Category: Film Review

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 19 very l o n g minutes, rated at an inflated 4.4 by 238 relatives of the director.
Genre: Sy Fy and Bickering

Verdict: It felt terminal.
In distant 2035 an international crew of bickering, backbiting, resentful slackers rides a spaceship to find a new home for the residents of the doomed planet Earth. These are the Bickersons and the fate of the species is in their hands. Game over.
What selection process picked this crew? Spin the bottle? Eenie, meanie, minnie, moe? Or were they the survivors of McKinsey management seminars? No, no one survives those.
The Bickersons awake from a cryogenic sleep – the scriptwriters best friend after the meteor shower — and find the low bid contractor struck again. The captain of the ship is a rotten corpse. Maybe he read the script and took the easy way out.
Thereafter others exit. First the 2-IC (that is, second in command for the pacifists) steps up to the plate. Briefly. Now that he is in the big chair his butt print (the fraternity brothers suggested that image) allows him access to super secret intel. He reads the script and…. Yes, he hung himself in a hallway. So far nothing has happened but the payroll had diminished. Every managers dream come true.
Then the only one who seems to be taking his lines seriously snuffs it while wearing a virtual reality hood to watch a peep show. Meanwhile, others are doing a variety of pharmaceuticals. The snarling Russian in the ranks smokes oxygen burning cigarettes. Sure. That would be a good idea. The fraternity brothers waited for her to don a space suit and light up!
This crew has been carefully selected from the world’s population and this is it! It looks like President Tiny’s inbred cabinet of dolts, droolers, and dopes.
Then there is the automaton who even in death is irritating. Androids can be like that. Even the severed head of the android has been done in ‘Spaceflight IC-1’ (1965) discussed elsewhere on this blog.
It is by the numbers. The dead captain was dramatic in ’Planet of the Apes’ in 1968. The virtual reality was done to death in Star Trek. The drugs have been everywhere. These people did not need a spaceship for such banalities. The mechanical man, a woman in this case, is another tired trope stitched in.
It is all interiors. We never even get a glimpse of the stellar void, or any sense that the space ship is going anywhere or that the Bickersons have any control over it, though we get far too many shots of its vast CGI bulk.
Most of the action is the crew arguing about who is in charge. That part did seem realistic because pointless bickering is on most agendas. They snipe at each other. Denounce one another’s national origins and dress sense. The usual. No need to go into space for any of this.
And they didn’t. The end.
The Italian Sy Fy of the 1970s at least had some energy. Not so here. The direction is leaden. The screen play has no redeeming merits. The set is a card table. Within those limits the actors try to work up some drama, well, some of them do, and others keep looking at their watches. Me, too.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour 20 minutes, rated 4.4 by 95 cinematiziens.
Genre: Sy Fy, Mexican

Verdict: Lucha libre!
While auditioning for Eggheads, Dr Caronte keeps three dead brains in his cupboard. They are hungry little grey cells and he sends a horde of bearded zombies in boiler suits to the Red Cross to take, not give, blood for these critters. Musical interludes punctuate the pace.
To confuse matters Caronte often wears white, while the bare chested, tireless battler for truth, justice, and the tamale-way, Neutron, wears black. Got it so far?
Neutron has a way of appearing and disappearing. Whoosh. There he goes again, or here he is again: Whoosh.
The action takes place in a darkened Mexico City alley, and in the director’s home, and on a sound stage nightclub. Many expenses were spared. The dubbing is terrible, befitting the picture. Still all and all, it is better than some early Roger Corman efforts and less predictable than anything on broadcast television.
Neutron does the lucha libre with the zombies, who are directed by a dwarf who can barely lift a revolver and runs like…..a dwarf, and not a CGI.
It seems Neutron and Caronte have a history in a series of the movies, four or five, but who’s counting.
Wolf Ruvinskis stars as the man without a shirt but with a mask and a Whoosh. He was a Lativian Jew whose family fled the Naziis. In the new world, as a teenager, he became a lucha libre champion and that took him to the heart of the sport, Mexico City, where he stayed. One thing led to another and when the falls got too hard to fake, he kept the mask to extend his career as Neutron. (Pretty sure that the physiotherapist I go to learned the trade at lucha libre.)
Amazon Prime tempted me with this offering, and it seemed better than some of the alternatives from Hollywood of late. At least it was not pretentious, did not present fiction as fact, or have Jack Black in it. Three pluses right there. Though admittedly the part of the dwarf would fit Tom Cruise.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 20 minutes, rated 6.8 by 992 cinemtizens.
Genre: Mystery, Canine.

