
a long ard vark snout? Oh yeah, I forget his name,
but yes he does look like and especially at one
point in the film when Tommy puts a coat on
him with a hood garin dan Is that right? If

(09:14):
you say so, I guess he also looks a little
bit but like Max Rebo, the blue piano player from
Java's barge, of course Trump he has hair. Yes, okay,
so according to is this Wikipedia or some kind of
Star Wars wiki? Um, this creature with the goggles, the
hood and the long snout is called garen Dan, also

(09:37):
called long Snoot. Says he it was a kubas. I
think that is an alien species. Uh. And he is
considered to be the greatest spy in the most zely
spaceport there. I mean you barely notice him, you know,
you have to look up his name. That's the mark
of a good spy. But but a big difference is
that Trump is furry, whereas garen Dan is not. You

(09:57):
don't want to carry all that fur with you on
tattoo Lean though perhaps the first yeah yeah, um what so?
One of the human characters describes the aliens is 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. Yeah yeah, the the

(10:20):
snout doesn't look very pig like. It's more it's more
snuffle up agus. That's what I think, yeah, I wonder
if that line was written before the creature design was finalized.
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

(10:40):
was looking up the various releases. I was thinking, well, okay,
I can't find that 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 that they used
in Spain. 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 and are as well, what are you Tommy? Hey?

(11:09):
Come back down, Tommy? What are you doing? What was
all that noise? Tommy? Did you hear me? Tommy? Quickly?

(11:33):
I didn't? There? All right, And a note on availability
for this film. Sadly, this is not one where you
can find it. Seemed to be able to find a
better uh cut of the film, or at least like
better film quality. I ended up streaming at via Prime
and I know there are some ure's some other streams

(11:54):
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 it in
those languages. But in terms of finding like any kind
of restored 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

(12:17):
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 some day for
nights effects going on and things get really muddy looking.
The woods in this movie often look like the foggy
forest that that that Graham Chapman gets lost in and

(12:38):
uh where where they find the knights who say knee
and Monty probably found on the Holy Grail? Remember that sequence? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
this film makes like makes great use of the fog machine.
So yeah, So sadly we're still waiting on I guess
a proper like 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,

(13:01):
as far as I know, we don't really have a
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 have we've we've

(13:23):
mentioned the director of this film before. He's come up because,
especially when we've talked about Spanish films, Uh, inevitably, some
of the people involved in Spanish productions also worked on
some of his films. This is one, Piquare Simone. He
was the director, the writer, and he also did visual
effects on this film. He lived nineteen thirty five through eleven,

(13:45):
Spanish b movie director who became I'm gonna say he
became legendary for such films as 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. Um, it may be anxious
about sitting on a toilet. That's how how terrifying the

(14:07):
trailer was. Because there's a scene where you see slugs
crawling on a toilet. Oh there's a toilet attack in it,
or just just slugs on a toilet. I can't remember.
I think you know, we we we've talked about the
trailer for Slugs the movie at some point for for
trailer talk back in the day, but I don't think
I could quite bring myself to watch it in full.

(14:28):
Is that one of the movies kind of like the
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? Is it is that? So? Okay?
I have a vague memory of something like that could
be wrong. Uh. Simon's other film of note is Pieces.

(14:49):
This is a film we've almost watched on Weird House before.
It's been been almost cued up in the past. It
is a chainsaw movie with a lot of other extra strange,
uh things added to it. But it has a really
fun cast. It's like, it seems kind of like if
Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not rural and Texan but was
about like an apartment building. Yeah, like an apartment building

(15:11):
the in Madrid or something. Yeah, it's kind of odd,
so we may come back to that one. Simone also
directed the nineteen nine 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, aided Mystery on Monster Island that

(15:33):
has Terence Stamp and Peter Cushing in it. And he
also did Cathulhu Mansion. Oh, I'd love to see what
jan Piccare Simon does with Terence Stamp. General's odd. Yeah,
I'm I'm curious. So there's also another writer credited on
this um Joaquin Grao. Who's credited is Jack Gray on

(15:54):
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 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 poachers in the film,

(16:16):
played by Frank Braun who lived through two thousand and 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 be movies of the day,
including Return of the Blind Dead, which we previously covered
on the show. He in this movie looks like a
cross between Sam the Eagle and Leslie Nielsen. He has

(16:38):
a kind of uh, silver silver haired authority. Uh, and
yet he's just playing kind of a scummy poacher. Yeah.
I think he. 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, often white hair,
and and also seemed to be able to grow a

(16:59):
lot of impressive facial hair. So if you look up
just images of Frank Brauna in different movies, yeah, he's
He's a little chameleon like. He can play any kind
of suspicious, sort of handsome dude with really piercing evil eyes. Um,
it's it looks like he made a career out of that. Wait,
who was he in Return of the Blind Dead? Was

(17:20):
he a was he like one of the corrupt politicians
or something? He was memory serves he was the corrupt
politicians Hinchman 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 you know killed by the dead. Alright. Other other
humans in this film we have we have the character Rick,

(17:44):
who's the frontman of a horrible band. Uh. 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 us
him oan, but he's recently directed and produced it looks
like um and yeah and this. He plays Rick, a

(18:05):
perfectionist lead singer of a terrible band that makes everyone
around him miserable. 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 you
realize that he is sort of the hero of the movie. Uh.

