Alien Invasion Monster Truck Theme Song
3 /10
A film where little happens
Warning: Spoilers
INVASION FROM INNER EARTH is a low budget US science fiction flick with a great title and premise: a group of folks are trapped in a mountain cabin by aliens and wait for the impending end of the world. Sadly, it was made as an indie with no money, non-actors and no kind of incident at all, so the end result is testing to say the least. Other than an occasional flashing light, the aliens are kept off screen, with the actors reduced to reciting exposition and reacting to stuff off-screen. As you can imagine, this becomes tiresome very quickly, and with a flagging pace and generally cheap feel, it's really not worth your time.
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2 /10
Aliens Use Lots of Electronic Music
How can one write a script and produce a movie without one entertaining moment. Film is supposed to be visual in nature and this has people sitting around talking the whole time. And it's no "My Dinner with Andre." Something is killing the people of earth. It's spreading. Some people, trapped in some pretty cold environs (Canada?) are left to try to figure it out. That's all they ever do. Try to figure it out. They have no plan. They have no vitality. The aliens never confront them, to speak of, and so we don't even know what's going on. The outdoorsy scientist has a theory, but it could just be a bunch of hooey. The conclusion is about as stupid as anything I've seen in years. How could someone get the money to put together such a snoozer. If you can't compete with the big boys, at least tell a decent story. As with so many of these, there are long treks through the snow and a snowmobile trip that goes for about ten minutes with nothing happening.
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6 /10
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL
Warning: Spoilers
This is a "sci fi" film light on special effects. Jake (Nick Holt) and his sister Sarah (Debbi Pick) live in a remote northern cabin 205 miles north of Manitoba. They have a few scientist guests when the earth is invaded by aliens we never see, but they attack us with red lights and red and blue smoke bombs.
People get ill and die as our group stay in the cabin listening to the short wave radio, trying to figure out what is going on in the world. Yup, that is pretty much it.
The transfer to DVD wasn't the quality I hoped for on my Mill Creek edition. The dialogue concentrated on bad humorous stories, which actually made the film. . . yes aliens from Uranus. The sound track seemed to be added at random and didn't necessarily reflect what was on the screen. Was that a harpsichord? Really?
The acting was sad also. Lovers of bad films can find moments of enjoyment. The original title of this film was "Invasion from Inner Earth."
Kid safe.
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4 /10
try to get through 'They'- it's fairly slow, tedious, and red lights!
The very opening shots of They, aka Invasion from Inner Earth, aka The Selected, aka Hell Fire, aka your mama (well, not the last one), has lots of people running around, apocalypse raging. This is obviously from another movie, as the producers of the film rarely have enough of a budget for Wonder bread inbetween the takes for the actors much less staging a big epic cluster-f***. Right after these shots, which look made for a promising movie it cuts to the Wisconsin (or Canadadian?) wilderness, where some guys are flying in a plane. But there's also a crazy guy flying a plane who crashes in the woods. The four guys see this and investigate. But there's more than they bargained for: all communication with the outside world is cut-off, except to a pretty girl with a radio in her cabin one of the guy's knows. Then a red light coming out of a flashlight is buzzing around the room- the alien, of course- and now there are ominous callings on the radio.
Spooky? Moreover inept, really, though it's not without a certain allotment of watchability (unless it's late at night, which might make it a good movie to fall asleep to, or to fool around with the significant other). But it's also so cheaply shot that anything that could possibly be in the script is obfuscated by the meandering take of the material. 'We need aliens' should've been as a protest on t-shirts during the making of the film! Instead it's done in a style that elimintates the middle-man, or middle-martian, so that Ito (yes, a director called Ito, who in reality directed one of the worst films ever Monster-a-go-go) can get many shots of outside in the wilderness and so-so scripted fighting in the cabin. I don't even remember if I made it all the way through to the end. Looks like They don't get very far with this stuff- the filmmakers, I mean. At least the stock music is cool.