Verdict: A fast start and and fast finish, but in between time passed very slowly.
Veteran supporting actor Edward Arnold plays the lead as a blind detective in the first of a short-lived series of B pictures. He is ably supported by an excellent cast and it starts well.
Eddie has his Alsatian, Friday, to look after him and Allen Jenkins to do the heavy lifting in-between pratfalls, while Mantan Moreland opens and closes doors and his bug eyes. These latter two share the comic distress duties.
An old (girl) friend (hereinafter designated OGF) comes to ask for his help, because her step-daughter Donna Reed (sigh…, went the fraternity brothers) is in love with a gigolo twice her age. What Eddie and company can do about this domestic tangle is anyone’s guess. He tells her to have it out with Gigolo.
OGF takes his advice. (What a sucker, cried the fraternity brothers.) She finds Gigolo cold and dead on the bear rug in front of the fireplace in his bachelor pad. Gulp! She goes back to Eddie, who sets out with Friday and Jenkins for reasons unknown, but a private dick has to do what a private dick has to do, per the script.
OGF’s husband is the incredibly dignified Reginald Denny, a scientist working on a TOP SECRET project that he keeps in his clothes closet at home. Security or what? Or what. He is away being important leaving OGF and Donna at home to tear strips off of each other with a houseful of recently employed servants with foreign accents. Will the clothes closet b safe? The tension did not mount.
So far it has some pace and mystery, but about now occurs a hissing sound that is the air leaving the balloon.
All of the many servants at the house are Nazi spies so incompetent they have not yet found the closet and purloined Reggie’s secret. Donna’s friends who encourage her to antagonise her step-mother, i.e., OGF, are also Nazis. They are everywhere. Friday even looks under the bed for more. The top Nasty is Katherine Emery who gives a masterful performance as a black widow.
Once Eddie is ensconced in the house, the action freezes. He carries on as best he can with the screenplay but really…. He plays the organ; he paces in garden; he listens at doors; he plays the organ some more; he paces in the garden; he listens at doors. Then for a change he repeats the sequence. It was a very long night. And so on.
[It is no surprise to any observer of the absurdity of life, that some IMDb reviewers think the interminable scenes at the house with Eddie playing the uncle are great. Me, watching paint dry would be better.]
The Nasties take him for a fool, underestimating him because he is blind. That is a neat idea but it just does not gel in this rendering. He has some nice lines like this one: ‘Turn out the lights, I am going to read.’ Did he have a Kindle, too? No, he had Braille.
There is a superb confrontation in a darkened cellar where the blind man has the edge, and it is staged and directed with real suspense. Fortunately for the Eddie the Nasties have been knocking each other off to reduce the budget so he does not have to deal all of them at once. Meanwhile Friday shows off his canine athletic ability racing here and there, completing a crossword puzzle on the run. It all comes good in The End.
A second was made but it, too, had a cool reception, perhaps there were too many blind men coming home for the war for it to be diverting. There is a large ensemble cast on show here and many went on to bigger and better things, including Rosemary de Camp, John Emery, Ann Harding, Steven Geray, Stephen McNally, and Barry Nelson in addition to those named above.
But the biggest name is director Fred Zinnemann whose list of subsequent credits runs to: ’Member of the Wedding’ (1952), ‘High Noon’ (1952), ‘From Here to Eternity’ (1953), ‘A Hatful of Rain’ (1957), ‘Behold a Pale Horse’ (1964), ‘A Man for All Seasons’ (1966), and more.

