Synopsis:
An asteroid crashes to Earth and is discovered by a professor and his student. Is their relationship more than just “professor and student”? Oh most definitely.
Anyway, the asteroid is a glowing orb and there is also a large, rubbery alien creature and there is a dysfunctional family trying to capitalize on it and a bar full of drunks wanting to murder and so on and so forth.
Thoughts:
Everyone has their favorite bad b-movie that they ran across in a video store. We used to go to the video store located in the front of Wal-Mart once a month or so and look for the worst movie we could find. Have you ever seen The Boneyard, in which an old woman and her poodle are turned into hideous, mutated creatures? Or The Beast, in which a man turns into a drooling, claymated monster for some reason? Or Puma Man, which involves Aztecs, Stonehenge, Donald Pleasance and the insinuation of a flying sexual encounter? Because I have. I’ve seen all of those, and more. So much more.
My favorite in the bunch was Galaxy Invader. It was my go-to when a friend was in town. “You haven’t seen Galaxy Invader? YOU SIMPLY MUST!” I’ve seen it more times than I care to count. I’ve seen it so many times that, when I finally tracked down a copy to buy, I noticed that a line of dialog was missing from the copy I had seen. I can see JJ saying, “What could I do, Pa, he had a gun,” with his arms in front of him, bouncing awkwardly. I can see it in my head, but not on my DVD copy. I own 4 copies of this movie and that dialog is missing from all of them. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya.
Did I say I own 4 copies? Because I meant that I own, um, 0 copies of this movie. I’m borrowing one from a friend. You probably don’t know him, so don’t bother asking. He’ll deny it, anyway. And he doesn’t have a phone or anything.
This movie is beautiful. The monster’s suit is terrible and rubbery, and, for a movie called Galaxy Invader, he is not the star of the show. The star of the show is the Montague family. The father – Joe – is abusive and leers after the wife of his best friend and owns one shirt that has a giant hole in the middle. His daughter – who seems to be in her early 30s – desperately wants to run away with her boyfriend, a flannel-clad man who either hides his smoking from her, or was smoking during his shooting breaks and didn’t throw the cigarette away before the camera started rolling. There’s no way to know for sure. The wife – Ethel…of course it’s Ethel – just kind of puts up with Joe’s crap for some reason. Their son is an idiot and is easily in his 40s.
Joe’s best friend is a cowboy-hat wearing jackass by the name of Frank Custer*. For some reason, Frank is a big figure in the community and can easily gather up a bunch of trigger-happy drunks at a moment’s notice. Frank says things they “HEYYY GOOOOD,” and has large strings of drool escape his mouth when he removes his cigar. Frank’s wife – the aforementioned object of Joe’s affection – is Vickie. She wears low-cut shirts and has a mole that reflects light.
The back of the VHS box shows a scene that never comes close to happening in the movie. Not in any of the copies that I…I mean, my friend owns. My friend. Who, again, you probably don’t know.
The ending is delightful. Just delightful. I once watched this movie in a room full of people who had never seen it and the entire room erupted into roars of laughter. It’s unreal. It’s one of my all-time favorite scenes in any movie ever. It’s perfect. I would highly recommend that you watch the full movie. But, if you just want to skip to the end, well…
The full movie is on YouTube! I repeat, it’s on YouTube!
This movie is terrible and trashy and I love it completely. Please watch it so we can all talk about it. Please. Please?
Rating: 15/5
* Frank Custer is played by Don Leifert. In the credits, it says, “Hat Provided by Don Leifert.” They had a line in the credits that told us that he brought his own cowboy hat. That always killed me.