(18:26):
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 hero heroism,

(18:47):
it's very mild. 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 the young guy
who comes in at the end, but you know, and
like shoots the monster and off. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
In that regard, you could say he's definitely filling the
space that should be occupied by a more heroic figure.

(19:08):
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 there, you know. Yeah, let's see

(19:33):
another human of note in this. There's Nina Ferrer playing Sharon,
a member of the band and Rick's girlfriend. Dates unknown
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 Susannah Biker who plays Laura, a fan of the band.

(19:55):
Laura is also a mild spoiler. She will be one
of the early vict ms in the film. Um, but
kind of a victim of both humans, more of the
victim of the humans right as opposed to the aliens.
At any rate, Well, it's confusing because I thought that
her death is caused by humans, but then she gets

(20:16):
the little like uh the Big Dipper inscribed on her forehead,
which suggests she was killed by the aliens. So I
don't know, all right, we'll have to suss that up
at any rate. Beaker here 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's had a She had a small

(20:38):
role in Hostile Too as an Italian translator, and she is,
according to her online acting profile, fluent in English, Italian
and French. 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

(20:58):
are all of this movie does not of live sound.
The dialogue is dubbed in right, So my understanding I
could be wrong in this is that again, it was
a French Spanish co production, and I think lines were
recorded for both the French version and a Spanish version,
but I don't know if both of those. If we're
talking about two different takes in two different languages, I

(21:19):
don't know if we're talking about one is the live
taken the other is the dub or, as is sometimes
the case with films of this caliber, if both were
dubbed and they just and they didn't do sound, I
don't know. Alright. We mentioned Tommy already, Tommy the heart
and soul of this film, the sweetness of this film,
This this film's hope for humanity, Um played by Oscar

(21:40):
Martin born two, a French child actor who I think
would have been like ten or eleven at the time
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, uh this time as
as opposed to the past, because like, here's this, here's this,
this child that is you know that it still has

(22:02):
all of this innocence in him, and he's you know,
he's in cute animals and caring 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, in this
fear of them growing ever older, getting closer and closer
to that world, of of of teenaged nous and an adulthood,

(22:23):
and all of the complexities of all of that. Uh So,
I think 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. Okay, this is
explaining a lot. Yeah, I suspect your son would make
better decisions than Tommy does. Well, I don't know. We'll

(22:45):
see what is tom Well, we'll get into it. I'm
trying to remember what Tommy's worst decisions are. Uh 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 of him is essentially uh kind of un each
ing an alien horror on everyone, But he doesn't. It's
not so much his fault. Yeah. Yeah, I would say

(23:06):
he increases the amount of entanglement between the people and
the aliens, but maybe that was inevitable. Yeah. Martin here
playing Tommy is good though, and 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.
We 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 we

(23:28):
might have an adult woman dubbing the voice for Tommy,
which adds to the sort of weirdness of the whole situation. Yep, yep, yep.
What was what was the kid in the House by
the Cemetery? Was that Bob? Bob? Yes, at least this
time in a proper child's name, right, Tommy, that sounds
like a child a child's name, Bob, that's a grown
up's name, right, alright. A couple of other actors of no,

(23:51):
there's their numerous actor There are really too many human
characters in this because the band and has just multiple
members and hangers on, uh, some 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 Quatos born four Spanish actor who worked mostly

(24:13):
in TV and was also in Slugs. And then we
have and then Tommy's uncle Bill lives with them. Uncle
Bill is played by Manuel uh Pereiro, who was born
in a Cuban born Spanish actor I believe, who has
a fairly diverse filmography, having appeared in movies that also

(24:35):
featured the likes of John Finch, Steve Guttenberg, Alan Arkin,
Leonard Nimoy, Julian Sands, Paul McGann, and Paul Nashy of
course Paul Nashi. Um 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. Yeah,

(24:58):
and he's oh he he's awful. He's just a grumpy
man who distrust everyone, hates animals. Um yeah, really hates
Carl Line s c Yeah. Oh yeah, so it was
we'll discuss um Bill. Uncle Bill is is not a
likable character, all right. And finally, the music, the music

