Top 5 Things From Space (That Came To Destroy Us) | Archive

00:00:21
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00:00:42
Speaker 2: Hey, film spotters, it's archive drop time. With our review of Project hail Mary coming this Friday, we thought we would share our twenty fourteen top five things from Space that came to destroy us. Obviously, the space connection makes sense now, not a spoiler. I think everybody knows going into Project hail Mary, or maybe they've seen it already, Josh, that there's a benevolent alien. Yes, in that film. We were tying our top five into Under the Skin, a little bit of a different scenario in that one.

00:01:16
Speaker 3: Under the Skin and I have a note here from Sam. Did we really give Under this Skin seven minutes?

00:01:23
Speaker 4: How is possible?

00:01:25
Speaker 3: I mean, that's just insulting to an incredible movie for one thing. But I guess I guess that's what happened. We also reviewed our main review on that show. Jim Jarmush is the only lovers left alive. Maybe we went long on that.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I thought it, but you know I thought I interviewed Glazer two for that movie, so maybe that's why it only that.

00:01:45
Speaker 3: Would explain it, That would explain it, and then we just touched on it afterwards. Yeah, a really a really great movie that inspired a very fun top five. I think we covered I'm not going to give anything away, but just looking at our lists, I think we covered varied ground here, from sci fi classics to B movies to Superhero.

00:02:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, Superhero, So it's a good mix.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: We offered on this list Top five things from space that came to destroy us. That's from April twenty fourteen.

00:02:19
Speaker 5: Youth criminals have been causing a further act of seditious treason. General Zod, your only feeling was to contempt for our society.

00:02:30
Speaker 4: Your only desire was to command Ursa.

00:02:34
Speaker 5: The only feeling you showed was from the vicious.

00:02:36
Speaker 2: General Terrence stamp Zod and his cronies. They're banished to the phantom zone in that scene from nineteen seventy eight, Superman, Zod, Ursa and Non all contenders for our top five. This week, though, Let's be honest. If you're gonna pick one of those three as a contender for our top five, it's got to be Non Non sure, I mean, the unsung hero of that TRIUMVIHR, and.

00:02:57
Speaker 1: I think really I'd go with Ursa.

00:03:00
Speaker 3: I mean, finally, you know, maybe there are earlier examples, but it was just so thrilling to see a female like badass villain, right.

00:03:07
Speaker 4: I don't know how.

00:03:08
Speaker 1: Often we got that.

00:03:09
Speaker 4: No, no, good point.

00:03:10
Speaker 3: Although I don't think any of them would like you calling them cronies. Good point, so careful.

00:03:14
Speaker 4: They would not. But that is our top five this week.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: Things from Space that came to destroy us In Josh, we both like to use these as a chance to catch up with some movies we've overlooked in the past. You are just a little more diligent about it than I am most of the time. Was that the case this week?

00:03:29
Speaker 3: It was, I mean, give me an excuse to go check out some nineteen fifties sci fi I'd never seen. Yeah, I'm gonna try to make time for that. So three of these picks, no, actually I did see three things, only two made my list. One I was a little disappointed in so maybe we'll get to that. My number five, though, is one I had not only seen, but I saw a long, long time ago.

00:03:50
Speaker 4: It's The War of the Worlds.

00:03:51
Speaker 3: I'm going to give my nineteen fifties American sci fi slot to the nineteen fifty three adaptation of the HG. Wells novel, though I do like Steven Spielberg's recent remake. I first encountered this on wgntv's Sunday afternoon movie series when I was a kid, called Family Classics, because you know what's better family fun than watching the Earth be destroyed by martians. I don't know quite how bad fit the programming, but since that time, there's really only been one sound that signifies an oncoming alien invasion for me, and it's that piercing laser of noise that feels like it's burrowing into your brain.

00:04:31
Speaker 4: The noise does seem.

00:04:32
Speaker 3: To come from the alien spacecrafts in the film, and they're probably the slickest special effects in the War of the Worlds. They're curved wings, they're something like metallic bats. Just was really fascinated by those as a kid, and I think they still.

00:04:46
Speaker 4: Hold up pretty well.

00:04:52
Speaker 1: The aliens themselves not so much.

