The Galaxy Invader
This movie is absolutely worth 80 minutes of your life.In the credits we see a lot of "Dohler’s". It’s never a good sign when there are so many of the same last name in the credits. Here’s an interesting credit:
Alien Portrayed by Glenn Barnes
Lest we confuse this with an actual alien.
In the opening scene we see a car being driven down a dirt road. A glowing red object from space flies over it and lands in the distance. After this we’re treated to a full 30 seconds of a POV shot of what we assume to be an alien creature walking around a forest and breathing into a large cup. Now I’m looking at an ugly guy lying in bed as the phone rings. Ewww, he’s gross. Did they just film this in the motel the crew was staying at? There’s a bed, a side table with a very motel looking phone, and a picture on a white wall. Looks like a motel if I ever saw one. The kid in the car from the opening scene is calling from a phone booth. His name is David Harmon. The sleeping man is Dr. Tracy and was David’s teacher last year who David remembers has an interest in UFO’s. Man, this acting is absolutely awful. You have to see this to believe how bad it is. I’m guessing David is being played by a Dohler. – Wait a second – So, are we to believe that David drives around with the phone number of a teacher that he had last year? Why? Just in case? They continue their conversation. Dr. Tracy tells David to wait for him in a field… for six hours! Scene over.
You know what I feel like looking at now? A lot of back and forth shots of people eating breakfast. Hey, whadda ya know! That’s what I’m watching now in this erratically cut scene. But this man and woman are not alone. They hear mysterious noises in the basement. The guy grabs a knife and heads downstairs with his woman. Now I’m hearing what sounds like a basketball hitting a neighborhood backboard but I actually think it’s the sound effect they use later on the movie for foot steps at about 01:01:35 with an echo. Is this what passed for a sound effect in 1985? The couple walks around the basement for a bit before, wouldn’t you know it, the galaxy invader takes care of ‘em both. The invader cannot be killed with a knife, a shovel, or… a cheap lamp.
Now we get to the good stuff. I give you, the most dysfunctional family in the galaxy: the Montagues. Eating breakfast together, Joe and Ethel Montague have three kids: J.J. - a 30 something super loser who’s never going to leave home, Carol (25) – perhaps the only one with any sense because she wants to leave her family, and Anne – who spends most of her time hating her dad. Breakfast ends much like I’m sure breakfast ends every morning in the Montague home, with Joe pointing his shotgun at his family before going off to kill his daughter’s boyfriend. Ethel sends J.J. after Joe in the hopes of preventing him from doing something drastic. As Ethel and Anne watch J.J. runoff we hear how Anne really feels about her dad. I hate him!
A "chase scene" ensues. While Joe is looking for Carol he happens to come across the galaxy invader (from here on out I’ll just call him TGI). Of course, Joe shoots it. TGI drops a glowing white ball and runs away. It’s only about 4 inches in diameter but Joe tells J.J. to go home and get a wheel barrow and shovel to transport it.
Carol makes it to her boyfriend’s, Mike’s, house. This guy’s pretty burly and they talk about running away together but Carol doesn’t want to leave her sister and mom so they decide to stay in Harleyville.
6 hours later, Dr. Tracy pulls up next to a waiting David and they head off into the woods to look for the "meteor".
Frank Custor pulls up in Joe’s driveway with a hot little number named Vickie Johnson who has such an obviously fake southern
accent that I doubt it’ll last the entire movie. Joe’s invited Frank over to talk about their plans to make money off of TGI. If you
thought Joe was the epitome of backwoods retard just you wait, he’s got some competition with Frank as he lets his chaw drip from his
mouth for all to see. Joe and J.J. show them that not only does the ball sit there and look cool but it also drops cheap pyrotechnics
from its backside in an attempt to make it look even cooler. A poorly edited conversation later and Frank and Joe are off to round up
some local yokels to hunt down TGI. Vickie’s accent didn’t even last for this one scene, by the way. After Frank and J.J. leave, TGI
gets the white ball back from J.J. by prodding him behind the garage.Frank and Joe go to the Brandon Rail saloon where we’re treated to a whole group of local losers. 4 "people" volunteer to go alien hunting. Some of the best acting of the movie comes from this bar scene from the extras, seriously. For some reason, Frank calls Joe "Bill" at one point. Hmmm...
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Joe finds J.J. (surprisingly in the correct spot where he fell down). Back to David and Dr. Tracy... AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!! David is such a horrible actor!!
And back to Joe, Frank, and the gang, which has now assembled at Joe’s house. It takes a little convincing to get the guys to go out and hunt for an unknown creature but since they weren’t doing anything else with their night, or life, they figure they might as well go for it.
Ethel and Anne watch the gang drive away into the night. Anne asks, What are they gonna look for, mom? Mom responds, Hey, how ‘bout a game of Scrabble? Anne replies, I hate that game!
