Rhapsodies

For this week’s entry I decided to get my Science Fiction fix on with Alien Invaders, specifically what TVTropes likes to call “Aliens in Cardiff” which is to say stories where the aliens invasion occurs in places where the world might not notice. This can be a very effective strategy though it’s gennerally done so the writer and director can do their story in an area they are familiar with.

In our first film Attack The Block. Our alien crash in a housing project in South London only to run into a street gang who were in the process of mugging a nursing student. They hunt down and kill it with relative ease. Unfortunately taking it home as a trophy leads the rest of the aliens back to their block. Now “heroes” have to defend against the siege.

This was a fun action piece which does a wonderful job mixing comedy, horror and action. It also sneaks in a surprising amount of social commentary. Our protagonists led by Moses (played by John Boyega of Star Wars fame) they are shown as nothing more as brutal irredeemable thugs but as the movie progresses we are allowed to learn more about them until we’re rooting for them.

And the aliens are great. Ferocious things with fur so black they almost look two dimensional with the only details of them you can see is their huge sharp glowing teeth.

Lots of fun.

The next on my list was another one of those films that I only knew from one of my movie textbooks and even then all I remembered was the name and the monster costume.

Our story tells the story of a young woman whose finance is abducted by aliens the night before her wedding. The aliens replace him with one of their own. Over the next year it’s discovered that many of the men in town have also been replaced. Sooner or later she begins to notice somethings strange about her new husband but by then the aliens have replaced half the men in town for the sinister purpose of breeding with human women.

This film was hokey as hell and the subject was unbelievable even by the standards of fifties sci-fi. There was some potential for paranoia but that was blown by the monsters and what the monsters were doing from the very beginning so even when they do things like replace the police force any feeling of dread is missing.Also in a way the aliens are strangely sympathetic since they are trying to preserve their species… also most of the men the were replacing were jerks anyway.