Warning: In case of aliens, do not fly or operate outdated machinery

Continuing with our themed entries: apparently aliens love talking with folks via now-quaint technologies (short-wave radio and old-fashioned wood-paneled television sets, respectively), and really really love to mess with prop planes (what better way to showcase their destructive power over us?) Without further ado, we bring you one unjustly under-rated gem, and one deservedly panned bomb.

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They

Objective Grade: D+
Taking into account camp value: B-

AKA Invasion From Inner Earth (missing an entire reel of footage, apparently)
AKA Hell Fire (missing several scenes, including the entire ending)
AKA The Selected (the "director's cut," whatever that means)

1.6 stars, IMDB? This one deserves far, far more credit than that. Maybe it's just our soft spot for deep woods shenanigans, but this one had all the things (or some of them, anyway) that make you want to get together with a big bowl of popcorn and some good-humored friends.

An opening credits sequence set to a synth rip-off of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly could be good news, or it could be bad news; when it's accompanied by folks screaming and running away from plumes of red smoke billowing from the sewers, we quote Martha and say it's a good thing. The music is completely off-the-wall throughout, unexpectedly cutting from one "song" to the next and set at a high enough level to be slightly obtrusive at best, crazy overbearing at worst (though not nearly as annoying as furry-hatted rich grad student, the unfortunate pilot of the plane taken down by mysterious alien forces. . . good riddance).

The thing that many other reviewers seem to miss (and what makes this one worth watching, in our opinion) is the humorous thread woven unexpectedly throughout the plot. Every now and then we found ourselves turning to each other with amused and slightly perplexed looks, as if to say, "did we just see that?" Case in point: our bearded friend Stan (already the go-to comic relief guy) gets entirely slapstick while out hunting, falling head-over-heels into a snowdrift while accompanied by a goofy wah-wah sound effect; he gets up, blows snow off the end of his rifle barrel [possibly a pantomimed suicide joke? - P.], and moves on. Brilliant! (Also, watch out for wacky radio announcers, faux news interview shows, and even more crowds running away from red sewer gas, sprinkled randomly [and seemingly arbitrarily] throughout.) Truly a case of being just bad enough to be good.

Finally, there's the ending. . . and we're just going to leave that one alone. As another reviewer noted, the best thing is to see it cold--it's just that bizarre.

To all those other reviewers who claim this one is pointless, talky, and unwatchable: take a look at UFO: Target Earth and get back to us.

(Oh, and if anyone out there is into road trips, P. and I might just head out to Wisconsin to see slapstick Stan, aka Paul Bentzen, in the American Players Theatre. . . I mean, after all, why not?)

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UFO: Target Earth

Grade: D-

Now HERE we have pointless, talky, and (nearly) unwatchable. A college student accidentally listens in on a couple of government types talking about mysterious spacey stuff, so he grabs all the electronic equipment he can fit in his truck and goes to a nearby lake to investigate. Along the way he gets help (and long expositions) from a number of colorful characters: there's Dr. Whitham, who looks something like Roy Orbison with snow-white hair; Dr. Mansfield, an aging female scientist who reminds me a bit of Kate Reid in The Andromeda Strain; Rivers the assistant, who happened to play Ranger Tom in Grizzly (which we only discovered after almost skipping his bio -- that'll teach us not to ignore minor characters!); and then Vivian the crazy empath. Ah, Vivian, who looks so cute in some scenes, but then has to go and style her hair all weirdly, and ruin a perfectly good outfit with hideous seafoam green wideleg pants.

This could have been one of those "good" bad films. After all, it starts out with a series of mockumentary-style interviews with abductees and ufo spotters (plus the requisite plane crash footage), along with a wacky narrator voice-over à la Plan 9. Unfortunately, like so many others in this box, there's just far too much telling, and not enough showing. Well, except for what the aliens show us at the end: a solid 3 minutes of psychedelic screen-saver action set to an equally psychedelic synth soundtrack as a trippy philosophical/psychological send-off for our protagonist. P. was kinda into it; K. says thanks, but no.

(By the way, this one was filmed in Georgia. We dipped down into the state for a few miles on our way to Alabama, but we're not too keen on going back--not enough B-movie actors doing outdoor Shakespearean theater for our tastes.)

Wanna go tree

Our themes this time out include shotguns, sausages, and spears:

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All The Kind Strangers

Grade: C-

Creepy kids corral Good Samaritan photographer into becoming their "new foster father" (though none of them are named Ndugu) in this made-for-TV flick. Sustains its ominous atmosphere for a good while, but ultimately deflated by pointless musical sequences and an artificially tidy ending. Stacy Keach, gamely clad in a Hawaiian shirt, leads a serviceable if unremarkable cast, most of whom seem to have disappeared from the acting world shortly after this film.

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The Disappearance of Flight 412

Grade: D

Another TV movie, this one about Air Force flyers who have a mysterious brush with a UFO, and catch hell for it. Reasonably well-acted and well-paced, could've been pretty good, but it's missing two crucial things: first, the UFOs, which never appear onscreen; and second, a point to the story, which ultimately fails to offer any kind of satisfying resolution or sense of purpose. Also hampered by heavy-handed A-Team style narration at the beginning, which suggests "action flick" (which this isn't) rather than "psychological drama" (which this sort of is). Note that, with the exception of a brief scene with the colonel and his wife, this one's strictly a sausagefest.

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The Wild Women of Wongo

Grade: F
Camp Factor Bonus: D+

Though this goofy prehistoric rendition of the Ladder Theory picks up a bit in the second half, it's ultimately doomed by, among other things, the acute absence of both T and A. (Which weren't an option in 1958, really, but them's the breaks.) Mostly draggy and dull, without enough camp value to quite redeem it, and a few too many cringeworthy and annoying sequences (like that execrable parrot).

Still, the dance, the girlfight, and that winking at the end. So what's it like to be cast as "the ugly chick" in a movie, anyway? (Paging Heather Matarazzo.)

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On the non-Mill Creek (and creepy children) front, we also watched:

Who Can Kill A Child?

Grade: C

Stylish but disappointing, this provocative movie is sabotaged by incomprehensible behavior on the part of the two leads, who ignore the all-important "why aren't you getting the fuck out of there?" clause at every turn, leading to much swearing at the screen and gnashing of teeth. Maybe it's allegorical, but it doesn't play its cards quite right if so.

Also loses major points for opening with almost ten minutes of actual footage of atrocities committed against children (Holocaust, Biafra, etc.), which really seems exploitative and tasteless in this context.

Still, it's got balls, and the movie's key scene -- the antepenultimate one or so, by P.'s count -- is appropriately unsettling, especially the expression on the kid's face...