00:04:54
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've seen this or remember these, but they're really not that impressive. When we do finally get to see them face to face, there's something like an obese et. But then for some reason, right in the middle they have this disco ball where their face should be, so I don't know what the thinking was there. They don't quite work as well, but still this is at least where things started for me in terms of alien invasion movies, with the War of the World, So that's where I want them to start my list.

00:05:21
Speaker 5: Who where'd you think they come from?

00:05:24
Speaker 4: How would I know?

00:05:25
Speaker 5: In some place Mars is near? There is right now? Happened to aging twenty years you say from mah.

00:05:33
Speaker 2: Sadly, I have not seen the original War of the World. I've only seen the Spielberg version, and I'm not as much of a fan of it as you are. So didn't come close to making my list here. And I think the one movie maybe we do need to acknowledge upfront. Did you consider one of our former Sacred Cows two thousand and one is the monolith and object that was sent to destroy us?

00:05:52
Speaker 3: Boy, well, that's kind of what we've spent a lot of time it was seen about. I think I fell more along the lines of that's what it ends up doing.

00:06:03
Speaker 2: That was the intent, maybe facilitating our destruction, own our own destruction at any rate, before we get too far derailed.

00:06:10
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one talk, I did not consider it.

00:06:12
Speaker 2: Okay, well I did, but ultimately decided I couldn't get a grasp on it, so I ruled it out. Plus, it should be in our pantheon, and maybe it's sent point it will be my number five. Well, you already heard it. We played it coming into this segment, General Zod, I'm not going with non or Ursa sorry from Superman two, of course, not Superman one. But I love that we played that scene because that's our introduction to them, and it happens at the beginning of the first Superman.

00:06:40
Speaker 4: We never see them again.

00:06:42
Speaker 2: And you almost don't understand why this franchise, which you don't know is a franchise at the time, But why is it spending time giving us this courtroom scene and banishing these three characters who aren' gonna have.

00:06:52
Speaker 4: Any role in the movie whatsoever.

00:06:54
Speaker 2: Well, of course we come to see that they are major players in Superman two, but I always loved that opening scene with them and that guilty when I was a kid, those faces behind the black and just their big heads, them saying guilty that way.

00:07:07
Speaker 4: That used to kind of scare me.

00:07:09
Speaker 2: Actually, So there was some excitement there with the beginning of Superman one, but it is in Superman two where due to an accident, just a random bit of coincidence, where of course Superman throws that nuclear missile out into space and it happens to hit the.

00:07:23
Speaker 4: Mirror, the phantom mirror bigger.

00:07:26
Speaker 2: I know you would think so, right, but it does free them. And there's a lot I could say about Terrence Stamp's performance and why I think it's so amazingly fun. And it gets back to our discussion of only Lovers Left Alive in the first segment right where you've got this British thespian who can handle the theatricality of Zod and really pull it off without it being campy. But the funniest scene, the best scene, is the one with the President where he makes the President kneel before him and they have this dialogue scene and whatever, and the President finally reluctantly kneels down.

00:07:58
Speaker 4: And it's so great.

00:07:59
Speaker 2: He goes, Oh God as he kneels down the president like he's so dismayed and shame. He says, oh God, and Stamp says, Zod. Yeah, And it's just perfect. And it sums up that character and his sense of arrogance and omnipotence so well.

00:08:16
Speaker 4: And I read this and doing some research for this list.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: Where I was curious what Terence Stamp looks back on this movie, how he looks back on it, whether or not he has high regard for it, And he does because it was for him a return to kind of mainstream culture, returned to acting.

00:08:31
Speaker 4: He'd been out of it for a while.

00:08:32
Speaker 2: He wasn't really getting any good parts anymore, and he had actually taken this long hiatus and gone to India. And when asked about it recently in an interview when Man of Steel was coming out, and of course Michael Shannon reprises the role as Zod, this is what Darren Stamp had to say about maybe the secret behind his performance. In discussing Shannon, he said, all I can say is he needs to be very present. When I walked onto that set, I'd been in an ashram for a year, learning to separate orgasm from ejaculation. I was rechanneling the life force and I hadn't been working, and when I walked on the set, it seemed like everyone was asleep, but I was so so ready.

00:09:10
Speaker 1: Boy, you know, and I always I could feel that in his performance.

00:09:13
Speaker 4: That's how good of an actor he is.

00:09:15
Speaker 2: He channeled that life force into Zod and that's why he's not only one of our great movie villains, but he is my number five thing for space. It didn't come so much to destroy us, but to subjugate us.

