Strange Invaders
                                                                                                         
Director: Michael Laughlin
Year: 1983
Rating: 5.5
I vaguely recall this being released back in 1983 and it getting a momentary shot of publicity and then quietly disappearing. It had a couple well known actors - Paul Le Mat coming off Melvin and Howard and Nancy Allen after Dressed to Kill and Blow Out. Toss in supporting actors like Michael Lerner, Diana Scarwid, Louise Fletcher and Wallace Shawn and you have the making of a solid film. But it never found an audience and still hasn't. Not even as a cult film which seems to have been its most likely destination. It is something between a parody or a homage of the alien Body Snatcher films of the 1950s but can't quite make up its mind which it wants to be and ends up falling flat. It isn't either comical enough like Mars Attacks was nor creepy and suspenseful like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.




It begins in the 1950s in a sleepy mid-western town with the invasion of aliens. Unseen. Jump to New York City thirty years later and Columbia professor of bugs Charles Bigelow is left with his small daughter by his ex-wife (Scarwid) who has to go home to visit her sick mother. In Centreville. Last seen being invaded by aliens. When she doesn't return or call, Bigelow packs up his station wagon and dog and goes looking for her. He finds a very odd town where everyone acts a little off and looks at him with suspicion. And no one knows who is wife is. Oh, and they can shoot electric bolts out of their hands.




They are of course all aliens who took over the forms of the former inhabitants and every now and then peel off their human skin to reveal their true horrific looking bodies. Back in NYC, he teams up with Betty (Allen), a reporter for a National Inquirer type of rag. It gets fun when the aliens follow him and his wife finally shows up and admits she is an alien too. And their daughter? Who knows? The fact that he was having sex with an alien and they had a daughter never really seems to bother him. He loves his kid no matter what. It never quite picks up speed after the NYC segment and the conclusion is much less than expected.