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1 /10
Snow Job
Warning: Spoilers
"A group of campers in the Canadian wilderness begins (sic) to hear strange reports over their radio. Tales of a plague spreading across the Earth, sightings of bizarre beings as well as planes and cars malfunctioning fills the airwaves. Terrified by what they've been listening to, the campers decide to barricade themselves at their cabin in order to face the danger," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.
Aka "They", this is a very difficult movie to sit through. Hardly anything ever happens to the five main characters. They seem to be isolated in snowy Wisconsin, for reasons severely lacking in clarity, as the Earth is invaded from within. The "leader" finally emerges as "Stan" (Paul Bentzen); he is the blonde guy with the beard. "Sarah" (Debbi Pick) and "Jake" (Nick Holt) are brother and sister. "Eric" (Karl Wallace) seems to be the early "leader"; and, "Andy" (Robert Arkens) quintuples the group.
The startling ending (a pair of loin-clothed young children are tastefully shown) would have worked; however, the preceding 90 minutes don't lead you there. The very derivative soundtrack jumps the shark when "Jake" goes for help in his snowmobile, to the tune of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"!
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1 /10
Bill Rebane's They
Warning: Spoilers
Collosal bore from Wisconsin filmmaker Bill Rebane with hilariously awful "special" (ill)effects and a talky script whose ridiculous story plods along at a languishing pace that demands the most amount of patience ever conceived from any unfortunate viewer who happens to sit down to watch it. It features an ending so unbelievably corny, you'll be left in silence wondering if it was possible to conclude an invasion story any more ineptly. Five characters are holding up in a cabin as their country falls prey to Martian invaders from "inner Earth"..just wait to you hear the theory of goofball Stan(Paul Bentzen)regarding Mars being right near Earth centuries ago, having to leave, deciding to make their new home within the center of our world. Anyway, a pilot, Jake(Nick Holt)runs a service where he treats campers to his lodge for a vacation in the snowy wilderness. He looks after orphaned teenager Sarah(Debbi Pick)as a fatherly figure. Stan, along with Sarah's love-interest Eric(Karl Wallace)and prick Andy(Robert Arkens)were preparing to return home when Jake encountered a warning from a sickened airstrip operator who insisted he not land due to a mysterious plague spreading across rural America. As they remain in the cabin, away from civilization, tempers flare and the search for food has been difficult. What makes matters worse is when Andy takes off in Jake's plane, feeling the effects of a ray used by the Martians with the result being a crash. Left in the middle of nowhere, without food, running out of gas, Jake will make the decision to use a snowmobile, hoping to find help for them.
Rebane juxtaposes certain happenings outside of the plot regarding the log cabin characters, colored steam and red balls of light which cause people to act strangely, even disappearing. The flying saucers are of the Ed Wood school, quite an embarrassment, removing even the slightest bit of credibility Rebane attempted to establish with the development of his characters.
I like a good isolation story, and the setting of a log cabin, cut off from civilization, within the wintry wilderness certainly provides a good backdrop. I think a competent director, with even a decent(..nothing extravagant)budget, can utilize the framework Rebane has to work with, characters effected by the threat of invasion, attempting to uncover what is occurring outside their radius to the rest of the country, but he doesn't know how to produce even a hint of suspense and the terrible use of inappropriate, loud, obnoxious musical arrangements produces even worse an experience. I simply wanted it to end, because the film doesn't capitalize on a premise that could work in a more talented director's hands. I'm sure the script was too ambitious, considering the monetary means for this movie was obviously limited(..if you are to make an invasion movie, then you have to produce more than colorful steam and red balls of light to convince us of the terror that threatens mankind).
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3 /10
Next time someone is on the runway waving at you - don't land the plane....
I should have realised as the title music was a sort of electronic version of something Ennio Morricone left on the studio floor that I was in for a treat... This is dreadful. A group of young folks find themselves stranded in the Canadian wilderness as technology around them is breaking down. It appears that we are amidst an invasion - but of where, by whom - and why? Don't expect any answers to these and any other questions in this shockingly over-long, badly lit and directed piece of nonsense. The score is frequently outperformed by the sound of static on the radios and the acting (and dancing!) - well, think little Toby's Christmas nativity when he was 8. It didn't help that the version I saw recently was terribly over-exposed (perhaps a dodgy NTSC conversion) but by the middle, the invasion couldn't come fast enough - never mind by the end.
