9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Canadian B Movie Sci Fi Fun, March 16, 2001
This review is from: Starship Invasions [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This little low budget Canadian sci fi flick brings back fun memories for me. At the age of 12 my best friend and I went to a little suburban theatre on a Saturday afternoon to watch this campy little movie and had the time of our lives.
The title of the film basically tells you the whole plot, and I can tell you from the start it looks next to Star Wars, released the same year look like a Jaguar parked next to a rusted out Pinto. But then, keep in mind some people had some wonderful memories in Pintos <tho if they were in the back seat they woulda been at the chiropractor the next morning>.
Christopher Lee struggles his way through the dialogue and the special effects are on the level of a 1980s video arcade game...but wait!
With an open mind and a sense of fun, you are bound to have a great time watching it, especially with a bunch of friends <preferably drunk>. This may all sound sarcastic but, with the exception of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, never have I seen a film in a theatre where the audience cheered and participated to the fun of the battling flying saucers.
Though I may react differently if I were to see it for the first time now, the scene in which the aliens attempt to control the mind of a suburban Toronto housewife to slit her throat with a huge knife, shaking and struggling to fight the mind control, is one I will never forget.
Campy fun and suprisingly linear, if taken on it's own terms as Saturday afternoon fun, this movie is great though I doubt it would stand up to repeated viewing. Grab some friends, watch it on a big screen, see which one of you does the best Christopher Lee impersonations, keep the beer flowing and you will have a blast!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
fun nostalgia movie, June 16, 2004
This review is from: Starship Invasions [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Incredible - just when Christopher Lee thought it was safe to show his face again, "Starship Invasions" rears its head. Here, he plays "Captain Ramses", the leader of an aggressive race of aliens bent on conquering our world. Unfortunately, Earth is also home to "The Intergalactic League of Races", a wonderfully benign group of otherworldy guys in latex who monitor our world from their secret pyramid base under the sea (I'm guessing in the Bermuda Triangle). Using subterfuge, Ramses and the crew of his flying saucer enter the league's undersea HQ under the guise of friendship - only to turn on its members from within. With the league crippled, its last survivors scattered, Ramses's fleet is virtually handed Earth. Only with the help of a human scientist (and UFO fanatic) played by Robert Vaughn can the league's survivors prevail against Ramses and save the earth.
Okay, it sounds cool - and in a way it is. Sure, other movies have come and gone, their plots forgotten, there once innovative special effects overshadowed by niftier techniques in film-making. But watching "Starship" I feel pretty much as I did when I first saw it (age 8) - when I knew the special effects were not that special. Between "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters", sci-fi was again a-list movie material - meaning that flicks about flying saucers were going to require mire cash than the people working on "Starship" were willing to shell out. The vision of the movie is strikingly low - there's a robot that looks like it came from an episode of "Phantom Empire"; Ramses has his ships bombard Earth with cosmic rays that inspire mass suicides - even though he has enough ships to ravage Earth ala "ID4"; the interiors of flying saucers look like they were inspired by Sartre - a single spacious room free of any machinery to keep the ship, or the plot moving. Yet it was still fun - with its threadbare plot, I could never tell what direction the story was going, and its low production values gave it that sort of homespun feeling you can only get from sincerely independent movies. In short, "Starship Invasions" is only as enjoyable if you're willing to accept it as less a sci-fi epic than a really cool time machine capable of bringing you back to 1978.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sraship Invasions, August 4, 2003
This review is from: Starship Invasions [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Truly the one that got away..for every flaw you find in the plot of Day the Earth Stood Still I could give you a reason for catching this..the suicide ray is still the scariest device ever levelled at mankind. And those saucers..and the weird music..Second only to Forbidden Planet for me.
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