(25:20):
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
Spanish organ player and composer. He was apparently a member
of the band Los Roberts and the soundtrack was released
on vinyl in Spain, so some of these films will

(25:41):
end up talking about We're 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 as
a digital as a digital version. I don't think 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

(26:05):
into the sky and there's like a halo of light
behind him. Los Nuevos Extra terrest Race. So comb your
local used record store if you find a copy right in.
This has got to be worth a fortune at least
two certain very specific individuals. But anyway, the music in
this uh is pretty fun to the score anyway, lots
of scent, very atmospheric at times, also very goofy and

(26:29):
carnival esque at times. Um I remember in the MS
T three K episode they distinctly made I think they
made a music from the Hearts of space joke. In
there because it does have have that kind of feel
at times. Uh, did this person that will also write
the pop song that is the that is diegetic music
within the movie. It is the band the song the

(26:50):
band sings in the studio. I do not know about that.
I don't think that awful track which is which was
known as idiot Control out um on among MST three
k fans. I don't think that's on the on the
score album here, and I did know that iron on
IMDb there's another individual credited as well for music, and

(27:13):
so perhaps that individual had something to do with the
creation of that track. I'm not sure. I think outside
the context of ms T, 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 ms T skits. You know,

(27:34):
you watch MST and like a lot of times, the
skits aren't the aren't the best part. But the skit
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, Oh yeah, yeah, Joel does a
spoof of it and it's dis tremendous definitely. This is
a situation where watching it unriffed, I still had the

(27:54):
echo of a number of the riffs in my mind
as I was watching a steady issue goes or Fly
and over Trout. Yeah, yeah, 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 I

(28:18):
think it is? Yeah, that's 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. Okay,
you ready to talk about the plot. Let's get into
the plot, all right. 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

(28:41):
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. Yeah, yeah,
it's 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 an a logical example
of how to do it, look at something like John
Carpenter's The Thing right where we have Starfield object entering

(29:02):
Earth's atmosphere, and then we pretty much cut two stuff
on Earth. We don't go back to space. We were
never just stuck in space without any hint of action
going on. 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

(29:25):
in the soundtrack that is synchronized to the flaring of
a star in the middle of the of the void
and uh. And then of course we see after that
there's a big explosion and I guess that's supposed to
be a supernova or something. I don't know. But then
there's like a hunk of something flying through space towards
the camera. And I gotta say, from what I recall,

(29:45):
this is completely different from the opening that I remember
from Uh, 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 totally unrelated movie. Yeah,
the film Ventures International version that's where we got the
title Pod People. That was based out of Atlanta by

(30:06):
the way back in the seventies. But the version they
put out on I assume a VHS that they used
footage from Don Dollars five film Galaxy Invader. In the
opening Don Dollar of course is the guy did Night Beast. Yeah,
I've seen Galaxy Invader. Galaxy Invader and Night Beast, Uh
have some things in common. Both of them are about

(30:27):
a an alien that crash lands somewhere in like rural
Maryland and then runs around scaring people. Yeah. Yeah, we
really need to do one of his films at some point.
They're all basically all the 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.

(30:50):
One thing I remember about Night Beast is the the
titular Beast has a really cool, like, uh like shiny suit.
It almost looks like a like a suit, like a
cool like sy Or from the seventies would wear, like
in a disco band or something. Oh yeah, yeah, he
does have a shiny suit don't. But okay, that's the
opening of what a Wait? Which one? Which name are

(31:10):
we even using to call it? Extraterrestrial visitors? And then
we 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 knee. Uh.
It's very atmospheric in fact, like you could imagine some
of these uh, these environmental shots being kind of cool

(31:32):
in a better movie like the 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? Are you sure you're sure? And I
think they're trying to steal eagle eggs or something. Yeah,

(31:53):
they're like fumbling around for a ladder. They're they're scaling
a tree and they have what they claim to be
like three grand earth of eggs that they've still like
three thousand dollars worth of eggs they're going to sell
in the black market. I was wondering if they might
be fabergees. I don't know what are the What is
the market for eagle eggs? Do people want to cook
them and make eagle omelets or people trying to hatch eagles?

(32:15):
What's the deal? 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 going to break their break the rules.
They're gonna break all rules of of of law and
man and alien to get what they want. They're bad dudes.
And then we zoom out again. It's like, I'm tired

(32:36):
of Earth. Let's go back to space. So we just
see like auroras of weird energy and 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. Um
here's a kid in bed and he 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.