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5 /10
"They" are out there, maybe...let's drink coffee and talk about nothing!
Bill Rebane's first film proper (as far as I know), and I was half curious about it, half dreading it since I'd read nothing good about it. Sure, it's as low budget as you can get, has questionable acting and has little going on, but is it really that bad? The answer is: Probably. After some red mist appears and people begin falling dead in the street, we cut to hunter Jake and his sister, who were putting up three students who are now ready to return to civilisation via plane. However, once heading for the airport they are prevented from stopping by a sick man who then collapses on the runway. Jake takes the students to the next airport and finds it deserted, where they also witness a plane crash.
Our students are Eric, Dan (whom you'll be shouting 'kill him first' as he's the joker of the pack) and a guy either called Tom or Sam (I don't remember). Tom, let's call him, is the cynical one who wants to get back to society, even after witnessing strange red light bouncing about the place. Dan on the other hand is full of theories as to what's happening, although to me it sounded like he was making stuff up off the top of his head.
They all head back to Jake's cabin where the film settles down good and proper for a whole load of nothing. They try the radio, look for food, try the radio again. Sometimes a mysterious voice contacts them asking where they are (I'll admit these bits were quite effective). And just when you're cutting this film a whole lot of slack, you run into the last half hour when things take a complete nose dive when the remaining people decide to wander around outside for the rest of the film until the completely bizarre ending.
Add to this the Kraftwerk style take off of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly theme tune, those hilarious flying saucers and shots of people running around panicking, the random TV show, and most of all Dan (Or Stan) giving a brain melting speech about how Mars and Earth were right next to each other at some point, and you've got a film that cranks the weirdness up to ten. The fact that things almost happen sometimes is about as much 'action' as you're going to get here, as very little happens. There's also some bizarre hint at some point that Jake killed his father somehow to get insurance money that crops up from nowhere and is never mentioned again.
Fans of things happening in films are going to fall into a coma with this one. Fans of Bill Rebane will need to see it anyway just to see where it all started. Fans of bad movies will have to see it to see some of the most inept aliens ever I wouldn't say seen I'll say hinted at – smoke bombs and flashing lights.
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totally unwatchable film
Warning: Spoilers
*Spoiler/plot- Invasion from Inner Earth ('They' or 'Hell Fire'), 1974. A group of campers in the Canadian wilderness begins to hear strange reports over their radio. Tales of plague spreading across the Earth, sights of bizarre beings as well as planes and cars malfunctioning fill the news airwaves. Terrified by what they hear, the campers decide to barricade themselves at their cabin in order to face the danger.
*Special Stars- Paul Bentzen.
*Theme- Canadians are optimistic people in crisis.
*Trivia/location/goofs- Canadian production. Now public domain intellectual property.
*Emotion- A totally unwatchable film considering the endless scenes in the wilderness snow and indoor cabin scenes. The plot has huge plot holes and is confusing. The film effects are worse than remedial and the aliens are reduced to an unsatisfying weird radio voice. The final scenes is the worst in screen history.
*Based On- New age religions.
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2 /10
2nd tier Bill Rebane flick (yes, there is such a thing) should be avoided at all costs
Warning: Spoilers
Although I remember panning "Giant Spider Invasion" and "Monster A Go Go" here on IMDb, I thought that the Spider film at least had a little energy and some comic interest. And "Monster" was just deliriously bad -but it wasn't entirely Rebane's fault (as I understand it) because some one else picked it up and tried to edit it into a different movie altogether. And I remember "Twister's Revenge" as being silly, but mildly amusing...there was a tank and a monster truck crushing things at one point,and the hero got thrown through a barroom window.
However...if "Giant Spider Invasion" is Rebane at his best, this movie (and "The Alpha Incident") are examples of movies where he didn't manage to make them entertaining even by accident.