00:09:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.

00:09:26
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have to think Stamp at least regrets those black, lamey outfits.

00:09:30
Speaker 4: I don't know if they don't hold.

00:09:31
Speaker 3: Up quite as well. But it is a great performance. The fun is what makes it work. You're absolutely right, all right. For my number four, it's time for me to play M Knight Chayamalan apologist yet again. Though I always like to note my loyalty only goes so.

00:09:44
Speaker 1: Far as Lady in the Water. I know for a lot of people that's still too far.

00:09:46
Speaker 4: It is too far, but it does.

00:09:48
Speaker 2: I'm actually gonna just start referring to as my co host M Night Shyamalan apologist.

00:09:52
Speaker 3: No, I don't think that would go well Signs, though I think it's his best film, I will apologize for that. Though it has plenty of fans, I think we're still not bored for this one. It's really an internal character study in a lot of ways, but it nevertheless delivers on the thrills he was still capable of doing that. It's a genre reworking of something like The War of the World's It's a perspective of an event that takes place in the War of the World, but here you're not spanning the globe. It's almost claustrophobically realized, because you're asking what would an alien invasion, a worldwide alien invasion, look like from the point of view of one family in one remote farmhouse. Mel Gibson gives a strong performance here as this misfit father and widower. He's a former priest and he's closed himself and his kids off from the rest of the world on this farm. Joaquin Phoenix, I think is pretty funny as Gibson's younger brother, this one time minor league baseball star. Now the aliens themselves are largely in the background.

00:10:47
Speaker 4: As proposed to all until the end, Well, no, we see them.

00:10:50
Speaker 3: I revisited this scene and a lot of people complained about the aliens.

00:10:54
Speaker 4: When this movie.

00:10:56
Speaker 3: No, it's when Joaquin Phoenix is watching news report on television at a birthday party, a little kid's birthday party, and they're all looking out the window. It's a home movie camera, wondering what's out there, what's out there? And you just get this one climpse and it's pretty much it's like a green humanoid figure. It's nothing much in terms of special effects. But what I love, and this is what is the puzzle about Shyamalan, like where this went, is how he plays that scene because it's a parody of a lot of moments, but it still works as one too. It's really funny. And that's where we first get to see these aliens. But then they do show up more directly in the climax. And this is another great thing about science is it shifts genres all of a sudden, because now it becomes in essence a zombie film. We've got Gibson and his family hold up in this farmhouse under attack, just like the protagonists were in Night of the Living Dead. So I do have another movie coming up on my list that mixes sci fi and horror a little bit less elegantly, but I'll save that for now. Signs is my number four.

00:11:52
Speaker 4: Okay.

00:11:53
Speaker 2: Like I said, I was a fan of Signs when it came out. I've still only seen it once. But in terms of feeling like a director was in complete control of his audience and yeah, pulling all the right strings, that's what I thought about Shyamalan there. Unfortunately I haven't felt that again with him. I don't think many moviegoers have. I realized that my list here is dominated by eighties movies. As a child of the eighties, maybe not a big surprise. And my number four is the Predator. All Predator.

00:12:18
Speaker 4: Who's that backup? No such things, old buddy, this is a one way ticket. Once we've crossed that boarder, we're on our own.

00:12:28
Speaker 1: He's just get a minute Predator.

00:12:31
Speaker 4: I did.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: I totally had to go Predator, and I actually really relish the fact that I get to talk about Predator here a little bit.

00:12:37
Speaker 4: And what's funny is, of course, as I was.

00:12:39
Speaker 2: Forming my list and thinking, yeah, the Predator is definitely making it, I wondered, is it possible that somebody out there has some grand take on this movie, this film that I always just thought was this dumb action movie from the eighties, albeit one I really liked.

00:12:54
Speaker 4: Is it somehow deeper than that thick around knock knock?

00:13:03
Speaker 2: Is it some kind of allegory for something else? So I started googling to see what I could come up with.

00:13:07
Speaker 4: The answer is no, before you started google.

