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Truly Dreadful Film

best movie i've ever seen.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Probably produced following the smash success of The X Files, The Puppet Masters is a pretty solid slice of alien invasion pulp fiction. The casting is good, with Eric Thal and Julie Warner proving to be charming enough stand-ins for Mulder and Scully. Elsewhere, sci-fi genre fans may appreciate the appearances of Yaphet Kotto (Alien), Keith David (The Thing) and of course the great Donald Sutherland (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers).Behind the camera, it's an unusually British affair with director Stuart Orme, cinematographer Clive Tickner, and composer Colin Towns all heralding from the UK. They do nice work - Orme provides a tense and pacey first half, Tickner's very fine work lends a stylish visual sheen, and Towns' music is lushly complex.However, although it starts out well, the flick loses some energy and traction around the middle and doesn't get it back. Its potential begins to slip away and I'm not quite sure why. Maybe budget/script cuts. The last third in particular, with its under-powered action set-pieces and somewhat perfunctory ending, suggests that the film had hit the glass ceiling of its production resources... or perhaps even its creators' full interest.Nevertheless, it's an enjoyable sci-fi thriller for a good part of its running time. Might make a nice viewing companion with The Hidden (1987) or certainly any number of old X Files episodes!

My problem with this movie is (1) Robert Heinlein is my favourite science fiction writer, bar none; (2) The book on which this movie is based is one of his more forgettable works; and (3) The film is a decent effort, but it's a low-budget project and pretty uninspired. I've waited a lifetime for Heinlein's better writing to make it to the screen, and unfortunately, it hasn't happened. There is nothing "wrong" with this movie, but almost any other Heinlein novel or story would have been better starting material. Better choices for source material might have included Stranger in a Strange Land (best known work, but not best novel), and any of the so-called Boy Scout series from the 50s: Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, Red Planet, and many, many more.

Heinlein's book is, I gather, pretty good. I'm not a purist and I don't demand that a movie adaptation follow the print version closely, and in fact I haven't read the novel.But this isn't very good. In plot it seems more an overblown version of "The X Files", except that the federal investigative team has more members, so that some can be taken over by the pods. It's hard to imagine Mulder or Scully zombified.In execution and style it's reminiscent of Carpenter's bombastic version of "The Thing." Gloopy organisms coil themselves around people's faces and boomerang from point to point. Or they auger themselves into a victim's back. They "attach themselves to the spinal cord" of the victim, so you can't tell if someone is possessed or not until you have them strip down the back of their shirts and take a look. Julie Warner's examination was the only bright spot in the film.It bears no resemblance whatever to the classic 1950s science fiction film, "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." That much-imitated original (from Jack Finney's novel) began with a normal, steady state of affairs, grew through suspicion, developed into conviction, and led to action.This begins and ends with action, just in case the viewer might be bored during the first ten minutes of exposition and switch to an energy drink commercial just to watch cartoon figures leap around. The gloppy organisms, ripped off shamelessly and pointlessly from "Alien", are on abundant display. The sloppy, sticky, guts are picked apart, accompanied by a lot of scientific gobbledygook.Donald Sutherland's performance provides the eye of this hurricane of horror. He's quiet and controlled, when almost everyone else is running around berserk.The innards of those parasites are a true mess, and so is the film. I can't imagine that Heinlein, a good writer, produced a book that could be so popular and yet so execrable.

It really makes no sense how this film could not have worked. Working off a script based on a Robert A. Heinlein novel, with the venerable Donald Sutherland in one of the lead roles, and with alien invasion the subject matter, this should have been at least a seven star Science Fiction film. As Sci-Fi goes, the superior ones focus more on futuristic and/or scientific concepts, with action and/or special effects adding to the spectacle. That is why films like the Star Wars saga really aren't Sci-Fi, but action/adventure first (and in the case of Star Wars, fantasy) and science fiction second at best. This film does delve into the biology and culture of the aliens, but just barely. Mostly it focuses on hokey special effects and a few watered-down action scenes to fill up screen time. The aliens themselves are quite realistic and original, a plus for the film. The chemistry between Donald Sutherland as the leader of a secret government agency and his son, played by Eric Thal (an unknown at the time) is actually quite good. In addition, Julie Warner actually does well as the scientist working for Sutherland and of course plays the romantic interest for Sutherland's son. While not a superior actress, she performs adequately, although her talents are more suited to television, as it appears this movie was. While most will think, as I did, while reading the plot synopsis of the film that it is a rip-off of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (Sutherland starred in the remake of this film in 1978), the actual book was published in 1951, prior to the original film as well as the novel written by Jack Finney. Bottom line: not a bad movie to watch when you know you will be distracted as it requires very little of your attention and there are enough action scenes to move the pace along, but science fiction and Heinlein fans will be disappointed.