Listen...if you don't have any money for special effects and you can't really write dialog, and you can't really do a good plot, and you can't really direct the actors in any helpful way, and the actors have no real idea of what they are doing...if you have all those problems and you are relying on scene after scene of spoken exposition to carry and advance the plot, plus you never really let the audience in on what the aliens are or what they want...then your movie is in serious trouble. In fact, it's going to suck, and not in a good way (the "so bad it's good" way either.)
The basic concept is sound enough - George Romero took a similar situation and turned it into "Night Of the Living Dead" - but Rebane manages to strip his movie of any conceivable energy, interest or dramatic tension in the first 5 minutes, and after that I was checking the time display menu on the DVD player every 30 seconds to see how much of this bore-fest I had left to go.
I wouldn't watch this movie again unless it was under the influence of high narcotics (not that I indulge), and neither should you.
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4 /10
Alien invasion via citizens band
Talky, ponderous sci-fi is about twenty-minutes overspent in my opinion, and while it does a fair job in painting the isolation of a remote band of people discovering the human race may have become extinct in the wake of an alien invasion, it does little to fulfil the promise when action is needed.
Director Rebane has a solid concept, and his cast of amateurs do a creditable job (notably Bentzen and Holt) with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and building a sense of intrigue out of a flickering red light and interference on a ham radio. The landscape is attractive and while there are a couple of moments where the pace gets above ambling, it's an effort to reach the climax (which while unexpected, doesn't redeem the previous 95 minutes of hard-talking labour).
One of those films that promises much in its narrative build-up, dangling the juicy plot carrots, displaying an attractive ambition that is ultimately never realised; and when you discover that it was never on the negative and certainly never on the page, you become (understandably) quite aggrieved that you invested almost two hours of your precious life for such a blatant ruse. I wanted "They" to live up to its potential, and disappointingly, though it's picturesque and moody, it doesn't come to fruition.
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1 /10
My first Bill Rebane movie experience & probably my last!
Strange gas erupts from the earth and mysterious red lights appear out of nowhere, causing the world's population to slowly die off as this unknown menace moves from the North & South Poles toward the equator. The main part of the story focuses on 5 folks in the woods and how they deal with the situation. How? By talking...and talking...and talllllllking. Somehow one guy into UFOs lets everyone else know it is UFOs because, well, he is into UFOs and knows aliens from Mars moved into Earth's core 8,000 years ago. Good lord Rebane, what are you thinking? Even if this has a germ of a good idea, the execution is so terrible that nothing can be forgiven. Not even the cool, snowbound setting. I can take cheap any ol' day, but not cheap and boring. The only thing that kept me amused was that this uses the same theme from James Bryan's LADY STREET FIGHTER. Well, I was amused until I remembered that theme was stuck in my head for weeks after LSF and now it will be stuck again.
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1 /10
A Lot of Absolutely Nothing
Want a movie with no action at all? Here it is, another Bill Rebane (Monster-a-go-go, Giant Spider Invasion), schlock-fest, boring beyond the limits of human tolerance. I'm a big fan of "so-bad-they're good" movies, since they are at least enjoyable on the level of invoking laughter from the unintentional humor; however, this one does not even achieve enjoyable camp status. It just annoys you.
Any "action" in this movie occurs off screen, and is conveyed through non-stop dialog throughout this tedious sleep-inducing dud. People blab on radios, aliens (with booming voices) chit-chat on radios, characters drone on endlessly to each other (without saying much), and on and on it goes. The most "exciting" sequence involved some colorful smoke bombs, with people screaming and running (away from the smoke?). Also, there's a plague (again, we only are told this through the babbling characters). Oh, and there's some irritating, synthesized noises in the soundtrack to tell you that something happens (since it doesn't happen on the screen, like it would in other movies).
There's plenty of ridiculous dialog; here's a sample: when a know-it-all guy theorizes (ready?) that Mars and the Earth were once closer to each other than the Earth and the moon are. The planets were aligned this way for over two thousand years, he lectures. How the five planetary bodies (Earth, its moon, Mars, and its two moons) did not crash into one another due to the immense, mutual gravitation, was not explained in the lecture.