See all of Anne's hate here:
Meanwhile, back at the bar, Vickie is sitting next to a guy in a red and white plaid shirt and says she’s gonna play a song on the jukebox. She gets up and walks towards the jukebox. In the very next shot she’s all of a sudden on the other side of the guy in the plaid shirt asking for a drink, to which I respond, WTF? David and Dr. Tracy enter the bar. They take a seat. Nice place, David. David comes back with, Yeah, it’s not much. But the food’s good. Uhh, I highly doubt that. They overhear Vickie talking about the spaceman from Mars so David calls her over to their table. With a promise of a drink they get her to tell them where Frank and Joe are. They leave without buying her a drink. Nice.
Frank, Joe, and the gang stomp through the woods looking for TGI. They find him and corner him. Despite the previous
instructions to not shoot, everyone just opens fire. They’re surprised when he shoots back and kills one of 'em.GAAAHHHHH!!! David delivers more flat lines as he and Dr. Tracy watch the battle of bottle rockets from the bushes. Frank, Joe, and J.J. spring up from behind TGI and drape a rope around him from which TGI apparently can’t break free. Back at the house, Joe and J.J. are in the basement trying to figure out how the gun and ball work together. They discover that the ball powers up the gun and they fire off a few test shots in the basement. Joe yells, I bet the Russians would pay a million dollars for this! Why would the Russians pay a million dollars for a gun that isn’t even able to defend its native user from a bunch of drunken rednecks? It doesn’t even do any damage to the stairs that Joe is shooting at in the basement. And what kind of design is this for a gun anyway? It requires an external power source, the ball. Why isn’t the ball just attached to the gun somehow? Instead, TGI has a whole harnessing system to hold the ball in front of his stomach. I’m sure Russians are very interested in such a cumbersome and ineffective weapon.
David and Dr. Tracy brake into the Montague’s garage and look for TGI. He’s laying in broad daylight but it apparently takes them a few seconds to spot it. They throw open the garage door and make a break for it right in plain view of Frank and Joe. As they’re running through the woods Carol runs into TGI (in slow motion) and gives him his weapon back. Frank guns down Dr. Tracy and is about to knock off David but TGI intervenes and shoots Frank. David runs away and Joe shoots TGI, kicks him in the face, takes his gun and runs away.
Carol stops David and tells him she saw everything and that they need to find Michael (Carol’s boyfriend) to get some help.
David initially refuses because he "doesn’t feel too good" but then he concedes. I’m glad David doesn’t get too upset by the little
things in life. The little things like having someone shot dead two feet from you then almost being shot yourself if it weren’t for
the alien that saved your life. They make it to Michael’s and David tells him that Dr. Tracy’s been shot. How does Michael even know
who Dr. Tracy is? I don’t know how Michael knows any of this story about the alien. Michael’s never been in any scene with the alien
and we’ve never seen him ever being told about it until now. They come up with a plan to get the family out of the house the next
morning.Night passes and Joe wakes up on the couch. Three days in a row now he’s been wearing the same white shirt with an obviously self-inflicted tear in the front. He looks around for his family. Now we see the family walking to Michael’s house. Anne complains about not wanting to leave. I don’t understand why, I thought she hated her dad... and Scrabble. They leave her alone but a few seconds later, after some very touching music and kind words, she decides to go along with the plan.
Joe’s gotten tired after a few minutes of walking around and falls asleep on the couch again. Vickie comes by looking for
Frank. She’s got something shiny on her boob, what is that thing? It must have caught Joe’s eye because now he’s all over her trying
to get a piece of that. She breaks free and runs away. He grabs the space gun and zaps her in the back. Joe drags her dead body away
and hides it. He falls back asleep on the couch.The rest of the family comes by the house and gets the gun from Joe’s sleeping hands. David, Carol, and Michael run away to look for TGI.
Joe wakes up and discovers his gun is gone. He’s not happy about it at all. Ethel, J.J., and Anne are all standing around him when he wakes up so he knocks over Anne and Ethel and has a fight with J.J. in slow motion, at least it looks like it’s in slow motion with how slow they throw their punches. Joe takes off with his gun to look for the space gun. After about 10 seconds his footsteps are already within earshot of Carol and the other two. How is this possible? He was asleep when they took off running and now this stumbling drunk has already caught up to them? They arrive at a cliff where TGI shows up to help out again only this time Joe shoots him twice with his shotgun and once with the space gun and TGI drops dead. Michael and Joe get into a scuffle that somehow doesn’t result in Joe’s face being crushed in. It might have something to do with Joe’s ‘throw-dirt-in-the-eyes’ tactics. Joe’s on top of Michael and it looks like it’s all over for him until Ethel picks up the shotgun. She lines up the swing and cracks Joe in the back of the head. You have to see this to fully appreciate the slow motion replays and the dummy that gets tossed over the cliff so here it is:
The end.
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