Strange Invaders

The early to mid-1980s saw a resurgence in alien invasion films like The Thing (1982), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984), and Invaders from Mars (1986) that were either remakes of or homages to science films from the 1950s. Strange Invaders (1984) was part of this wave and fared just about as well with mainstream audiences and critics. That is to say it was largely ignored. Were audiences not sophisticated enough to handle a film that simultaneous paid tribute to and gently parodied films from another era? Were they looking for something more straightforward and sentimental like E.T. (1982) or Starman (1984)? It’s too bad because Strange Invaders is quite a good film in its own, understated and unassuming way.

In 1958, the residents of Centerville, Illinois (a.k.a Smalltown, USA) are invaded and quickly assimilated by aliens from outer space. In a nice touch, it all starts with a couple of young lovers (played by Dey Young and Dan Shor – she was in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and he was in Tron). Flashforward 25 years later and we meet Charles Bigelow (Paul Le Mat), a professor of entomology at Columbia University. One day, his ex-wife Margaret (Diana Scarwid) drops off their daughter Elizabeth (Lulu Sylbert) to stay with him for awhile because she has to return home to, you guessed it, Centerville, to deal with her mother’s recent death. Charles doesn’t hear from Margaret for several days and is unable to get a hold of her on the phone despite repeated attempts.

So, Charles decides to go to Centerville and find out what happened to her. Right from the get-go, something seems off about the town. It could be the man (Kenneth Tobey) that runs the boarding house that Charles stays at who claims to never have heard of Margaret or her deceased mother even though he’s lived in Centerville his whole life. It could be the fact that when Charles goes wandering around town it looks like the inhabitants never left the ‘50s. It could be the church he enters that just happens to be emitting a strange blue glow from behind the altar. Or, it could be the odd way in which the patrons in a diner he hangs out in, while his car is being fixed, ignore him when he asks about his missing dog.

However, it is his car suddenly bursting into flames that seals the deal and when Charles makes a break for it by stealing another car, he spots someone who does not look human. We only get a fleeting glimpse but when it shoots out a bolt of electricity from its head that zaps the doors and trunk off Charles’ getaway car that pretty much confirms the otherworldly nature of the townsfolk. When several of the disguised aliens arrive in New York City (by Greyhound bus no less) we get the big reveal in a memorable scene where one of them sheds his human disguise to reveal an alien visage in a fantastic display of make-up effects. Along with the visual effects (mainly involving the alien mothership and their ability to manipulate electricity), they are quite effective for what I’m sure was a modestly budgeted film.

Charles returns home to find his place has been tossed. After talking to a fellow professor about his close encounter he is put in touch with a government official by the name of Mrs. Benjamin (Louise Fletcher) who tells him that no one has lived in Centerville since 1958 when it was destroyed by a tornado. This leaves him even more confused but he comes across a photograph of the alien he saw on the cover of a National Inquirer-style tabloid newspaper. He meets with Betty (Nancy Allen), the reporter who wrote the story. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t believe him and claims that she made up the article. However, Betty quickly becomes a believer when she gets a visit from a strange AVON lady who is not what she seems and proceeds to zap her neighbor (who, in a nice touch, is played by none other than Wallace Shawn). Betty and Charles team-up to figure out what’s going on.

Strange Invaders was the second film in a proposed trilogy by filmmaker Michael Laughlin. The first film was called Strange Behavior (1981) and it mixed science fiction, suspense thrillers with mad scientists and serial killers. Laughlin was a self-professed genre fan and found that “there’s a much greater association between the audience and the filmmaker in genre films. They know the formula, so they look to you to tantalize them.” On this film, he re-teamed with his co-writer and associate producer from Strange Behavior, William Condon. The first image Laughlin came up with was that of a Midwest landscape with an “old-fashioned mothership sliding in.” He started writing the first few pages of the screenplay himself and then he and Condon completed it in two months, each writing different parts.

