STRANGE INVADERS contains a good music score from John Addison. The only thing wrong with it is that it’s in a pathetically bad movie. An homage to 1950’s sci-fi pix (chiefly Invasion Of The Body Snatchers), it sets up an okay premise, cast likable actors and manages a handful of moments that decently mix creepiness with satire, but they’re lost in space thanks to a wobbly tone, half-hearted acting, inept direction and a script that didn’t mature beyond the concept stage. Plus the makeup is yucky. Made for $5,500,000, released in 1983, it grossed $1,400,000, expiring at 128th place for the year. *

Centreville, Illinois, 1958. The bucolic ‘average’ Eisenhower’y town is taken over by aliens, the inhabitants absorbed and impersonated by the extraterrestrials. Skipping 25 years, etymology professor ‘Charles Bigelow’ (Paul Le Mat) travels to the burg, searching for his ex-wife, who went there for a funeral. He doesn’t find her, but ‘they’ find him, and pursue him to New York City. With government agent ‘Mrs. Benjamin’ (Louise Fletcher) dismissing his sightings, he manages to enlist support from tabloid writer ‘Betty Walker’ (Nancy Allen), and they locate the one man who escaped back in ’58, Willie Collins’ (Michael Lerner), residing in a psychiatric hospital. Then the aliens capture Bigelow’s little girl. Time to grab a gun and see if these fake-folk from space bleed red blood or green juice.

Blame for the direction rests with Michael Laughlin (producer of the excellent The Whisperers and cult item Two-Lane Blacktop), who, with William Condon, bears co-writing guilt for the terrible script. Two years earlier they’d teamed for Strange Behavior, a $1,000,000 indie shot in New Zealand that drew praise from critics. With five times the budget, a good premise and some decent actors, Strange Invaders was meant to be the second in a ‘Strange’ trilogy, but it bombed out and snuffed the plan. Laughlin later wrote & directed Mesmerized, a dud with Jodie Foster, then co-wrote Town And Country, a mega-flop. He was married to Leslie Caron for seven years, so we’ll give him credit for that, at least. With nowhere to go but up, Condon went on to write & direct Gods And Monsters, Kinsey and Dreamgirls.

Initial interest dissipates. How do you get wan performances from genial Le Mat and spicy Allen? Fletcher, Lerner and Diana Scarwid (as Bigelow’s wife) are so limp they may as well be doing a tired rehearsal. Two inserts of adroit weirdness are provided by Fiona Lewis and 50’s sci-fi veteran Kenneth Tobey as the chief aliens. So-so effects (the glowing orbs) aren’t cool enough to deflect needlessly icky makeup gunk when the space creatures peel off their human replica skin. Addison’s score works hard to make the slipshod continuity hold together from one scene to the next. The editing is terrible, conversations and transition scenes start, stagger and stop arbitrarily, the dialogue is pitiful, actions and behaviors don’t hew to the most basic plot logic. Sloppiness kills it.

As well as Tobey, bits from other genre figures are tossed in for nostalgia’s sake: June Lockhart and Mark Goddard (both from TV’s Lost In Space–she has hardly anything to do) and Bobby Pickett (21 years after his 1962 novelty hit “Monster Mash”). Also in the cast are Wallace Shawn (just bad), Charles Lane (78 and still feisty) and Lulu Sylber (the kid, charmless). 94 minutes.

* Sci-fi /horror/fantasy ugliness in ’83—Xtro, Videodrome, The Entity, Liquid Sky, Space Hunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone, Psycho II, Superman III, Jaws 3-D, Krull, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, Yor, the Hunter From The Future, Fire And Ice, Pieces, The Keep, The Being.