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 24 minutes, rated 6.2 by 2,242 cinematizens
Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: A known unknown, to quote Donald Rumsfeld. with whom I once crossed a street in D.C.
A British Army unit practices detecting and securing radium watches on a mired, desolate beach. These are national servicemen who are none too keen on this damp, wet, and muddy duty so they slack off. Then one of them gets burned to a crisp. Now that might stimulate some attention, but no they continue to smoke, rest, and generally act by film extras. More crispy critters are on the menu.
Turns out the practice radium has lured a radium eating blob from deep within the screen writer’s imagination to the surface.
Officialdom reacts according to the McKinsey management manual by denying reality, by blaming the victim(s), by minimising the loss, by claiming pilot error, by blaming Hillary and so on. But the plot must thicken to make a movie. Nearby is a nuclear research centre and also a nuclear power station, plus all those radium dials on watches that were fashionable at the time. In short, it is a picnic ground for the blob from the deep whose appetite has been stimulated.
A couple of adventuresome boys are toasted and the parents blame science, not stupidity. Got it.
Rumpole arrives to investigate and seeks out Baldy, who gets all serious. Baldy is the American import straight from Jefferson High School where he used to supervise Mr Novak. Baldy and Rumpole team up and tame the blob with some mumbo-jumbo, aka science. Blob retreats but will it come again, and what was it anyway? X as above.
The pace is snappy. The atmosphere is effective. The blob is largely unseen and all the more menacing for that. Baldy is authoritative without being arrogant. Rumpole is persistent without being obnoxious, contrary to the current rule of Hollywood.
The tagline on the poster above is ‘It can kill but cannot be killed.’ Why did I think of McKinsey management training sessions? Is this another unknown? Dunno.
Steve McQueen must have gotten a few tips from this picture when he encountered his own blob.
The screenplay was originally intended to continue Hammer Films run of success with Professor Quatermass. However, Nigel Kneale, who owned the copyright to Quatermass, would not relinquish it, i.e., not enough dosh was on offer, and so Baldy was re-named.
As is sometimes the case, there is more drama behind the camera than in front of it. Hammer had hired Jospeh Losey to direct.

He went on to do many superb films like ‘The Servant’ (1963), ‘The Go Between (1971), ‘Mr Klein’ (1976), and many more.
However, Baldy refused to work with Losey. Losey had escaped the monster that roamed 1950s Hollywood, HUAC, while Baldy was a 100% Moron who would have nothing to do with this pinko. Either he goes or I go, he is supposed to have said. The producers made the wrong call and kept Baldy.
They got lucky though because Leslie Norman did a fine job of filling in as director at short notice. He went on to be a regular with ‘The Avengers.’ The screenplay by Jimmy Sangster is low-key and lets the action carry the story. There is no exposition. No effort to make anyone sympathetic with a boring backstory. He cranked out many a story for Hammer over the years.

IMDb meta-data is runtime is 1 hour a 9 minutes, rated 5.9 by 551 cinematizens.
Genre: Old Dark House