The two men wrote the script without any kind of deal in place but were confident that it was going to be made into a film. To this end, they figured out the budget, scouted locations, cast the actors, and then worked on the production design (all at his and Condon’s expense) while arranging the financing. To help produce the film, Laughlin brought in his friend Walter Coblenz, who had been the assistant director on the Laughlin-produced film Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), and they shopped the project around Hollywood. Strange Behavior had been released by a small distributor and this time around Laughlin wanted his film handled by a major.

Executives at Orion Pictures liked the script for Strange Invaders and were looking for a good film at a modest price with mainstream appeal. Orion provided half of the film’s $5.5 million budget with England’s EMI Films coming up with the rest. As a result, Orion received distribution rights for North America while EMI handled the rest of the world. As part of the financing deal, Orion and EMI demanded several script changes, which Condon and Laughlin found difficult because they had to try and explain their ideas verbally. The companies’ influence reduced the film’s scope. For example, in the original script, the American government was a much bigger threat with a big sequence taking place at an Air Force base. This bothered Laughlin because the changes resulted in a lack of a well-defined middle section that he and Condon had to work on.

Orion and EMI also influenced the casting process and approved every choice Laughlin made. The original script was written with Michael Murphy in mind (he was also in Strange Behavior) but EMI refused, much to Laughlin’s confusion “because there didn’t seem to be a good reason for his rejection. I guess it was a matter of personal taste.” Orion and EMI suggested Mel Gibson or Powers Boothe to play Charles instead but Laughlin’s choice was Paul Le Mat because he hadn’t played that kind of role before and had what Laughlin saw as a “Joel McCrea quality” that he was looking for.

For the role of Betty, Laughlin wanted an actress from New York and not someone from California playing a New Yorker. Condon was a big fan of Brian De Palma’s films and Nancy Allen who had appeared in several of them. Louise Fletcher’s government agent was originally written as a man, a “Bob Balaban bureaucrat,” but during the screenwriting process, Condon and Laughlin decided to change the character to a woman and cast Fletcher who had been in Strange Behavior.

There are several references to science fiction films from the ‘50s with the presence of Kenneth Tobey (star of the original version of The Thing) and June Lockhart (one of the stars of Lost in Space), at one point, someone is watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) on television, and the film’s score could easily feel right at home in that decade, complete with the use of the Theremin, a unique musical instrument that emits an eerie sound – the hallmark of several films from that era. Laughlin was drawn to the ‘50s because it gave a “very American texture. There was a tremendous burst of imagination.”

Strange Invaders is an offbeat film to say the least with an off-kilter rhythm that probably didn’t endear it to audiences in the 1980s (or now, judging from its continuing anonymity). The very dry humor pops up in the unlikeliest places but in a good way, if that makes any sense. Charles is hardly the overtly heroic type but is rather a mild-mannered professor bewildered by what he’s witnessed. Paul Le Mat (American Graffiti) plays a rather odd protagonist as he keeps his performance grounded in realism, which are in sharp contrast to the fantastic encounters his character experiences. There is something refreshingly unique about it but detractors found him bland and uninteresting. Nancy Allen, a mainstay of genre films (see Dressed to Kill, Blow Out and RoboCop), plays an ideal foil to Le Mat’s determined professor as a jaded tabloid journalist. Betty is no damsel in distress and helps Charles uncover the alien threat.

Strange Invaders received mixed reviews from what few film critics saw it. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called it, "a tasteful monster movie with a terrible secret: it eats other movies.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, "Hovering unclassifiably between nostalgia and satire, this amiably hip genre movie confirms Laughlin as a deliberately minor but unique stylist. It's up to the viewer to determine just how faux his naïf style is, but either way you choose to take it, Strange Invaders offers a good deal of laid-back fun.” The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, "Strange Invaders is a pastiche, a film-school jumble of aphorisms and winks at the audience that are neither as knowing nor as amusing as they are meant to be."