00:13:09
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see, Josh, we'll see, because I did find this take from Jake Cole. You may be familiar with him as well. I think you may follow him on letterbox. That's the only place I know him from. He's a freelance critic and he on letterbox, and this is his letterbox review of Predator starts as a critique of Reagan era CIA operations with slaughters in Latin American jungles designed to protect certain interests, interests, by the way, that have nothing to do with those doing the fighting, who must be lied to to even get them to sign up. But then it moves far deeper as his political commentary is extrapolated into a moral and biological abstract. McTiernan that's director John McTiernan routinely redefines who is the technologically superior force, and who is outgunned, who is invisible, and who is a sitting duck, and who is fighting for survival and who is simply displaying primal savagery. The predator could be the spirit of the massacred guerrillas, becoming the jungle itself as a picks off imperial invaders, but it is also of course an invader itself, killing for the sport of it. By moving well beyond in a neat thematic notion, McTiernan could easily have lost track of the film, but the editing and shot construction make clear visually what almost sounds like a head trip on paper. What starts as a potential commentary and eighties American politics slowly undermines the generic themes that celebrated that foreign policy through blockbusters valiant effort.

00:14:22
Speaker 4: You're bleeding man, I ain't got time to believe you pullshite all of it. The cabinet minister of the whole business to get somebody and who could cut these vessels. So he cooked up a story and dropped the six of us enemy Brinda, what happened to you do?

00:14:41
Speaker 2: Here?

00:14:41
Speaker 4: Used to be somebody that.

00:14:42
Speaker 2: Could trust And I don't think he's kidding.

00:14:45
Speaker 4: I don't think he's being ironic. No, no, I don't think he is either.

00:14:48
Speaker 3: And we've acknowledged McTiernan with Diehards show Lily into Yes, spoof macho tendencies.

00:14:53
Speaker 4: But are we buying any of that?

00:14:56
Speaker 1: You know too much? I was dazzled by the beef cakery. I couldn't pick up on any of that right going on?

00:15:03
Speaker 2: Just his body, I mean Carl Weather's yeah, you know, and surely everyone listening is seen Predator stuck in the jungle. This this predator, this alien being. They have to figure out what it is is hunting them down. That's the plot.

00:15:14
Speaker 3: I will say that it's an awesome alien. I mean, as a kid, I was wowed by the alien.

00:15:21
Speaker 1: I have seen it recently. Terrible film, but awesome aliens.

00:15:25
Speaker 2: Okay, so I hadn't seen the list, but that's what I wanted to say. I always thought that of the movies I loved when I was twelve years old, I thought Predator is one that would actually possibly hold up, or at least hold up better than some others, because of its simplicity of its story, it's simplicity of purpose, the clarity of its characters. What everyone's after And I'm sure there are some laffable lines and some laffable line deliveries, but I think they're all of a piece, and I do like the alien. That's why Predator made this list because of that mystery that drives the film.

00:15:54
Speaker 4: What is this thing?

00:15:55
Speaker 2: And the way you see it blending into the jungle, so you don't ever really get a beat on what it is and the mystery of its motivations. Okay, it's clearly here to kill them, but why we don't really understand it until you know a good way portion through the movie. It's also Josh distinct from the other aliens on my list and probably yours, and that it really isn't here to destroy us. It's not here to destroy humanity. It doesn't have any grand designs on destruction or enslavement or using peace people for food or whatever.

00:16:22
Speaker 4: It turns out. It's just here for sport.

00:16:24
Speaker 2: It probably travels all around the universe going to whatever places it can find, or at least all over this planet looking for different things to hunt down and kill, and it really doesn't have anything bigger than that that it's trying to accomplish. Is there any kind of commentary in the fact that this creature travels to this foreign country to find this elite American fighting force in order to have a good time, and the force itself seems to be somewhat out for the sport of it themselves. Maybe I don't know that I'm going to go there, but the fact is John McTiernan had that run in the eighties of Predator, Diehard, of The Hunt for Red October three really good action films from the eighties, at least that's how I remember them.

00:17:03
Speaker 4: I have not caught up with Predator in a long time.

00:17:10
Speaker 3: I know I shouldn't say this, but I'm recommending Predators from twenty.

00:17:14
Speaker 4: Ten, which really which is no.