Verdict: Several rungs below mediocrity.
Went backward to see the original version the film already discussed earlier on this blog. Its only claim to fame is that it stars Virginia Kathrine McMath of Independence, Missouri. She plays two roles, one of them very brief.
As above, and often word for word the same, but with a little more explanation and less forced humour from the detective. There is a even a reference to the thirteenth guest at the end, though it makes no sense. The completely incompetent cop is the nephew of the police chief. The detective is a relative of the other copper.
Here, as in the version discussed earlier, the detective orders the police around, carries off evidence with their approval, sequesters witnesses at his home, and generally runs the show while the police say ‘Yes, Sir’ to this arrogant and supercilious twit. He is also patronising to women. An all rounder. Don’t blame the actor, he is written that way.
The best part is that the villain who hides in secret passages and hidden basements wears a rubber mask, hood, and cape. That get-up must have been heavy and hot. It was also pointless since no one ever saw him in it. What a slave to fashion he is. None too bright either, because he puts the switch he uses so far away from his peep hole he can never reach it in time.
Lyle Talbot played the lead, and it is easy to see why Nebraska’s own Talbot receded to supporting roles where he compiled a massive 332 credits, ending in 1987. Maybe the thing to say about him is that the ‘Known for’ entry on the IMDb lists for him ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ (1959), where that picture might have better stayed. It is discussed elsewhere on this blog.
The pace is leaden. The direction is leaden. The dialogue is leaden. Not even Virginia Kathrine McMath is allowed to liven things up. She is Miss Ginger Rodgers.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour flat, rated 5.4 by 354 insomniacs.
Genre: Old Dark House

Verdict: Mysteries aplenty.
On her twenty-first birthday Marie goes to the one-time family home, which has been empty for thirteen years and became an Old Dark House with sliding panels, secret passages, sub-basements, priest holes, and other conveniences. Evidently none of these things were in the house when she lived there because she knows nothing….about them.
Thirteen years earlier her grandfather had a family dinner and denounced his relatives as useless, greedy sods, all but little, innocent Marie. Her two child brothers are also included in the denunciation, it would seem. An empty chair at the table represented the thirteenth guest, and Gramps said he would explain that later. We are still waiting Gramps! We have waited more than six years! It is never explained.
Gramps entrusted an envelope for Marie with the attending family attorney, whom he also accused of greed. Is that smart Gramps? First accuse him and then hand over the goods? Gramps also assumed Marie is going to remain innocent until age twenty-one. Gramps did not get out much.
Years later on the appointed day the lawyer gives her the envelope and she has to take it to the ODH and open it there. Why is anyone’s guess. The screenwriter kept that to himself. In it is the message 13-13-13. Gramps is inscrutable. Is that a cube root in the making? Yes it is thirteen years later and that has something to do with the thirteenth guest. Huh?
At the abandoned house Marie discovers the electricity is connected and so is the telephone. Everyone else rediscovers this without ever considering the implications. ‘Zap!’ being the major one.
Thereafter the murders begin. We never do find out the identity of the first and last victims. Huh?
The murderer also posed the murdered victims at the table. Why? Who knows. Maybe he was trying to find number thirteen.
Spoiler alert. Turns out the greedy lawyer is the murderer. Hmm, and he is not a very bright murderer. He wanted the envelope which he had in safekeeping for thirteen years. Why not take a peek? Guess it did not occur to the screenwriter. That would have been easier than all the rigmarole at the ODH. That must have been covered in law school. Did he sleep through every class?
Moreover, we discover the numbers 13-13-13 are a safety deposit box that holds a will that leaves everything to Marie. Any shyster lawyer could surely have streamed open the envelope, and just as easily as Marie was to do, figure out it was a safe deposit box, and finagle opening it. That certainly is covered in the law school curricula, for why else go to law school? By the way, how did she make the leap from 13-13-13 to a safety deposit box? We’ll never know.
In a classic ploy the villain hired a private dick to guard Marie, and tell him what she is doing. That dick is Dick Purcell who has a script from a different movie. He makes jokes and laughs as the bodies fall. He laughs a lot at his own jokes. This rugged he-man died with a year of a massive heart attack.
Even more annoying is Frank Faylen as a dumb cop, so favoured in movies of the era, but at least this comic distress is not a black man or a woman. The other dumb cop has no excuses since he was one of the authors of the screenplay.
Given the screenplay, the direction by journeyman William Beaudine is crisp and well paced. The gaffes and gaps are in the text, not the direction or the editing.
When the film was released the U.S. Marine Corps had engaged the Japanese on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, and this indecisive but bloody battle would contain to the end of the war. Naval engagements off Bougainville were likewise indecisive but murderous. Meanwhile in Europe, Blond Germans were busy murdering Jews, Gypsies, Masons, homosexuals, and red heads.