Strange Invaders gradually builds the mystery, giving us bits and pieces so that we put it together along with Charles and Betty. This includes the reveal that the United States government is in cahoots with the aliens, anticipating The X-Files by several years. Strange Invaders’ commercial failure sadly nixed a third film in Laughlin’s proposed “Strange trilogy.” At the time of Strange Invaders, a third film, a World War II spy thriller with science fiction elements entitled The Adventures of Philip Strange, was planned with Laughlin hoping to cast many of the same actors and crew members from his two previous films. I, for one, would have loved to have seen where the filmmakers were going to take the story next. Strange Invaders does achieve a certain amount of closure and went on to anticipate other ‘50s alien invasion homages/parodies, like Top of the Food Chain (1999) and the more recent Alien Trespass (2009) – both of which fared just about as well commercially as Strange Invaders, which just goes to show that this kind of film only really appeals to a niche market but maybe that’s just as well.

Here's the theatrical trailer;

The Abyss

The more times I see The Abyss (1989), the more I am convinced that it is James Cameron's best film to date. Wedged between megahits, Aliens (1988), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), The Abyss was unfortunately lost in the shuffle. This may also have been due to the flood of leaky underwater films like Leviathan (1989) and Deep Star Six (1989) that were released around the same time. Even though The Abyss came out after these financial and critical failures, it was dismissed by most critics as yet another underwater disaster. Most reviewers were clearly tired of this string of underwater themed films and assumed that Cameron’s motion picture was no better than the rest. However, this is simply not the case with The Abyss, which, like many of Cameron's films, is filled with stunning visuals, a strong ensemble cast, and a solid story that is never sacrificed at the expense of the movie’s special effects.

As the film opens, a United States nuclear submarine is accidentally sunk by a mysterious, unidentified source under 2,000 feet of water off the coast of Cuba. Nearby, a corporate owned underwater oil-drilling rig commandeered by Virgil "Bud" Brigman (Ed Harris) is subsequently ordered to aid a group of Navy SEALs, led by the no-nonsense Lt. Coffey (Michael Biehn), to salvage the downed sub and search for survivors, if any. To make the situation even more interesting is the surprise arrival of Bud's soon-to-be ex-wife, Liz (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who designed the rig and rejoins the crew to ensure that everything goes smoothly. As the mission progresses, a storm rages topside causing many problems for the rig and its crew. Add to this the growing tensions of nearby U.S. and Russian naval fleets and you have a potentially volatile situation. But this is only the beginning of a string of dilemmas that beset Bud and his cohorts who gradually realize that there is something else down there with them, and it may not be human.

The Abyss was a project that James Cameron had dreamed of making ever since he was 17 years old. He wrote a “very, very crude and simple story dealing with the idea of being in the very deep ocean and doing fluid breathing and making a descent to the bottom from a staging submersible laboratory that was on the edge.” His original short story concerned the adventures of a group of scientists in a laboratory at the bottom of the ocean, “which is the sort of sci-fi idea that appeals to all kids, I suppose,” he said. Over the years, Cameron became involved in numerous other projects but he never forgot about this underwater adventure and wrote several drafts that changed radically over time but the original idea that started it all remained intact. When Terminator (1984) and Aliens became bonafide box office hits, Cameron was in a position to make his dream project a reality. He had no idea the problems that he would face trying to realize this dream.

The bulk of The Abyss was shot in and around Gaffney, South Carolina. At first, this seems like a rather unlikely place to shoot an underwater epic, but it turned out to be the best place after their decision to shoot on-location became unrealistic. Cameron had originally planned to try filming in the Bahamas where the story is set, but soon realized that he had to have a totally controlled environment because of the stunts and special FX involved. To this end, Cameron found the Cherokee Nuclear Power Station, an abandoned site that proved to be ideal for what they needed. The film crew ended up shooting all of the underwater sequences (this comprised 40% of all live action principal photography) in two specially constructed concrete containment tanks: one holding 7.5 million gallons of water, and the other holding 2.5 million gallons.