00:17:17
Speaker 3: Yes, it's film no Adrian Brody, directed by I'm rod antal. I mean, come on, it is a better film. Though it is a better film, all right now. I'm going to pay for that, I know it. My number three, this is one that I was able to catch up with for the first time. I had actually never seen one of the supposed worst movies of all time, and all I can say is that it lives up to its reputation. It's Plan nine from outer Space, and it's not just that this is good bad. I mean, we have plenty of those, especially in the sci fi genre. But it's more that director Edward de Wood Junior. He brings a confidence to this material you could just feel coming off the screen, and it can only be attributed to extreme self delusion. So we have the epitome of camp here. I mean, mind you, this came out in nineteen fifty nine, so we're six years right after the War of the Worlds, which has not the creatures, but those spacecraft are pretty impressive effects. Yet Wood here it includes countless insert shots of his flying frying pans, as if they're equal to that or better or an improvement, and there's just.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: No way that they are.

00:18:20
Speaker 3: It also has stabs at poetic dialogue and voiceover narration that's spoken with the utmost sincerity. One of my favorite lines is it was the sundown of the day, but also the sundown of the old man's heart. That old man, by the way.

00:18:33
Speaker 1: Is a very very sad double legosy.

00:18:35
Speaker 3: Overall, this has a misplaced pride that's so pure and joyous.

00:18:39
Speaker 4: I think this is.

00:18:40
Speaker 3: Why Tim Burton wanted to make the movie with Johnny Depp Edwood, because that's What it captures is that love of making a movie, no matter what the movie is, you can really feel that when.

00:18:50
Speaker 1: You're watching Plan nine from Outer Space.

00:18:52
Speaker 3: Now, as for the aliens, I don't think I can do any better than describing them the way the movie does, which as grave robbers from space. For reasons that are never quite clear, these aliens are reanimating the bodies of the recently dead. So this is where the mixture of sci fi and horror that I mentioned earlier comes in. Now, to be fair, there's sort of an eerie visual poetry to the performances by Tor Johnson and Vampira as two of the zombies. Johnson's resurrection scene is it's pretty iconic that's worth checking out alone.

00:19:22
Speaker 4: But the actual.

00:19:23
Speaker 3: Aliens, they look like normal people and they're played by Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee with this odd sort of calmness. It's like they're hosting a PBS pledge or something, not trying to take over the world. Their leader, however, is played by the oddly theatrical John Breckenridge. And another great detail is that for some reason he sports a medieval tunic and it even has an emblem of an axe. On it, even though he's like from some futuristic planets. So I could go on and on about the awful delights of a plan nine from outer space, but I'll save that for people to discover. It really is one of those terrible movies that's worth a watch.

00:19:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, I need to see it still, I've only seen it as it's being shot in the Tim Burton movie ed Wood. You're listening to Film Spotting.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: We're sharing our top five things from space that came to destroy us, inspired by the new film starring Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin. For my number three, I'm definitely picking the movie here versus the Alien, because this is an alien we never see and it's the deadly micro organism from and Drama to Strain, the nineteen seventy one Robert Wise directed film from the Michael Crichton novel, and basically it's the story of a small New Mexico town. A satellite crashes there and all the inhabitants mysteriously die. So the government sends in this scientific team to try to figure out what's going on. And I went back and looked at my notes for this movie, Josh, because this was one of the early films in a seventy sci fi marathon we did here on film spotting four or five years ago, I think. And the things that stood out for me about this movie is that the whole film really is about the science. It's showing us every single step of this process trying to figure out what this strain is. Almost as if the filmmaker was out to make a case for the embrace of science, because that is all it's really interested in this kind of technology and coming up with these solutions.

00:21:14
Speaker 4: And so many of the movies that have followed.

00:21:16
Speaker 2: And probably even preceded it, where they're these virus movies, right, and there's a lot of action because they're trying to keep the zombies at bay or whatever they're trying to do, while the scientists are off in a room somewhere working on a cure.

00:21:28
Speaker 4: Here it's all the cure.

00:21:30
Speaker 2: That's the whole movie, is just them being locked away.

00:21:33
Speaker 5: Well, you don't turn off the oxygen, put them on a room, man, No, there, stick with Andramata, experiment with your own eye.

00:21:39
Speaker 4: Dammit, Andromeda will spread everyone. We'll never be ready with it.

00:21:45
Speaker 3: There are now five minutes self destruct.

00:21:49
Speaker 2: It's the science part and I think that is pretty interesting. You also get into the paranoia and fear of the government stuff that inhabits so many of these types of alien invasion movies. The fact that the scientists all pretty much operate under the idea that the military probably created the strain themselves and is just trying to harness it as a weapon. Another, as I said, very common thing, not only for these movies, but especially seventies sci fi movies. So I like The Andromeda Strain. I think for a lot of people, it's probably a pretty slow film and they kind of want a little more of that action and crackle. But I like the fact that it respects that it's really about science.