IMDB meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 6 minutes, rated 6.2 by 77 cinemitizens.
Genre: Old Dark House.

Verdict: Much better without the sheriff.
Henry Gordon is a marvellous bad guy, who reeks malice and laughs as others fall down. In short, the fraternity brothers warmed to him immediately. His great fortune came from a mine in South America.
He lives with his sister who has two adult children, too lazy and stupid to move out, a very young William Lundigan who made the mistake of trying to act, and a very fey Nan Grey whose acting was irrelevant. She has taken up with the very pleasing Donald Woods, who for once plays the lead. Then there is the kindly doctor, Holmes Herbert, who is much in attendance.
One look at the greasy Gordon and we know he got the mine by foul means. He knows it, too. When a black voodoo doll lands on his desk, he gets the message.
Then he get a sharper message in the back. To know Gordon was to hate him in the words of the song, but who got to him first? That is the question. The business partners he cheated out of the mine? The sister that he keeps captive? Her son, Lundigan, who owes gamblers money? The butler whom Gordon has treated with contempt for years? The pet canary that has been caged since forever? Nan, the niece, who wants free of the past Gordon represents? A boy scout doing a good deed? A stranger off the street? Or none of the above?
Pop quiz! Remember who was much in attendance above?
Nan has a picnic with Dan, and they play detectives with the pet Westie. There is another brilliant scene when Nan runs through the rain, and really does get wet, to find Dan and runs into the villain….
Regrettably, as the local sheriff Edgar Kennedy almost ruins it all. Don’t blame him. He was woefully miscast and systematically misdirected. Yet he dominated the second half. The fraternity bothers are never comfortable with authority figures, but Edgar they accepted, since he had no authority, no gravitas, and no brains. He took over the dumb-as-a-post duties often assigned to black stereotypes or women in films of this time. For that we owe him thanks.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 46 minutes, rated 6.3 by 191272 time wasters like me.
Genre: Sy Fy and Self-Indulgence

Verdict: Cut! Cut! Cut!
‘The Martians are coming!’ ‘The Martians are coming!’ ‘The Martians are coming!’
Got it.
What is worse they are just like the fraternity brothers, stupid, cruel, rude, ugly, and relentless. About twenty minutes too relentless.
One fine day an ensemble set of characters from a big cast list discovers that ‘The Martians are coming!’ and react to that in different ways. That is the first half. Some are afraid. Others hopeful. Some don’t notice. Others don’t care. Scholars rush to speculate. Talking heads do.
Then the Martians come and exploding heads follow. Many exploding heads. Many, many, many. And then some more. Second half.
In the first half a weak-kneed liberal president concludes they are coming in peace, though no one wonders why it takes so many of them to come in peace. Every courtesy is extended including overlooking the slaughter of the first welcoming party. There follows more slaughter and more forgiveness. Is there a parallel to the weak-kneed native indians who kept trying to cooperate with the white man and got slaughtered for their trouble. It seems an obvious comparison but it is not made here.
In the second half it is all out war. Except none of the weapons Earthlings use do any good. Not even the method acting of a geriatric Rod Steiger which killed any interest the fraternity brothers had in the film. Fortunately, the Martians are none too smart and it takes them a long time to murder everyone. What losers!
There are tropes from a host of other Sy Fy movies, including the bulbous noggins of the Martians and the flying saucers over D.C. A few of the vignettes are amusing; most are not.
While the actors are uniformly good, they have very little to do. The script after all was derived from bubble gum trading cards. The characters betray their cardboard origins. Viewers will long for the depth of insight of a comic book.
Martin Short as the slime-ball press secretary is great. That Jack Nicholson is president seemed a welcome relief in 2018 since he gives the role gravitas. Pierce Brosnan never looked more sure of himself than when he was totally wrong time after time. Perfect. Annette Bening lit up the screen. As always, Jim Brown brought dignity to the Las Vegas Egyptian costume (which one dolt, a professional reviewer at that, said was Roman) and Pam Grier evidently thought it was a drama and gives a fine performance that should have been in another movie. ‘I’ts not unusual’ that a big chunk of $70 million budget must have gone to the performers. The writing is less than Ed Wood standard. Much less.
On the plus side no one thinks the response to the Martians’ assault should be prayer. Regrettably Whit Bissell is nowhere to be seen at a lab bench concocting a double whammy to lay those Martians low as he did in so many 1950s Sy Fy films. On the minus side it is a long list but it always comes back to one thing: the lack of a narrative. We don’t care about the characters because they are so cardboard, and the situation is repetitive, and the denouement is nice but much, much too long time in coming. Way too long.
There are many loose ends. The apocalyptic opening scene with the stampede of burning cattle is never resolved. It occurred long before the first Martian left Mars. It seems to have been forgotten by the director, along with much else.
We never do find out why the Martians came. Sure, just for fun, but why then? Why not in 2016 when we really needed a diversion.
Are Kansans really as deplorable as they appear to be in this movie?
We have a lot of camera time with the first daughter and then she is seen no more. Moreover, she would seem to be more like a grand-daughter to the geriatric president.
Did Jack Black have to be in this movie at all? (This is always a question worth asking.)
The Martians seem particularly to dislike birds. Why? We’ll never know but a point is made of establishing it.
What colour socks do the Martians wear? (One of those searingly insightful media questions.)
As to any and all of the above, who cares?