As if this wasn’t enough of a challenge, the actual shoot consisted of a grueling six month, six-day, 70-hour a week schedule that took its toll on cast and crew alike. “I knew this was going to be a hard shoot, but even I had no idea just how hard. I don’t ever want to go through this again,” Cameron remarked at the time. And yet, the sense that what they were making was groundbreaking and worth doing was the glue that kept everything together. The film’s producer, Gale Anne Hurd clearly viewed The Abyss in this fashion. “No one has attempted this before, and we had to solve everything from how to keep the water clear enough to shoot, to how to keep it dark enough to look realistic at 2,000 feet where it’s pitch black.” By all accounts, the cast and crew thrived on this challenge, and as the final results demonstrate, succeeded in producing a truly stunning work.

Cameron’s production company had to design and build experimental equipment and develop a state-of-the-art communications system that allowed the director to talk underwater to the actors and dialogue to be recorded directly onto tape for the first time. For all of the underwater scenes they used three cameras in watertight housings specially designed by underwater cinematographer expert Al Giddings, known for his incredible work on The Deep (1977). Another special housing was designed for scenes that went from above-water dialogue to below-water dialogue. Underwater visibility was a major concern for Cameron as he wanted to see the actors’ faces and hear their dialogue. Western Space and Marine built ten experimental diving units for the film. They engineered helmets which would remain optically clear underwater and installed innovative aircraft quality microphones in each helmet.

In addition, Cameron was also breaking new ground in the area of special visual effects, which were divided up among seven FX divisions with motion control work by Dream Quest Images and computer graphics and opticals by Industrial Light & Magic. ILM was brought on board to create the amazing water pseudopod and spent six months to create 75 seconds of computer graphics needed for the creature. However, this work caused the film’s release to be delayed from July 4, 1989 to August of the same year.

The production difficulties that plagued The Abyss have become the stuff of Hollywood legend. There were reports from South Carolina that Ed Harris was so upset by the physical demands of the film and Cameron’s dictatorial style that he said he would refuse to help promote the picture. The actor later denied it and did press for the film. He did admit that the daily mental and physical strain was very intense. He recalled, “One day we were all in our dressing rooms and people began throwing couches out the windows and smashing the walls. We just had to get our frustrations out.” The actors were not happy about the slow pace of filming. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio remembered, “We never started and finished any one scene in any one day.” Michael Biehn was frustrated by the waiting. He claims that he was in South Carolina for five months and only acted for the three to four weeks. Cameron responded to these complaints by saying, “For every hour they spent trying to figure out what magazine to read, we spent an hour at the bottom of the tank breathing compressed air.”

Like all of Cameron's other films the action plays a secondary role to the central love story — whether it was between Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor in Terminator or Ripley and Newt in Aliens. In The Abyss we are presented with a disintegrating relationship between Bud and Liz. And yet, as the film progresses and we spend more time with these two people, we begin to realize that they still love each other and that this is what adds a real element of humanity to the special effects-laden film. But The Abyss is much more than that. It mixes elements of an exciting thriller, action film, and science fiction story together in one great package. The way the film is structured, we are presented with several small movies that, when linked together, comprise a larger whole. It is this wonderful structure that makes one realize that there is more going on than a search for a missing submarine.

As Cameron demonstrated with Terminator, he has a real eye for action sequences and The Abyss is no different. One scene in particular, demonstrates Cameron's ability to create moments of white knuckle intensity. Several compartments of the underwater rig begin flooding, while crew members try frantically to escape to a safer area. Cameron's hand-held camera follows these men through the claustrophobic hold at such a breakneck pace, via a compelling first person point-of-view angle, that one can't help but get caught up in the feeling of urgency brought on by this dangerous situation. At times, it feels like you are actually bouncing through the tight corridors of the rig alongside the characters and this enhances the thrill and excitement of such adrenaline-fueled sequences.