That's about all there is to this, except a bizarre ending reminiscent of another Rebane fiasco, Monster-a-go-go. I don't know if MST3K ever slammed this one; they certainly should have. Even their best salvos might not have saved it, however. This mess deserves a negative rating, but, as you know, IMDb's rules prohibit that; which, in the case of this movie, is a pity.
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One of those obscure "non-movies" from the 1970s
INVASION FROM INNER EARTH is one of those "non-movies" made during the 1970s. A "non-movie" is a film that: A) can be described as regional filmmaking. B) no budget. C) no recognizable actor. D) probably made by students. E) it's a genre movie, usually sci-fi or horror, that's very ambitious (in this case, UFOs and invasions) even if it can barely afford to pay for film stock! F) the soundtrack is a collection of stock music (the main theme was good though). G) was probably released in one or two theaters somewhere in and around where the film was made (hence, the regional aspect of the flick). H) the advertising (or video box cover) is always deceptive. There's no mention in the script that the aliens are from inside the earth, which makes me wonder why did they bothered to give it that title.
There were a lot of "non-movies" made in the 1970s (and in the 1980s, they morphed into the "direct-to-video" category) and IFIE epitomizes these kind of obscure, regional movies few people saw when they were made. The film itself is not very good. There's just no story. And what story there is doesn't make much sense. The dialogue is at times painfully bad. The direction hardly creates any tension. And the ending is inexplicable. But as bad as it is, the film is totally harmless, and in a certain weird way, as some sort of quaint charm to it.
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Wretched sci-fi turpitude.
Warning: Spoilers
*minor spoilers*
Easily selectable as one of the crummiest sci-fi flicks of the 1970s, INVASION FROM INNER EARTH is a bland recipe which denotes Earth being menaced by Martians who took residence within the Earth's core thousands of years ago. They launch germ warfare against humanity, sending colorful smoke-bombs into populated areas. A group of field researchers in a remote forest cabin are unaware of this situation, and wonder why they can't seem to reach the outside world by radio.
Dismally cheap micro-production with inane dialog delivered by thespians who probably couldn't give a believable performance in a photograph. The only special effect in this economically underprivileged little lacuna is a red-filtered light being repeatedly flipped off-and-on. The nonsensical story(rather, the meager provision we're given as such) sails straight over the edge of a very steep, intelligence-insulting, WTF conclusion you'll NEVER see coming.
Worth a peek for high schlock value by bad movie enthusiasts, anyone else might consider self-immolation over watching it.
2.5/10
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10 /10
OK! Great atmosphere, garbage acting/dialogue, low budget masterpiece, Real rating 7. 10 for balance. INVASION FROM INNER EARTH aka, THEY; or, HELLFIRE.
Warning: Spoilers
You want to see a candy movie? Then go see Star Wars VII, Force Awakens (or a clone), or Thor, or Avengers, or any other unrealistic piece of garbage that is spoon-fed to the masses.
If you want to see a movie about an apocalypse, that is being experienced by a few isolated people who are confused and unaware of what the hell is going on, then this is the movie for you. What we have here is a movie with great characters. A brother and sister Nick Holt as Jake, and Debbi Pick as Sarah who run an isolated cabin for adventurers or scientists. These are the best actors here. Not great, but realistic. Very important, REALISTIC! Jake and Sarah's guest are scientists Paul Bentzen as Stan (Beardman), Karl Wallace as Eric, and Robert Arkens as Andy (Richboy). Stan is the most joker and the actor is garbage. Wallace is also garbage. Arkens is better and had a few decent scenes. I liked his death scene on the airplane. So, acting department, no awards, and maybe no career. But, as far as what is required, they all provide the realistic aspect. Isolated, confused atmosphere.
Cinematography was very good. The editing was good but could have cut back on some extra footage. The music was great. The main theme song was very eerie. The snowride theme was a copy from a spaghetti western, which was weird but fine. Mostly synth music. The fxs are garbage, red lights, smoke bombs, and cheap ufo ships. I liked the superimposed fx.