IMDb meta-data: 1 hour and 2 minutes (it seemed much longer than that) and rated a generous 3.3 by 686 dopes.
Genre: Sy Fy and Bore.

Verdict: Two good things about it are: It does not star John Agar and Robert Clarke keeps his shirt on.
The stooges kidnap an heiress and head to the high Sierras for a spot of ransom. Sounds far better than it is. While this is played out in slow motion, or so it seemed, a flash of light in them thar hills occurs and then a woman in a skin-tight body suit with exaggerated eye brows walks from the woods to the out of focus camera. She stays out of focus. She walks like she has the OED balanced on her head. Carefully.
The inference is that she is an alien emanating a blurred aura. The fraternity brothers like the skin-tight part but not the blur. However the blur was probably necessary to get the picture aired in the time of the Hollywood code.
To sum up, she wanders around the woods killing everything and everyone she meets. A dog, a man, a bear, a woman, a butterfly, a fox, another man. Obviously she is an American diplomat come to make the peace of the dead. I kid not. Read on.
Meanwhile the three stooges have holed up in the aforementioned Robert Clarke’s mountain cabin where he practices taking his shirt off and on away from prying eyes in readiness for his performance — is that the right word? — in ‘The Incredible Petrified World’ (1959), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Two of the stooges have gats and Clarkie has little choice but to comply. He complies. At times they combine to fend off Skin-Tight, but she picks them off one by one, until….. Spoiler coming.
The pollution in Earth’s atmosphere kills her. Whew! Thank you H. G. Wells for suggesting that in 1891.
But wait there is more!
The locket Skin-Tight wore was not an intergalactic fashion statement after all for it contained a message written in copperplate English handwriting, declaring her to be an ambassador who has come in peace! Pause.
Just think, someone got paid — not much we may hope — for writing this.
How will the home-world react to the death of this ambassador. Will another come? A bigger, a badder, a meaner one? The End. Was a sequel planned? Does it exist? Can it be avoided?
Does it sound like ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ (1951) without the depth? Yep a derivation which these days is called ‘reimagining,’ i.e., trivialising with CGI.
Nota Bene. This ambassador made no effort to communicate but her touch was fatal to everything. The opening voice over went on about cosmic retribution which was heard by the minority paying attention, but this is never squared with the peaceful mission revealed after the body count at the end.
The young heiress looks about fifty. The two goons and their moll look retarded. The direction looks zero. Once the actors are on their floor marks, they stand still to retain camera focus. There are voiceovers which indicate the lack of a sound engineer. Perhaps 90% of the film is in one nearly bare room. Cheapo. For the drive-in market where no one would see it.
Robert Clarke grew up in Oklahoma movie struck from a young age. He tried hard and seems affable enough on screen, and much more alive than say John ‘Oak’ Agar. Clarke’s other credits include ‘The Man from Planet X’ (1951), ‘The Incredible Petrified World’ (1959), and ‘Beyond the Time Barrier’ (1960), which are reviewed elsewhere on this blog. What a Sy Fy CV. He never made it in movies and like many other B-movie actors he went into television where he compiled many credits.
The fraternity brothers talked me into watching this one and they will pay for that when I read long passages from Martin Heidegger to them while they eat. Indigestion is sure to follow.

