So much average

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

"Starship Invasions" is an incredibly slow and underacted sci-fi film from Canada. While it stars Robert Vaughn and Christopher Lee, the rest of the cast are mostly unknowns. If I didn't know better, I would believe that the film's director gave all the actors downers before they began filming. This is because although the film is supposed to be a life or death tale about the invasion of the Earth, it's all so low energy and the acting is just too subdued....to the point where you start to wonder if it's a sci-fi zombie film!So is there anything I really liked about this film? Well, there isn't much but I did like the makeup job on the huge-domed aliens-- they looked quite good considering the low budget. As for most of the rest of the aliens, however, they were just folks wearing silly black leotards. The robot that saves the day is even more ridiculous. Overall, the film has its moments but just not enough to recommend you watch it.

Apart from his stint among the ensemble of AIRPORT '77, 1977 was truly Annus Horribilis for Christopher Lee: his three genre efforts were easily among the worst exploitation outings of their vintage that I have come across! For the film under review, I sure hope that he did not accept it without even bothering to read the script – in the vain hope of matching the enormous success enjoyed by his frequent colleague Peter Cushing with the same year's STAR WARS (for the record, he would himself eventually join that most auspicious franchise – albeit with a quarter century's delay)! Well, where to begin with this lamentable Canadian attempt at a space opera – which, more than actively ripping off the George Lucas blockbuster, takes a leaf (or two) from yet another 1977 sci-fi landmark, i.e. Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND! In fact, here we have two sets of aliens, one which is evil and intent on destroying our planet (shades of Lee's own END OF THE WORLD, one of his afore-mentioned contemporaneous duds) and the other benign and seeking to thwart their plan (though, yet again, they still need to kidnap humans in order to have THEIR computer system fixed – WTF?!). To be fair to this one, it is not as deadly dull as the others – in fact, I ended up laughing out loud a number of times throughout! Indeed, its unintentionally hilarious moments are perhaps too many to catalogue or remember even at a mere day's juncture, but I will try regardless: a dim-witted, middle-aged farmer is abducted and conditioned to engage in sexual intercourse with a voluptuous alien (which he cannot quite believe is happening to him!); the costume of the invaders looks like a full-body black condom (which Christopher Lee looks understandably miserable inhabiting – what is more, all the actors playing extraterrestrials have had to loop their lines in post-production, since the writer-producer-director apparently thought it cool to allow them to only voice their thoughts!); equally incomprehensible is the redundant presence of what can only be described as space escorts forever waiting in the wings – maybe they should have called the film STAR WHORES?!; a couple of inept intergalactic goons realize too late that their protective force-field was not switched on, so that they are blown to bits by the typically impulsive and paranoid U.S. military; hero Robert Vaughn (displaying a fixed baffled countenance throughout) is supposed to be an expert on UFOs, yet when one flies over his car he does not immediately notice it and has to be alerted to its presence by his kid daughter and, on realizing that he missed the all-important sighting, he just shrugs and keeps on driving; to recruit his computer whiz pal to the aliens' cause, he visits him one evening at home, yet this guy is still wearing his coat and tie as if they were his casual attire; the world's end comes by way of a suicide epidemic (not in itself a bad idea, but would it not just take too long to achieve?) triggered by a laser beam fired from way out in space; Vaughn's wife, depressed over his absence from home (she had already voiced her concern about how he was being unfaithful to her with UFOs!), goes from peeling onions for dinner to slashing her wrists in a split second; though supposedly emanating from outside our atmosphere, the spaceships are inexplicably seen emerging from the sea several times; Lee does very little here except press random buttons off a keyboard and aimlessly fiddle with knobs to feign his authority, check his wristwatch every now and again to God knows what ostensibly vital purpose, and operate the occasional flimsy ray gun (also worn on his wrist), etc. Apparently, Lee himself though of STARSHIP INVASIONS as the nadir of his career…but, while I beg to differ (relatively speaking), it was certainly not a fluke of a low point! In ant case, it was shown under various titles to no effect: ALIEN ENCOUNTERS, ALIEN WARS and PROJECT GENOCIDE!