So, this is a story about the apocalypse. But not about all over the world. Just what happens to a few people. We are show what is happening in other areas but we are never given a definite explanation about the apocalypse. The five people dwindle, fist Andy Richboy dies steeling the airplane. Great stuff. Then Jake is taken out after the snowride. Eric freezes in the snow and is taken out. The last two survivors are separated. The best part of the movie is when Sarah is seen by the train tracks, eerie music playing, she sees something and is overjoyed, we see her running, happy music, long shot we see man from the back as Sarah runs towards him, it's Stan the jokeman. They are so happy to see each other, maybe love. They walk past a desolate, cold snowy town, up on a hill they transform into a young boy and girl in loincloths, and walk through the grass and flowers, the survivors, the new Adam and Eve.
Now this ending is completely out of outer space, or inner earth. But it works.
I've read all the user reviews. Most hate this movie. Too bad for them. Some like it, and see the problems with it. I've seen it twice now. First in 2016, Rating B-. I've also read the critic reviews and they also see the problem with it, but most love it. 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting (Scott Ashlin) Bleeding Skull (Dan Budnik) Ha ha, it's Burl! (Burl Cummings) The Eclectic Screening Room (Greg Woods)
Rating is a B, for a B movie, or 7 stars. 10 is given as balance, for losers who give this a 1 or 2 or anything below a 5. I suggest those viewers go watch Star Wars VII and get excited by the assembly line film making from those big budget films.
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3 /10
Neither worth your time nor effort, despite an interesting beginning!
This was REALLY bad and poorly made, and I'm being kinder to it than I should be, both because of its decent first half and the charm and beauty of the starring female protagonist, Debbi Pick (this seems to be her only film credit)--also it was obviously made on a super-low budget in my native country, Canada. There were some interesting ideas that would have made a decent film in much better hands (I have previously watched Rebane's later works, 'The Alpha Incident' and 'Twister's Revenge!', and this makes a 'trinity of tripe' that should best be avoided), and the cinematography is decent, simply because it's outdoors and shot in beautiful surroundings with natural light, most of the time. The low-budget special effects were abysmal, and incidents like plane crashes are simply off-screen and left to the viewer's imagination, so that Rebane doesn't have to show it.
I saw this under the title 'They', in my Mill Creek 50-pack, 'Nightmare Worlds'--this by far was one of the worst and least interesting of the bunch. Do yourself a huge favour and if you see Rebane's name on a film (at the very least, for these three mentioned), don't touch them with a ten-foot pole. They're neither worth your time nor energy.
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2 /10
Manos, forgive me! I slighted you unfairly!
Warning: Spoilers
About 10 minutes in to this movie, I actually thought it might be a bit of fun. I was expecting a low-budget version of THE THING (1951), as an unseen (due to budget restrictions) alien menace stalks and offs the stupid people in the snowbound cabin, starting with the annoying rich guy. (They are killed eventually, but it takes FAR TOO LONG.) Or maybe a killer virus flick like THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN or the made for TV flick WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE? Oh, how naive I am.
First of all, the alien IS seen, but is a red flashlight beam shined on the wall. As another commentator said, ow. Better that NOTHING at all were seen; just ask anyone who saw THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. The disease IS represented by smoke bombs going off. So what's going on? Aliens or a killer virus? They decide after FAR too much sitting around and talking that aliens have launched the virus. Then more pseudo scientific theorizing and discussion about what they should do, with occasional acid flashback inserts.
The most crazed part that no one else seemed to comment upon were the interludes at the local radio stations, where the announcers seem FAR TOO LAID BACK. "Oh well, hey a disease is killing thousands of people at once, oh well, back to the music..." Then the TV news segment which, unbelievably, offers what I believe to be intentional comic relief as two dopplegangers for Ma and Pa Kettle are interviewed on TV at 2 o'clock in the morning about their sighting of a UFO and subsequent abduction. Then the comic relief scene with the drunk guy at the bar?? Save me, please.
As I said, I judged MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE far too harshly. This sucker makes MANOS seem like a masterwork. And for that matter, director Bill Rebane's subsequent foray into Wisconsin film artistry, THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, is a work of Eisenstein or Kurosawa compared to this lummage. At least GSI had real actors in it.