00:22:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember it being slow, It's been a long time since I've seen it. But yet that paranoia really does seep in despite the focus on the science and the procedure and that sort of thing. All right, my number two how deep does my Tim Burton love go at them?

00:22:37
Speaker 4: Wow? Yes?

00:22:38
Speaker 3: Yes, deep enough that my number two is Mars Attacks. I think I may be the only person who does like this movie. But one reason Tim Burton doesn't even like Mars Attacks.

00:22:47
Speaker 4: I'm sure that's no. I think he does.

00:22:49
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the reasons why the performance is not all of them, but the majority of them are pretty bad and out of control, because I think he was having such a blast with the aliens, so I'm focusing on the aliens, though I like this movie overall. For this pick, it is his spoof of the War of the World's Plann nine from outer space and their ilk and the Aliens are these computer generated creatures who they're little green men, but they seem to be more modeled on the Gremlins more than anything else. They're mischievous, they toy with humans. There's just that great throwaway shot where they're flying Saw is trying to tilt the Washington Monument after the boy Scout troop to make sure it lands on him. There's also the scene, you know, the classic we come in p scene, except here a hippie unwisely let's loose a dove.

00:23:32
Speaker 1: That doesn't last very long.

00:23:34
Speaker 3: Burton and his animators they gave these aliens a really great aesthetic too, that's drawn largely from the trading cards that inspired the movie.

00:23:42
Speaker 4: I love the touch that.

00:23:43
Speaker 3: The aliens are wearing these these kind of glass helmets like they're in a cheesy ninety fifties TV show with astronauts or something, And of course the sound of their guns is a nice audio nod to those lasers from the War of the World. So the humor is very broad here, yes, and many of the performances are pretty bad. I like Jack Nicholson's President. I'm not so wild about the real estate developer he plays in the dual role. But I just think Burton was having such a good time with those aliens that he wasn't even paying attention to what else was going on.

00:24:12
Speaker 1: Pays off for me.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: Well, we go from your number two pick a movie nobody likes but you to my number two pick a movie everybody likes but you. No, No, I've got three words, Norris Spiderhead. It is the Thing from John Carpenter's The Thing. Yes, another eighties movie. And what I like about this movie mainly, Josh, even though I know your take on it is you see it as just a lot of splatter and a lot of gore for the sake of gore, and special effects for the sake of special effects.

00:24:41
Speaker 4: But I like the fact.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: What has always appealed to be about the film is the fact that it uses this crazy parasitic life form that seems to be able to assimilate any organism it comes into contact with, and it uses that to explore power and group dynamics.

00:24:57
Speaker 4: That really is what the film is about.

00:24:58
Speaker 2: So the enemy isn't so much the thing which we see in a lot of monster movies. The enemy really becomes the other people in the room, the other people at this station. And of course it does feature one of those great Growley eighties Kurt Russell performances as MacCready that I really do enjoy. But for me this was almost my number one because it's both this grotesque thing, this bizarre life form that makes your skin crawl just to see it on screen, and all of its different incarnations the effects of course famously by Rob Botten, but it also makes it such an interesting character, if you will, this thing is that it's also us. It's like an alien movie such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, right where the real horror comes from the fact that the other creature is really us. It's the neighbor, it's your husband, it's your wife, whatever it might be. And we see that in as I said, the way this creature assimilates and becomes other people. So really, for me, the suspense of the thing, the real horror of it, goes beyond just the obvious gore and it really becomes the senses. The movie goes on that, Okay, what happens if this thing does get out of this station?

00:26:06
Speaker 4: Is it ever going to be stopped?

00:26:07
Speaker 2: This one little creature could in fact, somehow assimilate all of humanity potentially, And that was fascinating enough to me at the time I saw it, which actually wasn't until probably later in the eighties. I don't think it's a movie I saw as a kid. If I saw it when it came out, I been able to sleep alone for probably weeks or a month, So it was later when I caught up with it, and even more recently when I've seen it.

00:26:27
Speaker 4: You know the effects.

00:26:28
Speaker 2: Yes, I've said it and gotten chastised for it here on the show for saying that the effects are a little bit dated.