(32:58):
I guess just where it's not supposed to be. I
think it got up to move around. Okay. He's like,
all right, I gonna take the kitten back to bed.
Uh yeah, this is this is our introduction to Tommy,
a child of absolute goodness who loves animals and nature,
whose room is home to roughly a hundred different species
that he's caring for there. And they're not only his charge,
they are his friends. Oh, he's just, He's just childhood innocence.

(33:22):
He is biophilia incarnate. He's just, he's just utter sweetness.
In an example of what humanity could be on this
world or in the universe at large. Only likable human
in the in the picture, beautiful, wide eyed in a
sense and curiosity. I start contrast to the to the
grumbling evil of the poachers. And then but let's go,

(33:44):
let's go check him with the poachers again. So something
crashes to earth. The poachers I think they're hanging out
of the campfire, but 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. That's kind
of weird. But he goes inside. In the cave is
full of eggs. I don't know why, but for some reason,

(34:05):
he's like, I gotta bash all these eggs. I gotta
smash him. So he gets a stick and or is
it a stick or a hammer, He's just start bashing
all the eggs for no reason. Yeah. Yeah, it's awful
because he just he happens about 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,

(34:27):
and you're like, no, don't do it, and he just
keeps doing it. But oh no, there is something in
the cave of glowing fog that does not like the
egg bashing endeavor. We get a p o V of
some kind of creature that comes out from around a
corner and attacks and kills the poacher. Dude. Yeah, this
is creature number one, which I guess weird to think

(34:47):
of as an adult creature or a mature creature of
this species that it was maybe already aboard this ship
or this or whatever or this piece of its planet,
whatever the details. Maybe he can learning this thing that
has craft with eggs on it um, but it's kind of,
I guess, kind of an egg guardian. It does. I
don't think it's supposed to be the mother because we

(35:09):
later get some testimony from from Trumpy creature number two
in which he's asked where you're where its mother is
and he like points to the stars or points at
a constellation on a map or something. So it's just
another creature of mature individual from this species. It may
be Trumpy's brother or sister, but it is not his parent.

(35:29):
But we're getting ahead of ourselves because we haven't met
trump A yet. Trump still so egg because not all
of the eggs are smashed. It it will turn out later, right,
most of them are smashed. So then we follow the
poachers 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 or the they just also happened to be hunting

(35:52):
deer at the same time they are poaching eggs. It's
confusing because 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 Brauna character. He's like, well,
we gotta get out of here. This feels weird. There's
something weird in the forest. Let's 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

(36:13):
then they stopped to camp, and so I think they're
not in a huge hurry after all. And then there
are all these scenes where Brauna 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. It's like the cop
in Plan nine for Matter Space who just points his
gun at people whenever he's talking to them. Yeah, but

(36:45):
let's let's go back to the house, so we check
in with Tommy. He is we find more, Uh, we
found out more about his 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 in the parts, and you can tell
how much he just loves learning about the natural world.

(37:05):
But oh, the fact that he's looking at a at
a creature under a microscope. This leads to conflict with
the guy I was thinking of his grandpapa. This is
uncle Bill. Uncle Bill apparently does not like the book
learning it is witchcraft. Yeah, that's right. Uh, it's mentioned
it's a centipede, and and Tommy gives the what is
supposedly the scientific classification for the species, and Uncle Bill

(37:30):
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 and 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 like
Tommy has all this sweetness and innocence and curiosity, and
it's just like Uncle Bill's just just pounding it into

(37:54):
the dirt as to to the best of his ability.
There is far more bacteria on Uncle Bill than there
is on the centipede. Come on. Yeah, Plus, you should
be so lucky as to have this beautiful predator in
your house hunting other packs, especially if it were a
house centipede, which you know is spread with humanity around
the world and are especially known for praying and all

(38:16):
sorts of things you don't want in your house, like
uh like like like bedbugs, for example, or cockroaches, So
like you want a house centipede around, 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 a singing group,
a group of singers. Oh yeah, none of them are
actually playing an instrument, right, there's just they're just singing

(38:39):
over a prerecorded track. Um, 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, uh thought about the movie this way,
but it makes a lot of sense. You've got movie A,
which is the Poacher's movie B, which is the The

(39:00):
Child with Pets, and then movie CEE, which is the
singing group. Yeah, this toxic bunch of band members and
their 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. Or he's like, it's awful, it stinks.

