IMDb runtime is 1 hour and 49 minutes, rated 5.9 by 7552 cinemitizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Des Moines never looked better
In a small town in Iowa, but not blue-eyed Riceville, a spaceship lands and thereafter everyone is as dead-eyed as a born again Republican. They lose interest in sex and, believe it or not, in football!
The Masters proliferate at an alarming rate endangering the future of the Iowa caucus. To avert that catastrophe the resources of the distant and oppressive Federal government are mobilised in the person of a Canadian. Huh! Go with it.
The Masters attach themselves to the backs of victims, who seem to enjoy the experience, without leaving a wrinkle in a shirt or a hump under a blouse. Amazing.
The first fifteen minutes are whiz bang. The ship lands. Teenage boys find it. A baseball bat figures. Next thing you know everyone in town has a Master. The Feds come to check and shoot ‘em erupts in the local television station’s office.
After that rattling start the pace slows, and slows, and slows, punctuated by gratuitous fisticuffs, shoot ‘em ups, and chases that go around in circles. Regrettably it does not feature the (infamous) Des Moines Sky Walk, about which more below.
The Masters turn hosts into automatons who hate immigrants, blacks, homosexuals, success, table manners, Democrats, and good sense. Hmmm.
While there are two scenes where communication occurs between a Master and a man, these aliens seem to have no program. They are there to destroy, not to do anything more. Many have concluded that they were Republicans. I couldn’t possibly say. They make no plea that they have to do this to survive, that their home world has or is going to perish, that they bought Earth in good faith at a Milky Way real estate auction, that God told them to do it, that their KPIs require it, or any of the other standard tropes of the genre. In this respect the Masters fall short of ‘Teenagers from Outer Space’ (1959) who came to farm lobsters, a film reviewed elsewhere on this blog, hidden in a collective comment on several films. Search away. Or for that matter, ‘The Lobster Man from Mars’ (1989) who came to steal oxygen, also reviewed on this blog. Get to clicking to find it.
I cannot remember the book, which I read as a teenager, well enough to add anything sensible. ‘Guffaw,’ went the fraternity brothers. Right on cue. [Subsequent note, I did try to re-read after drafting these words of wisdom but found its 1950s machismo hard going. It reminded me vaguely of the stories in men’s magazines of the era in barbershops.]
The film is repetitive and violent and the FBI warning contains the following note. The film has ‘violence, gore, and BRIEF LANGUAGE.’ Yep. That put the fraternity brothers on high alert. Violence? Check. Gore? Check. But, whoa, brief language? Nope. There is a lot of yapping.
There is much running around in Des Moines car parks and the city hall environs. The energy is high; the meaning is low; the character development is zero. Muscle is supposed to be Canadian’s alienated son. ‘So what,’ asked the fraternity brothers. Good question, since we never do find out what to make of that except that Canadian wears Armani suits. There is sex interest in an exo-biologist but there is neither spark nor sparkle there. Linda Fiorentino would have burned a hole in the screen in that role, but this player is bland on bland. By the way, Keith David nearly steals the show in a supporting role. Don’t blame him for the final turn which came from the writer and the director, not the player.
Likewise, Will Patton, as the nerd boy who figures a lot of it out, is a pleasure to watch.
But we don’t get a lot of thinking in this slam-blam adaptation. Yaphet Kotto is entirely wasted as an empty uniform.
Sometimes killing the host kills the parasite and other times it does not. Mostly it does not, but when the parasite ridden bodyguards of the President are mowed down, the parasites go quietly. That puzzled the fraternity brothers, briefly. Nothing stays with them long.
The stunt work is fabulous with nary a CGI in sight. The night para-glide into the heart of darkest, alien infested downtown Des Moines was great fun. But once there it is the same old, same old. The running, jumping, falling, fighting, shooting was masterful if one wants it. But after the fourth or fifth time with no forward progress in the story or the people, well, who cares.
While the critics linked to the IMDb comment on the small budget, it seems to be large and talented cast with plenty of money for stunt work. The list of stunt men and women acknowledged in the credits rolls on and on.
The story comes from Robert Heinlein’s 1951 novel, in which it is clear that the parasites are Commies sapping the vital red, white, and blue juices from Americans who are too dumb to know that they are being drained. Heinlein has a claim to be the Dean of Sy Fy in the 1950s. He was an Arctic Cold Warrior – seeing reds as slugs, bugs, and cruds. Slugs in this outing. Bugs in ‘Starship Troopers.’ And cruds in ‘Red Planet.’ And under every bed, disguised as dust bunnies.
The patience of readers to this point is rewarded with a comment on the Des Moines SkyWalk.
It was built in the 1970s to allow downtown office workers to traverse its four miles of elevated walk ways in comfort, out of the weather of the Great Plains. It connects to several large car parking garages, a bus exchange, office blocks, city hall, retail malls, a sports complex, hotels, and is dotted with cafés, fast food franchise, laundries, and the like. It served two purposes, one, to keep jobs in the downtown area rather than in outlying business and industrial parks, and, two, to attract companies to locate in Des Moines.
We used the SkyWalk in Des Moines and learned a sad lesson. Everywhere else in the known world North is always at the top of a map. Not so in Des Moines. When we paced the SkyWalk we saw helpful, illuminated maps at every junction and read these to navigate. BIG MISTAKE. Soon we were going around in circles and off course. Why? How could this be? We looked more closely at the maps, one after another. On some North was at the top, where it should be. But on others it was to the right, or left, or a diagonal, or at the bottom. No two consecutive junction maps had the same orientation. Believe it or not, Ripley!
The maps were useless to outsiders. And no doubt were never consulted by locals. While there is some information on the SkyWalk to be found on the internet none of it addresses this fundamental point. Is it any wonder that no famous explorer ever came from Iowa? Couldn’t find north.
There is an app. Wonder where north is on it? No plan to find out.
While the RÉSO in Montréal has far fewer maps, they are consistent and put the true North, strong, brave, and free where it should be.
It seems the SkyWalk has kept jobs in the downtown, about 75,000 of them according to the Chamber of Commerce, and in so doing has brought new opportunities to Des Moines. It has also obeyed the law of unintended consequences and nearly destroyed street level commerce. Everyone uses the SkyWalk in preference to the street. There are virtually no walk-ins to businesses on the streets. The space for businesses on the SkyWalk is much less than on the street, so the net effect is to squeeze out small businesses from downtown.
So it is said. I would say Iowans are going around and around on the SkyWalk because they cannot find north.
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