Oh, yeah, the music: BLOWS HARD. Really awful analog synthesizer music. Now, I like early synthesizer music. Give me a Perrey and Kingsley record and I'm a happy man. But this was awful stuff. Really piercing. And I recognized some of the music recycled to/from Giant Spider Invasion.
One more note: this plot could not be written today. "Oh my God, we're isolated and cut off from the world! What's going on? Are thousands of people really dying? We have no possible way of knowing!" "No problem, I'll just look on the CNN web site..."
I can't give INVASION FROM INNER EARTH a 1 because I actually watched the whole movie. Like watching the aftermath of a brutal traffic accident, I JUST COULDN'T LOOK AWAY. But you may require the use of various liquid refreshments just to get through it. I warned ya.
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1 /10
invasion is a dud
invasion of inner earth also known as;they is a extremely bad science fiction movie.we don't see any aliens or flying saucers,not even a pie plate on a string nothing,its a exercise in tedium,but the music on the soundtrack is OK.there are killer flashlight beams however.i don't get it what was directer bill rebane thinking?even the giant spider invasion was entertaining even if it was crappy.and there's no well known actors in this film.is it worth watching?i would have to say no unless you really want to be bored to death.the title does sound promising but really does'nt deliver.this is about 90 minutes ill never get back.but if you like bad dull boring movies then invasion from inner earth is for you,shame on you bill rebane.1 out of 10 awful!
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1 /10
The Horror! The Horror! (beat) The Boredom! The Boredom!
Warning: Spoilers
It's amazing how often the words 'god-awful' appear in the reviews of this movie - er - on second thoughts, no it isn't. This really is a god-awful movie and the most god-awful part of it - eclipsing the non-script, the non-acting and the execrable un-special effects, is the incredible amount of really bloody awful music in this movie. The soundtrack is a masterpiece of incoherence ranging from tinny renditions of what sounded suspiciously like Morricone's 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly' theme played on a Stylophone to mellow Spanish guitar music, to 10 second loops of synthesised rock - ALL IN THE SAME SCENE! This isn't a soundtrack to a movie. It's a John Cage concert.
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1 /10
So Bad It's Good
Warning: Spoilers
This low budget video snoozer is from the famous director, Ito, an inhabitant of Northern Wisconsin. It's starts out as some sort of winter in the wilderness movie. But things are going bad, occasional spurts over the radio talk about UFOs and diseases. The three guest of a backwood brother-sister duo, Jake and Kate, are scientists investigating...., what? We don't know, strange for a movie consisting of so much talk. We see a diseased man run across the runway, driving off Jake's bush plane. So he lands at a nearby lodge, laid up for the winter, but no gas there. While on the ground, another plane flies over-head, and in a stock sound effect and gasps, we learn that plain crashes. Two of the scientists are so blasé they would rather hang around the lodge and play with the ham radio than check out the crash and maybe save someone's life. There they see the mysterious red light, which is the aliens or something, besides a creepy echo effected radio voice asking leading questions which must be aliens.
So we hear a lot of speculation about this plague, invasion. Occasionally they cut to a TV studio with some locals telling the audience about their UFO encounter. More creepiness, young lovers watching this late night 70's talk show dreck suddenly disappear, kazaam!! Topping off the random cuts from the stranded group is the invasion of Tomahawk by the aliens, meaning about 50 odd friends and family running amok on the streets through red smoke generated by smoke bombs with the towns old fire trucks and AMC Ambassador police car going here and there. For clinchers, there is a couple UFOs that are grade school art projects at best.
Meanwhile, our team of four guys and the lady decline to three as one of the scientists steals the plane but crashes as the red light gets him. Then Jake, our outdoors man, tries to make it to town on the snow mobile but the red smoke bomb gets him cold. Finally, the remaining three trek back to town on foot, they are running out of food and there is no game to hunt. They get separated, one of them freezes, the last two get re-united, in a juvenile Adam and Eve motif that would make you wretch.