(39:20):
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 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 has absolutely garbage. Yeah, thinking of other people
who do ridiculous excessive numbers of takes, I think of

(39:43):
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. 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 that

(40:03):
there are similar tales about Dr Dre being very um
perfectionist when it comes to producing tracks and all um.
But but at the end of the end of the day,
do you have a Dr Dre produced track, do you
have a Stanley Kuprick directed film? Now you have idiot control?
Now this is the wind in my eyes. Yeah. But okay,
so they sing the song and then Rick, the lead singer,
is is hideously abusive to all of the other singers,

(40:26):
and then they're all going to pile into an r
V and go up to the mountains for the weekend. Yeah. Perfect,
ever getting along. Great, Let's let's take this to a
crowded camper and head out to a crowded gabin somewhere. Oh,
and then there's conflict over the fact that so they're
like open up the door to the r V. It's like, well,
we all hate each other and we've been fighting, so

(40:46):
let's let's go on and you know, spend the weekend
in the woods. And they opened 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 ball loss of the record label. I think.
So it's like they've got to be nice to her
because you know her her dad is deciding their musical fate.

(41:07):
But immediately this causes problems between Rick the Jerk and
his girlfriend Sharon, because it's for some reason immediately cleared
that Rick and Laura this other lady are gonna, you know,
they're gonna get together. And this other guy goes up,
like the nice guy. I think his name is Brian.
He goes up to the girlfriend Sharon, and he's like,

(41:30):
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. Just every everyone in this
group is awful or they're enabling of awfulness. It's yeah,
it's it's but also it works. He says that, and
she's like, yeah, you're right. That. Okay, you know, so

(41:52):
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 in the RV and
winding along while the music plays. More time is spent
getting these characters to the countryside than getting that that
space rock from its origin to the Earth. Meanwhile, we

(42:13):
gotta 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. And then
Tommy's like, oh, this is a dead man with the

(42:35):
Big Dipper on his head. Better steal one of these
alien eggs now, 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? Yeah,
I have a lot of questions about this too. Later

(42:57):
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 trump e is killing people
or in some cases, perhaps finding dead people and writing
the constellation on their forehead or making it appear with

(43:17):
phosphorescent spores or something. Who knows what the zeno biological
rationale is here, But I'm not sure why it would
do this. Is it like it would be like us
riding earth on dead aliens that we killed? Yet um,
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 of of your victims. So I'm

(43:38):
not sure. I guess it's one of these 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. All right, I won't overthink it from
now on. That's just what happens. Um so, so yeah,
Tommy grabs one of these eggs. He He's like, well,
I'm gonna take this back home. Maybe it's religious. Maybe

(43:59):
it's like like like we're thinking it's something bad. But
as we as we later like these these these aliens,
they just want to be our friends. Maybe this is
like last rites for them. Huh 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

(44:19):
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 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.
M yeah, well in that case, it doesn't make any sense. Sorry, Trump,

(44:43):
I can't help you. 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.
Um he uh, you know, he talks to his animals.
I think his mom's like, Tommy, what were you out?
You know, what were you doing at there? And Tommy lies,
he says kitty was me owing. I thought he was hungry.

(45:04):
But then after mom goes away, 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 hugging the egg. So it's so sweet. Now
back to the kids, Uh, the kid, not the kids,
I mean the I don't know. The people in the
r V. The singers, Uh, they're up to no good.

(45:24):
They're they're just again just being nasty. Like the 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, and then then she immediately uh.
In the next scene, they're like sitting around a campfire
and she's taunting Rick's girlfriend like, tell her what we

(45:45):
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's it just it's weird. Yeah, it
just left feeling like these are all this horrible people
and I don't care if an alien kills them in
the woods. But this leads to uh, this leads to

(46:07):
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. But not only saw the poachers,
but one of the poachers, the non Frank Brauna poacher,
and and and the non egg Smasher one who's dead

(46:30):
of course. Uh yeah, the non Frank Brauna attempts to
grab her and like a ductor or assault her or something.
So he runs away from from him, and then she
runs off the side of a cliff and and falls. Uhm,
it seems like quite a distance. She falls enough to
where she's not completely unconscious at least. Yeah, And so

(46:51):
they eventually the r V people come and find her,
and they take her back to the r V and
they try to I don't know, what does this medical scene. Yeah,
they 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. But so they eventually

(47:15):
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. Um, uh and uh.
And how does the family react? Uncle Bill doesn't take
kindly to strangers. Of course. Yeah, he grabs a gun.
That's his first reaction to the strangers at his door
pleading for help. Um. And his attitude does not improve

(47:38):
much at all. When he finds out that they're in trouble.
He's just like, all right, I guess we let him know. Yeah, yeah,
But the phones, of course are out, they say because
of the storm. But I don't think we've seen a storm.
It's just I guess all that fog, that just hideous
fog bank that's rolled in. Its just destroying phone lines
and everything else. Here's a metal band name Storm of Fog.