00:26:33
Speaker 4: They are, but it doesn't ruin the experience of the film for me at all.

00:26:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I have I have a John Carpenter problem, and I think I need to sit through I need to listen to a John Carpenter marathon that someone else conducts because I undervalue a lot of his movies about how one I really dislike, Hello, I love and it's very basic stuff that often with his films. It's a staging and halloween for a suspense film that I just can't get past. Assault on Precinct thirteen is probably the one, and I haven't seen all of his, so that's why did you need that?

00:27:05
Speaker 1: Marathon?

00:27:06
Speaker 3: Probably the one I like the best, so Carpenter, Yeah, I'm off and alone on him.

00:27:10
Speaker 4: Okay, you're number one, josh.

00:27:12
Speaker 3: My Number one is a movie that I just caught up with, Attacked the Block. It's from twenty eleven, a British sci fi comedy about an alien invasion of a South London neighborhood. This time, though, it's not the military that the aliens run up against, but a gang of wanna be teen thugs.

00:27:29
Speaker 2: Why is the alien from Believe it land in the wrong place?

00:27:33
Speaker 4: Do you get me the wrong place? I'm killing them, I'm killing them.

00:27:38
Speaker 2: Let's get to.

00:27:40
Speaker 3: The social satire in this thing. It's handled just about perfectly. I think the movie essentially poses this tongue in cheek question, what's scarier, hostile alien invaders or black youth, and then it riffs for the rest of the movie on the sad reality that many people are going.

00:27:56
Speaker 4: To say the latter.

00:27:57
Speaker 3: Now, as for those aliens.

00:27:59
Speaker 4: They're pretty cool.

00:28:00
Speaker 3: They're described as guerrilla wolves, I think, and that does seem to fit. They have spiky black fur, no eyes, but their teeth and their jaws glow in the dark, and it comes across pretty impressively considering this wasn't a hugely budgeted film. It also has some smart action scenes staged by director Joe Cornish, a lot of sly humor in it, a great hip hop soundtrack, and even to my surprise and delight, I didn't know this going in, but a small part for a very funny Nick frost.

00:28:28
Speaker 4: On you discovered a species. Give it's two unknown to science.

00:28:32
Speaker 2: Maybe there was a party of the zoo and a monkey shag to fish.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: So I'd only heard good things about this since it came out. I don't know why I never got around to it, but I was glad I did finally see it. I mean, it easily would have been one of my top ten films of twenty eleven. If I've really seen it, then oh yeah.

00:28:48
Speaker 2: Well, Attack the Block is a movie I enjoy as well. It's an honorable mention for me on this list my number one thing from space that came to destroy us. Josh, I'm just gonna pick at that. John Carpenter scalp oh Man, I should have called this the John Carpenter Memorial List, but then I wouldn't have had any tape, so I would have been in big trouble. But for me, it is the humanoid aliens from They Live.

00:29:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one I haven't seen any of there.

00:29:10
Speaker 4: It's really good. It's really good.

00:29:12
Speaker 2: It's come up on the show once or twice before. But this is that case I was kind of talking about with the Thing, where you have the fear of this gross creature, but you also have the fear of this thing walking among us and not being able to detect it. And that's what this whole film is about, is that these aliens are living among us and nobody can see them except, as it turns out, with these special glasses that the main character played by Rowdy Roddy Piper gets his hands on. And you can't watch this movie and not recognize that it was a big influence on the world's end. One of my favorite films from last year. But these aliens, they're using the earth basically just as a resource to deplete. They're going to leave it in ruins basically someday, as we come to learn. But with these glasses on, we see how all the media is filled with subliminal messaging to obey and conform and marry and reproduce and consume. And that is fun enough as a satire. But where the movie gets really interesting for me, Josh is where we see the bargain. The humans in the movie have struck with them, some of the humans have struck with them. The satire gets taken to another level when you recognize that basically the wealthy people, the rich, the one percent. They're the one percent because willing to sacrifice the long term health of the planet and everyone else around them for their piece of the American dream, for whatever they think they're entitled to. And like a lot of good sci fi, the whole movie is just sort of absurd and exaggerated enough and heightened enough to feel like it both could never happen and maybe already has happened. And I like too that the aliens in this movie, they're not really creatures so much as when you see them, they're skeletons.