"Oh boy, a real flying saucer!" is what a little boys shouts when he and his parents are confronted with a mysterious space ship circling above their car on a secluded countryside road. I definitely shared his enthusiasm, because I truly worship cinematic B-trash like this, and my only regret was that I wasn't yet drunk enough when I watched "Starship Invasions". Although a low-keyed crossover between the hugely successful "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", this piece of junk has quite a lot to offer. For example, it stars Christopher Lee in the most ridiculous and embarrassing outfit of his long and respectable career, hypnotizing aliens speaking without moving their lips, alien base camps underneath sea level, loads of sexy space wenches, authentic R2D2 robots (oh no, they're not men in suits AT ALL) and goofy intelligent beings with gigantic bald heads and miniature ears. I'm not at all sure what the plot is about, but it sure is incoherent and totally messed up. There are alien invaders trying to overtake planet earth, but at the same time these crazy beings are at war with other extraterrestrial species. I can't really say why because I always got distracted by random alien babes in too tight spandex costumes. Presumably the big bald aliens are here to protect us humans from the nefarious Christopher Lee and his posse. Meanwhile, Robert Vaughn stars as a professor who takes himself deadly serious and appears on TV talk shows in order to persuade the world about the existence of interstellar civilizations. Okay, "Starship Invasions" comes across as cheesy and campy, but admittedly it's also dark and sinister at times, especially when it turns out that the evil aliens are able to make earthlings commit ritual suicide through their telekinetic powers. Once you're done laughing with Vaughn's nihilistic facial expressions and Lee's stoic voiceovers the film does become very boring, though. The special effects are astonishingly decent for a low- budget Canadian exploitation flick like this. Particularly the UFO models are nifty, albeit prototypic, and even when floating around they don't look that stupid. With a slightly more coherent script and competent direction, and maybe also with less urge to imitate other and more successful Sci-Fi titles, I'm convinced that "Starship Invasions" could have been a better movie. Now it's merely a curious footnote in the genre and a reasonably interesting flick for cult-collectors. Writer/director Ed Hunt was also responsible for two favorite 80s guilty pleasure of mine, namely "Bloody Birthday" and "The Brain".

I have to agree with the people who say this movie's bad, but disagree with the ones who say it isn't so bad it's good. This movie is completely hilarious! I can only hope warner pulled SI out of distribution because they're working on a 30th anniversary DVD edition with lots of making-of featurettes where the director details how much crack he was on while he was making it. (It's out of circulation now and amazingly it's going for 150 bucks on amazon, this movie. Fortunately my video store happens to have an old copy.) Wait till you see the part with the pocket calculator! In this movie a guy uses a 70s style pocket calculator to compute flightpaths for a flying saucer. I rather would have thought that interplanetary trajectories would be a bit complicated for a pocket calculator, but what do I know? I remember when SI came out pocket calculators were a huge fad, along with digital watches. Everybody was all, now we can finally achieve world peace, because there are pocket calculators.And the overacting family in the huge car! "look! it's a flying saucer! For god's sake DON'T MAKE THEM ANGRY!!" And the robots who look like trash cans...And the sadistic kid who squashes the tomato...Believe it or not I remember seeing this thing 29 years ago when it came out. I was all, wow, that really sucked, mommy. And my mom was like, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. So hilariously stupid and trashy. it's got goofy flying saucers, lots and lots of cheesecake, christopher lee losing every scrap of his dignity, tons of mind-controlled people acting really zombified and stupid, space battles that look like they were lifted straight out of "mars attacks!", possibly the most ridiculous costumes of all time, and the real coup de grace -- one actually extraordinarily talented actress (Helen Shaver, the wife of the UFO researcher guy) caught in the middle of it all, trying valiantly to salvage this whole mess. oh, and the soundtrack kicks. and yet is completely inappropriate for the subject matter.I know, I know, you probably didn't find this review helpful.