(48:00):
There you go. I like it. Also, the road is blocked,
so they can't leave, so they're just stuck here at
the house. And they realized they're gonna have to spend
the night and tomorrow they'll go find a radio in
the rangers cabin and then use that to call for help.
So this place must be very secluded. I noticed that
they didn't make much use of it. But they had
a bar in this film, in the in this environment,

(48:22):
in this cabin that reminded me a lot of the
bar in The Devil Girl from Mars. Yes, really well stocked,
lots of brown liquors. Yeah, multiple shelves, like just 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. Meanwhile,
the poachers are out camping in the woods, and if

(48:44):
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. Yeah, they at first they acted like they
realized something was wrong and they need to get the
heck out of Dodge. But then they're not there's no
real rush. Later on, you'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

(49:06):
really do anything about it. They accept that they're the
really bad poacher says well, couldn't we steal those kids camper?
And he's like, like, you idiot, you can't do that.
You've are already doing enough crimes here. We don't need
more crimes. Yeah, it's the bearded one that wants to
take the RV. The other guys, the frank brownna is
more like they'll get us into more trouble. Yeah, we're

(49:26):
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. 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

(49:47):
this movie. So the alien is like, uh because sort
of a furry uh squat Chewbacca style body, but much shorter,
and then the head has like a pointy a pecks
on top and then long ard vark snout and then
pointy elf ears. I thought this scene was rather effective
because when we see the creature here, and we granted

(50:11):
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 uncanny nous to it as well.
And then also the lighting is very dark. Are the
human characters here are being uh, you know, very cautious

(50:31):
around it? Uh? And then another thing that I really
like about the extraterrestrials in this film is the eyes
they created for them are very expressive, Like they're very glassy,
like living looking eyes that I think give them a
lot of character. 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

(50:53):
up to the campfire, I don't know what its original
plan is, but they start shooting it with the crossbow. 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 a big grotesque piece of
meat that they've been cooking over the fire. Um, you know,
just already kind of an unsettling display. But then Frank

(51:14):
Brownna 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 are not
good ambassadors who have a humanity here. Meanwhile, back at

(51:34):
the house, Oh, that eggs hatchen uh pops open. There's
a little kind of greasy, slimy little alien in there,
and so cute. So it's not cute yet, it's already cute.
It's already cute. It's simmy little like like fetal elephant creature.
And uh yeah, I don't know. I thought it was cute. Okay,

(51:55):
I won't argue with you. Um. 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 trumpet. I don't think that's ever
made explicit, but that's what I guess. Yeah, I don't know.

(52:15):
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 or or in Spanish.
I don't know. But the kids like, oh, we're gonna
play now that you're getting bigger. Do you know what
playing is Trumpy? And Trumpy does not know, but Trump
Peop will find out. So this is the world that

(52:36):
Trumpy has is introduced to. This is the human world
that he's introduced to, A world of of of copious
amounts of food. A lot of it is breakfast, cereals, toys, play, um, friendship,
all the things that were denied to extraterrestrial one. But
remember now this is all taking place in the same
house where the RV singers are staying overnight, and apparently Laura,

(52:59):
the record executive's daughter who fell off the cliff, she
dies overnight and they come and see her and they
see something as horrible about her face. We already know
what it is. It's going to be the you know,
the big dipper with the lights um. But I guess overnight,
also Trumpy becomes much bigger. He grows from like the
size of a little toy on the on the shelf

(53:19):
to basically the same size as Tommy. Uh. 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. Yeah, they
make some great riffs in the in that episode about

(53:39):
him considering eating all these animals. But but in this
in the original film, uh, 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. You know, He's like, like,
come here, organism. Would you like some more organism? But

(54:01):
in this scene we also discover via interactions with a
toy robot that trump E has telekinesis. Oh yes, like
not not even just a little bit like not just
a little bit of carry White, but like full power
Carrie White, like full almost godlike telekinetic powers. Well ET
does too. I think this is an ET touch from ET. Yeah,

(54:21):
does E t like bring the whole room to life?
It's been so long since I've seen ET. I think so, yeah,
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. 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 um cut because Trump basically uses a Simon

(54:45):
game to cut a synth track like this Carnival scynth
track that starts playing like Trump. He does this by
manipulating the Simon software. I did not expect your take
on this movie to be so anti Et. I mean,
he's fine, you can't hate Et. But but I also
I don't. I've also I've seen Et like once in

(55:05):
my life. I've seen pod people or extraterrestrial visitors multiple
multiple times. What else does Trump e eat? So I'm
trying to think do they ever feed him meat? We
see 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,
Planners surely they paid for that place, you know they did?

