Slobbering aliens

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 32

Slobbering aliens

“Is this a joke?” asks 11-year-old David Gardner, as things start to go very wrong with the loving, caring life he has known. His parents have started to act strangely, coldly, and have started to eat very strange foods — ever since their bodies were taken over by the aliens who landed one eerie night. There is a certain familarity about the new release by RCA/Columbia/ Hoyts, “Invaders from Mars.” It has drawn on the long tradition of invasion movies and encounters with aliens, but it brings the elements together with a certain freshness. The film harks back to the spooky 1956 production, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and the set design aboard the alien ship is very evocative of organic structures the way the interior of the wrecked spaceship was shown in the film “Alien.” The film’s special effects are by John Dykstra and the invader creatures were designed and created by Stan Winston. These two deserve a lot of credit for the success of the production. The slathering, slobbering aliens are repulsive in the finest tradition of the genre. The director, Tobe Hooper, builds the tension and the mounting paranoia very nicely. One night, after a meteor shower and a thunderstorm, a boy obsessed with space sees a huge U.F.O. land. When his father, a N.A.S.A. scientist played by Timothy Bottoms, goes to investigate the sighting, he returns" behaving strangely.

David finds his family, his classmates, the police and his teacher are gradually taken over by these forces from another world. He manages to •convince his school nurse, Karen Black, of the small difficulty they are facing, and they set out together to try to solve the nightmarish problem. Black and the boy, Hunter Carson, perform well together, as well they might. They are actually mother and son. It is Carson’s second film. His first, "Paris Texas,” won the 1984 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. In “Invaders from Mars” he has the demanding task of being on screen almost all of the time and some of his nonhuman co-stars are certainly scene stealers. The film also stars Louise Fletcher as David Gardner’s elementary school science teacher, Mrs McKeltch, who is pretty difficult to deal with even before she is taken over by the aliens. Fletcher is best remembered for his role in the 1975 film, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which won her ah Academy Award for Best Actress as Nurse Ratchet. Director Hooper has had an interesting career. He first received widespread recognition for “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and was approached in 1982 by Steven Spielberg to direct “Poltergeist," which became a major earner that year. Scripts and offers poured in after that, but Hodper was not interested. He has now made “Lifeforce,” “Invaders from Mars," sequel to “The Chainsaw 'Mass-