Monster of the Day #1635

Blink and you might miss it, but my favorite thing about the movie was that the high tech, time traveling cyborgs didn’t have thumbs (that’s why they needed slaves). How these guys managed to evolve a high tech civilization in the first place if they didn’t have thumbs is left to the viewer’s imagination.

Gee, now I have to go back and re-watch this to look for the missing thumbs…

Jean Faux Van Damme explains it all during his exposition dump on the train. It’s easy to miss since he doesn’t actually use the word “thumbs” he just sticks out his thumb and says “these” The clearest shot of the cyborgs’ thumblessness is when Cyborg # 2 attacked the police station and picks of some slave device the cops confiscated from slave guy.

Robert Z’dar as a cyborg. Now it all makes sense.

They were clearly from the planet Twilo. Were there lots of walnuts to be seen?

Never caught that. That’s actually a fairly interesting idea. Though, as you note, problematic in them getting to the point where they could have advanced technologies without slave labor to build it for them in the first place.

This movie has some of the worst forced-perspective effects I’ve ever seen in a movie. The only one that’s worse that comes to mind is the Gargan (sp?) from Teenagers From Outer Space. At least this movie went to the trouble of making some puppets instead of just heading to the seafood dept.

I actually love that movie, it’s kinda…cute that they thought that would work? Not only do they use forced perspective later, but when you first see the the juvenile gargan it’s just in a bucket or something so it’s even more obviously a lobster. It made me wonder if lobster was such a rare delicacy in the 50’s that they hoped most people wouldn’t recognize one.

I think it is clever and moves along well. Big budget directors could learn a few things.

The core idea is pretty solid: A spacecraft lands on a planet. Its mission: Determine if the planet is suitable for growing / raising food. One crewman finds evidence that he thinks means there’s intelligent life present, which would mean they can’t use the planet. The commander disagrees rather forcefully, so the crewman goes off in a huff to look for more evidence. Then the ship is contacted by the Supreme Leader, who not only stresses the vital importance of finding suitable planets, but reveals that the AWOL crewman is his son. Now they’ve got to find him before his ineptitude compromises the mission. Meanwhile, their own ineptitude has let one of their research / food animals escape.

It’s certainly never boring, and the plot is interesting and original. And yeah, the skeleton beam gun was great! The line delivery is really funny, the first time I saw it I thought it was done on purpose because the first people you hear speak are aliens and maybe it was to make them seem more alien. Later though, I realized that everyone talks that way! I think it’s part of the charm, they didn’t seem like bad actors, they seemed like regular people doing their best.

Technically it’s pretty solid, too, lobsters aside. Shot in the heart of LA, but the camera work and placement is so perfect that it actually looks like it was shot in a small town. Strong editing, too, particularly in the use of the ray guns. One of the most unique flying saucer designs we’ve seen, too. To the complete independent, it’s pretty inspiring work, really.

Yeah, “It’s Alive!” Man is that thing dull. Although the hilarity of the “dinosaur” does liven things up for a brief time.

Not to step on Ken’s toes, but considering how long he’s taking to get back to my email, who knows when he’d respond to your query?