The Abyss is also similar to Cameron's previous film, Aliens in the sense that both have a top rate ensemble cast. The crew of the rig all have their own distinctive personalities, which are each given their own moment to shine and never detract from the larger story. The interaction between these people has a ring of honesty and authenticity, which suggests that every character is important and crucial to the film’s outcome. But these colorful characters never obscure the three main principles that are also fully-fleshed characters each with his or her own agenda. Ed Harris portrays Bud as a man dedicated to his rig and his people, but he cannot balance his work life with his personal life. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's Liz is, as she later admits, "a cast iron bitch," but underneath the hard, tough exterior there are occasional glimpses of a sensitive dreamer fighting to get out. Cameron regular, Michael Biehn (an underused actor also seen in Terminator and Aliens respectively) personifies intensity as the leader of the Navy SEALs who slowly loses his grip on reality and his priorities, posing a threat to the safety of everyone on the rig. Each of these characters has their own inner conflicts as well as the larger conflict that threatens everyone. One of the pleasures of watching The Abyss is seeing how these personal conflicts play out and resolve themselves by the end of the film.

The Abyss deviates from Cameron's other features in the sense that it stresses the idea of settling disputes through non-violent means. Violence in the film is not the solution to the problem, but the source. This idea is illustrated through Lt. Coffey, the main instigator of violence in the film. His violent acts create the many problems that the protagonists face and this ultimately results in his demise. On the other hand, Liz personifies the peaceful alternative. Where the selfish Coffey sees anger and hatred, Liz is willing to sacrifice herself for others. She is the calming effect on everyone and her presence on the rig is pivotal in resolving many of the story’s conflicts. It's a refreshing view that you don't often see in films nowadays where everything is solved at the end of a gun. Unfortunately, this viewpoint seems to have disappeared from Cameron’s subsequent work, which has since regressed to the usual violent antics. Whether it was because of the film’s failure to connect and succeed on a mass level or the departure of long time partner, Gale Anne Hurd, is unknown, but with a film like True Lies (1994), Cameron seems to have abandoned a strong, independently minded female character for one that is objectified by the camera and on the receiving end of a lot of misogynistic behavior. It’s too bad because The Abyss contains none of this and instead points the way for a new kind of action-oriented film that stresses problem solving over violence, while still providing the requisite amount of thrills. This is a much-needed antidote to the mindless violence and anger that is problematic in so many films today.

The Abyss was ultimately sunk by poor timing. Being released after two horrible underwater films was not a wise move. Critics and audiences were just not receptive to yet another underwater film, especially one that clocked in at over two hours. Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote, “The payoff to The Abyss is pretty damn silly – a portentous deux ex machina that leaves too many questions unanswered and evokes too many other films.” In her review for the New York Times, Caryn James claimed that the film had “at least four endings,” and “by the time the last ending of this two-and-a-quarter-hour film comes along, the effect is like getting off a demon roller coaster that has kept racing several laps after you were ready to get off.” The Globe and Mail’s Chris Dafoe wrote, “At best, The Abyss offers a harrowing, thrilling journey through inky waters and high tension. In the end, however, this torpedo turns out to be a dud – it swerves at the last minute, missing its target and exploding ineffectually in a flash of fantasy and fairy-tale schtick.” However, the USA Today gave the film three out four stars and wrote, “Most of this underwater blockbuster is “good,” at least two action set pieces are great. But the dopey wrap-up sinks the rest 20,000 leagues.”

The Abyss is a truly special film that never lags in pace or interest thanks to the many stunning visuals courtesy of breathtaking computer animation from Industrial Lights and Magic (effects that were the precursor to ones used in Terminator 2). There are also fascinating characters and exciting, often intense situations that keeps the viewer involved in the story. The Abyss is one of those rare films that you wish wouldn't end because the world and the characters that inhabit it are so compelling and exciting. This film demonstrates, yet again, that James Cameron is one the few directors who can make good science fiction films, with a strong story, a solid cast, and exceptional images that help elevate it above the usual Hollywood dreck and straight-to-video sci-fi clunkers. And that is truly something special at a time of militaristic, flag-waving propaganda like Independence Day (1996) which purports to be entertainment, but is just another mindless special effects workout.