IMDb meta-data is run time of 1 hour and 46 minutes rated 6.8 by 5011 cinemitizens.
Genre: Sy FY, Empathy

Verdict: one of a kind. Roger Ebert liked it and that is always enough for me.
A being in a B movie space suit frantically hits controls as a craft steaks to a crash in New York harbor.  In shredded clothes the being comes ashore on Ellis Island where millions of other immigrants preceded him. He looks like a black man.
In the nocturnal silence we find out some things about him. He lost a foot in the crash and hops around but seems to find this loss only an inconvenience.  On the remaining foot are three enormous toes.  Later he will be referred to as ‘a three-toe.’  More important, he has psychic powers for when he slumps against a wall or sits on a bench he hears in the air words spoken there by others in the past in a jumble as though recorded on the surfaces. He is frightened by these voices.  But then as always he is mute.
After sleeping on the floor, in the morning mist he sees the city across the harbor and somehow gets on a scow that takes him to Harlem where he hops around…..until his foot regenerates.  He observes the animal life on the streets of Harlem, and proves to be a quick learner with some survival instincts and an NBA jump.
We also learn that he has a way with machines, cash registers, pin ball games, video arcades devices, and so on.  He meets a great many people most of whom ignore him.  He takes refuge in a bar where some of the bar flies are willing to help a brother through hard times.  A social worker finds a place for him to lodge, and gets him work repairing machines.
Brother discovers Earth women and…..   No spoiler.  
Then the men in black appear, just as strange as he is.  They are after Three-toe, as they call him.  I was never sure if this term applied to him in particular or was a reference to his kind as a whole.  They, too, have to adapt to an alien environment. However, they speak though not too well and are white-bread. 
There are some marvellous vignettes.  Two attendees at a communication workshop talk to Brother for hours without realising he is mute.  An administrator intimidates the men in black with endless forms to fill out.  At the moment of truth the bar flies go for it on fourth and one.  
Loved that Brother looks for messages in street graffiti, and finds one!

It has to be said that the denouement is limp.  Finding an end to this ride would be a challenge to anyone.  
It polarises the opinionators on the IMDb with many ones and fives.  The one-givers complained about all the things I liked about it.  Slow pace, no shot ‘em up.  A divergence into the world of drug users and suppliers, for whom ODs are an interruption to cash flow.  The opinionators did not seem to mind Brother’s vigilante justice, though I did.  One such opinionator went on about the gimmick with Brother’s eyeball, denouncing it as unrealistic.  Well, don’t try it at home, that is for sure. But really…it is science fiction Mr Inane.
John Sayles wrote, directed, edited, and swept up afterward. He is also one of the men in black. He financed the production with the payment for his dreadful script for the dreadful ‘Battle Beyond the Stars,’ reviewed elsewhere on this blog.  Forgive but don’t forget.
Director and writer John Sayles is a rarity, an intellectual in film-making. Moreover, he is a utility player, as they once said in baseball, he acts, he writes, he directs, he paints sets, he produces, he edits. He learned the craft and the values of economy and versatility from Roger Corman. Sayles often hires himself out in one capacity or another to raise money for own projects like this one.