Wednesday, March 24, 2010

HIGH PLAINS INVADERS (a review)

Did you watch those old, cheesy sci-fi movies on Saturday afternoon? Usually from the 50's or 60's with cheap special effects, lousy scripts and bad acting? And did you secretly love them more than all those boring character driven, depressing as heck, Oscar movies? Well, HIGH PLAINS INVADERS is like a modern version of those fun, cheesy sci-fi movies.

The idea is simple: aliens invade the old west and now a group of people have to fight them off. (If this sounds familiar, Jon Favreau, the director of IRON MAN, has a big budget project lined up called COWBOYS AND ALIENS.) The story centers on a train robber, Danville (played by James Marsters, aka Spike from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER tv show), who is about to be hanged when weird space aliens invade the small town and begin killing people. Danville with a handful of people (the girl he jilted, a female bounty hunter, science guy, etc) first run for their lives, then realizing that the creatures could take over the world decide to try to blow up them and their ship.

The film is okay. The aliens are weird and different (very non-humanoid, weird insect-like burrowing things). The movie doesn't have the humor of the vastly superior TREMORS and it's a bit by the numbers, but in an okay way. This isn't a great movie (and is barely good really), but if you miss those cheesy sci-fi movies or if you need a fun creature movie the whole family can watch, this movie can work.

SLIGHT RECOMMEND

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