00:30:47
Speaker 4: They look human.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: They look like humans would look if you stripped away our skin and revealed what's underneath. And I don't know if Carpenter was going for this or not, but maybe that is what's underneath, is these creatures when you strip that away. That may be part of the commentary, but I do like they live part of the new cult cannon according to our friend Scott Tobias. Reference here for the second time I've name dropped Scott Tobias from the Dissolve. Will link to his discussion of they live in the show notes over filmspotting dot Net.

00:31:14
Speaker 3: Can we just pause here to acknowledge that your list has included both Jesse Ventura and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

00:31:21
Speaker 4: I love wrestling. What can I say learn?

00:31:24
Speaker 1: Need something new about you?

00:31:26
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know where we go from there. Those are our top five things for space that came to destroy us.

00:31:31
Speaker 4: Any honorable mentions?

00:31:32
Speaker 1: Josh, Yeah, I did think about the world's end as well.

00:31:34
Speaker 4: From last year.

00:31:35
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed that Gort from the Day the Earth Stood still mentioned in our show. Open had to consider Gort monsters versus Aliens is a fun DreamWorks animated for I thought about that in two thousand and nine.

00:31:45
Speaker 4: Did you like that? I did. I like that movie.

00:31:46
Speaker 2: And that villain voiced by Rain Wilson who wants to destroy the planet or take over the planet, is a really good character.

00:31:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, they riff on sci fi tropes, have a lot of fun with that Independence Day. I'm going to admit it has its moments. I mean it's a little scary patriotic too.

00:32:01
Speaker 4: I've never been by hand of that movie.

00:32:02
Speaker 3: Really, it has enough moments for me, and we do have to give a nod at least to Marvin the Martian from the Looney Tunes shorts. The one movie that I did catch up with hedn't seen before was really excited but disappointing me.

00:32:13
Speaker 1: It was Monsters.

00:32:15
Speaker 3: This is a low budget thriller from twenty ten about an alien infestation in Mexico.

00:32:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a movie I caught up with as well, just for this list and really hoped it would make my top five. And after maybe all the hype because there was a fair amount of it in kind of sinophile circles, which I get. After seeing the movie, I get it completely and I actually am really curious to see what that director, Gareth Edwards is going to do with Godzilla, which I never thought I would say that, but if seeing Monsters, I'm curious. That said, as a movie overall, it did fall short for me in a certainly the potential as a filmmaker is there. I still considered the creatures from that movie, just because there's kind of a saving gray scene with those creatures near the end of the film that I thought was really pretty great.

00:32:56
Speaker 4: So I did consider those creatures. I considered those.

00:32:59
Speaker 2: Dog Wolve whatever they are from Attack the Block, and we also had a reference to Galaxy Quests earlier in the film General Sarahs from that movie. I didn't consider the World's End because I was thinking about this and I couldn't really remember if they actually came here to destroy us or not.

00:33:14
Speaker 4: I couldn't remember what their intentions were. And I know a lot of.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: People are gonna say, Adam Pacific rim, you love that movie, what about them?

00:33:20
Speaker 4: Well, they didn't come from.

00:33:21
Speaker 2: Space, another dimension that didn't work. Come on, so the Kaiju they're off. And I also didn't consider Starship Troopers. And I know some people will probably be shouting Starship Troopers, So this entire top five. I really like that movie, but my recollection of the film could be wrong. My recollection is they don't attack the Earth, the bugs don't attack us. We they go out of the bugs, we go to their planet.

00:33:44
Speaker 4: So again that's right.

00:33:45
Speaker 2: Technicalities that they matter here for these arbitrary important to be spotting lists.

00:33:49
Speaker 4: We want to know what you think.

00:33:50
Speaker 2: Send us your picks or any other comments about the show to feedback at filmspotting dot net.

00:33:54
Speaker 5: In every age, there is a cause worth fighting for. But in the future, the greatest threat to our survival will not be.

00:34:08
Speaker 2: Man at all. You gotta live any top five that has parentheses after it and takes that a long time to say, you know it's gonna be good. Reminder that access to the film Spotting archive is just one of the benefits of joining the Film Spotting Family. Bona shows, weekly newsletter, early access to events and more. To join, we'd love to have you be part of the family Film Spotting Family dot com.

00:34:33
Speaker 5: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

00:34:37
Speaker 4: Go bye.