This is definitely a Mystery Science Theater 3K film. There is no action or much of a plot and the cut away shots to the rest of the world just add to the confusion. In the last act, out in the cold around a limpid campfire, the wiseacre Scientist reveals the whole mystery concerning Martians burrowing under the earth. You see Mars and Earth were once next door neighbors so the Martians made it to earth, burrowed underground for millenia. So why now, why the plague? How did they get the saucers out of the ground? How did he derive the hypotheses, based on meager data he gleaned from the shortwave? Who knows?
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4 /10
Uhm...different
Okay, most of the film is pretty boring: people sitting around in a cabin, listening to an alian invasion, nothing much happening in terms of group dynamics. Special effects are beyond belief. That's something that would not have happened to Ed Wood, he would have made an awful film on the same budget but with much better special effects. However, the film does have its redeeming features. The idea of having radio/TV stations still running while earth is being taken over clearly influenced Romero in Dawn of the Dead. Some dialogue is reasonably funny and some shots are pretty atmospheric. like the deserted airport in the beginning. The final scene is really funny, the last survivors turn into Adam and Eve in a completely over the top scene, and it's not the hunk but the nerd who gets the girls. That's funny. However, the music takes the biscuit. The theme tune is a rip off of The Good, the bad and the Ugly and no one except for the great Ed Wood in Jail Bait has ever used music so completely clueless. 20 or 30 minutes less and the film would have been acceptable.
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3 /10
My introduction to the film-making of Bill Rebane
Warning: Spoilers
Or, I should say, the first Bill Rebane film I can make it through without being bored to tears. I got this film on one of those 50 movie packs called "Nightmare Worlds", so you know I couldn't have wasted too much money on it. I don't know why, but I really like this film. Maybe it's the goofy music that sometimes sounds like an off key version of the theme from "The Good, the Bad,and the Ugly". Maybe it's the attention grabbing beginning. Maybe it's the original characters that I actually started to like about a third of the way through the movie. There's the drab but somehow attractive female protagonist, her brother who cares so much about the group that he actually leaves the cabin for help, the rich snob who is slightly reminiscent of Charles Winchester from M*A*S*H, the guy the female protagonist is infatuated with, and the brainy, slightly crazy nerd who looks somewhat like a walrus, and is actually more important to the story than you think he is at first. The atmosphere and cinematography were also above average. Now, I'm not saying this is a great movie. Heck, I'm not even saying it's a GOOD movie... it's slow paced, has bad acting, and the quality of the DVD transfer is god-awful... but you might like it if you have a very distinct taste in cinema... a BAD taste.
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1 /10
In a league of its own
This movie should become a master class in how not to make movies. In every single aspect it fails. For the first 30 minutes I was laughing at the insane music choices and the terrible jumps to random scenes with a new bizarre sound and theme. Walking in snow? How bout a whacky comedic tone. Still walking? Let's now do a magical fantasy theme. Riding a snow mobile? 70s kung-fu score? After an hour the comedic side of it wore off and I was disturbed by the director/editors (were these actual jobs on this production?) Complete lack of film knowledge.
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6 /10
Those Red Guys, You know...They.
I saw this movie under the title "They" as part of the Nightmare Worlds 50 DVD collection released by Mill Creek. Easily one of the best sci-fi flicks filmed in Wisconsin circa 1970's I've seen this year, mostly because of the mention of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. I admit I was a little let down by the fact there wasn't a single Hodag (Do a Google search if need be) to be found.
Still, killer smoke bombs are without a doubt the most original villains ever. The film is only mostly terribly acted or over acted if you're a bearded cast member in this film and the snow mobile scenes are gratuitous if not plentiful. The scenery is white, the bad guys are red, and everyone owns a checkered flannel shirt.
OK, This is a painfully bad film, the soundtrack is off the wall, the actors are only actors in the sense that they are in the act of doing things in the snow that are (maybe accidentally)captured on film, and the special effects consist of smoke bombs and flashlights with red cellophane covering the lens. For me to sum this movie up in one word, it would be, AWESOME
Lovers of these types of films (Le Bad Cinema), like myself, will find this flick both charming and indispensable. If you got enjoyment out of such fine films as They Saved Hitlers Brain, Mano's or Curse of the Headless Horseman. You will love this...errr "They".
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Alien Invasion Monster Truck Theme Song
Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071666/reviews
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