(55:26):
This is the the Reese's treatment, right, And they do
a special effect where you know Trump, He's snout is
like a vacuum cleaner, and it's sucking up all the peanuts. Uh.
When we in this scene, we get some really good
looks at Trump's eyes. Noticed Trumpy has a vertical slit pupils.
Oh nice, Yeah, again these are lovely eyes. Um, whoever

(55:49):
did this this costume? I feel like they they kind
of knocked it out of the park. I like it.
But Trump, he learns puzzles and games. He telekinetically solves
a puzzle, uh, 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.

(56:11):
Do you have a mommy? Yeah? His picture of his
mom looks like a Rick Flair Pez dispenser yep. Uh.
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. Uh. The scene and and Trump he turns

(56:33):
the child's bedroom into a living nightmare of carnival music,
flickering lights, dancing toys, terrorizing the pets. Uh. He sticks
to the ceiling like Baron Harcon and it's great. Yeah.
And also his eyes glow like stars. It's it's it's
pretty great. Now is this the scene where Trump he
says where his mommy is and points out the constellation?

(56:55):
I think so, because I think he shows in the
picture Tommy's picture of his own mommy. 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. Trumpy points that a map
of the constellations and causes one of the constellations the
one of the dippers took low. Yeah, now exactly like

(57:18):
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 Trump he is playing DJ in the bedroom, but
there's the distraction of of a 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

(57:40):
snuck into the house. But at one point and maybe
later but uh, 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
these animals even come on, that's an empty threat. Uh.
But meanwhile, speaking of grizzly murders, Grandpa and one of

(58:02):
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 Uh and Uncle Billy. They go to the
ranger station. Uncle Bill just walks around pointing his gun
at everything, and they find one of the poachers inside,

(58:22):
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 um. Are we are we as the
audience supposed to be wondering if this is Trumpy doing

(58:46):
the killing since in the scene right before this Trump
he 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
to be an open question or not. Yeah, I'm not
sure on this because it it seems like, on one hand,

(59:07):
the killing started before Trump he hatched. So if we're
just looking at the timeline of events, we we can't
pin all the murders on Trumpy. There has to be
a A has to be another A, a primary alien
out there, extradrestrial one. So I don't I have a
hard time understanding how we the viewer are supposed to

(59:30):
think Trump he might be doing this. But also it's
hard to reflect on this because I it's been so
long since I had a fresh viewing of this, Like
it seems like I've always known that Trump he was
innocent and incapable of murder. He is blameless. Did you
notice the Ranger cabin in the woods here has framed
portraits of Ronald Reagan on the wall. Yeah? Yeah, that

(59:51):
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
Nst three 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. Uh. So we see the alien kill
another one of the band members. This is the singer Tracy.

(01:00:15):
He just he kills her in the r V. And oh,
this time, Tommy happens to be looking through the telescope
at the down at the r V outside I guess
to witness this, and because the aliens look the same,
he thinks Trumpy is the killer. Oh no, there there
is a rift between them. Now. Now, this is definitely
the point at which, yeah, it's hard to imagine that

(01:00:36):
this particular murder was itself on that that it was
provoked in anyway, This seems to be an unprovoked killing
by exterrestrial one. Yeah, Tracy, what do you think Tracy
attacked the alien? No? I mean, Tracy is just Jesus chilling. Yeah. Anyway,
the rest of the survivors are all hold up in
the cabin um. Oh except Tommy for some reason, like
he runs off into the into the bog and fog

(01:00:59):
to 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? 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

(01:01:21):
aims the rifle at 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 like anyone bugging me. Yeah,
this is the act of of a rational character that
we're supposed to right for now, Tommy comes back to

(01:01:42):
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 begins this mad
exchange between Tommy's a voice again. This is dubbed by
like an adult woman, I think, and and trump. He's
various like head nods and headshake to communicate. Uh so
the kid is saying Trumpy, no, stay there, stay away.

(01:02:05):
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 but Trumpy, I think, is able to
explain himself with head nods somehow. He's like no, no,
wasn't me, shaking his head, and then the kids like
was it someone else? Did another one do this? And

(01:02:27):
Trumpy nods. He's protesting his innocence, and so eventually I
think Tommy is convinced that Trump he is innocent, and
for some reason he dresses Trumpy up like a jahwa like.
He puts a coat with a hood on over him.
I'm not sure what the purpose of that is. I
guess to sneak him out of the house. But there
are no other children anywhere in the vicinity in the

(01:02:47):
film at all, so I don't I don't know exactly
what time he was hoping to pull off with this.
This is just my friend, the bipedal ardvark who wears
a raincoat. Yeah, so we get another random alien attack.
The r 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

(01:03:10):
it's standing behind her and then it attacks. Uh. There
are 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 uh,
when the mother and Sharon I think see Trumpy. They're
like the kids trying to sneak him through the house
and they're like, there, it's that monster. And Tommy tries

(01:03:34):
to explain. He says, no, it wants to be our friend.
He's good, he's good. Um, they all want to be
our friends, but we won't let them. And of course
the mother doesn't believe that, so so Tommy and Trump
he 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 and give
him what for, but Trumpy intervenes. Yeah, we finally have

(01:03:57):
extraterrestrial one and extra terrestrial to a k a. Trumpy
meeting up in the woods. Now, eventually there's a big
showdown Uncle Bill and Rick that they shoot the other alien,
the non trumpet alien. Grandpa is killed in this scuffle,
but Rick blasts the alien to death and then it
like turbo berries its own body telekinetically. Yeah, we have

(01:04:22):
another self burying monster, kind of like the some of
the creatures in Crawl. It's a great effect. I like it.
I'd like to see more of it in my monster films.
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

(01:04:44):
into the mist. You never know if he gets back
to his home planet or not, or or what happens
to him. He just wanders away, and then roll credits
and Rick survives. Yeah, that's that's the weird choice. Perhaps
the product of this film probably changed its direction and
priorities at some point in production. They're like, oh, we

(01:05:04):
forgot to do anything with Rick. That's all right, But
I have to say that this the ending to this film.
It got me. I I teared up a bit, you know,
because the aliens, 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 its fellow alien, and and this seems

(01:05:26):
to maybe even convince him of some of this stuff like, no, okay,
a lot of these humans are bad, but Tommy's cool. Um,
they have this moment, so the aliens are good. Tommy's good.
Humanity itself is just hostile and violent and mean spirited.
And Tommy and Trumpy are just too good for the world,
and and so, but but but what happens. Tommy has

(01:05:48):
to push Trumpy away, has to send him off into
the woods where, you know, either he does find a
way back to his home plan 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 Tommy retain his sweetness and goodness as he continues
on in this world? Uh? Is he? Or is he
saying goodbye not only to his friend Trump. Is he

(01:06:09):
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's all
going through my head here as I was I was
tearing up watching this. Uh, this, this poor extraterrestrial being
left in the foggy woods and then walking off into
the wilderness. The gospel of Trumpy. Yeah, and we also

(01:06:33):
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'm no, 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 some
of the inherent messages in those in those pictures. But

(01:06:56):
I don't know. Also maybe Simone 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. Like I
feel like that the film does have a heart, you know,
there's still there's still some heart there. And what heart
is there is genuine I wonder what, you know, what

(01:07:18):
kind of new themes and possibilities emerge from a sort
of a 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 slasher movies, just
more like night Beast or something. It's just about an

(01:07:39):
alien that runs around killing people. And then e T
came out and they were like, oh, we gotta make
this a sweet story about the bond between a child
and an alien and a child's love and um friendship
from the hearts of space and and trying to smash
those two things together makes for such a weird product,

(01:08:00):
but maybe also having some elements that would not have
been achieved had it just been an attempt to create
an et rip off from the beginning. Yeah, that's a
great question because he kind of reminds me again of Gremlins,
where the original Gremlins movie, by being totally inconsistent, seems
to have a core message of hey, kids, monsters exist
and there's no Santa Claus, you know, which which clearly

(01:08:21):
was nobody's key intention. But I think that's probably what
comes comes. This is kind of thing that emerges when
priorities shift and the tone changes, and the tone is
inconsistent throughout a picture. Every day I feel closer to
doing Gremlins too. 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 e t V,

(01:08:44):
we have to do G two. No stopping it all right,
Well that is extra Terrestrial Visitors or visitors or e
v P, or of course, um, the Hatching of Monsters.
I think the Hatching of Monsters is really good because
it also because we have different types of monsters. We
have the alien monster and we have the human monsters.

(01:09:05):
I think it's a good title. I wish they I
kind of wish it's stuck with that across translations. UM.
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 you know, like us, grew up
watching the MSG three K episode, perhaps you have prior
experience with pod people or than or extraterrestrial visitors. Uh,

(01:09:29):
definitely right 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
in the future, that will be the next big one,
because there there are a lot of worse films that
get get the restoration treatment. Uh and uh and And

(01:09:50):
I'm not 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 in this Spanish forest somewhere it wants to
be found. All right, until next time? Weird How Cinema
publishes every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your Own
podcast feed were primarily a science podcast with core episodes

(01:10:12):
on Monday. No no core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday.
Sorry mondays, that's a listener mail Wednesday that's artifact, were
Monster Factor short form episode, and on the weekends we
do a rerun. 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,

(01:10:33):
or just to say hello, you can email us at
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