The Puppet Masters (1994)

OK, admittedly, I have not read the book. I am sure it is a beloved sci-fi classic. This movie is none of the above. I accidentally selected this on my streaming service, thinking it was one of the Toulon Full Moon puppet-master series. I saw some of the cast and decided maybe it was worth a look. It was not. Hard to follow, the actors all seemed to be in a daze. Walking around muttering pointless dialogue. Even the revered Donald Sutherland came off as a stiff. The production values were very low budget, I almost laughed at the first appearance of the "alien". No tension, drama, excitement involved. Julie Warner spent the first part of the movie frustrated that men would not ogle her boobs. I am not making this up. I would hope that this film is a very bad adaptation of the book. I had to turn it off about 30 minutes in. AVOID IF POSSIBLE.

This movie could have been a good movie, it had some potential: the presence of Donald Sutherland, Will Patton and the sexy Julie Warner. There are a few good scenes but, overall, the movie is a failure. If you have some cinematic culture, not too much, you're gonna give me right. See it and you'll convince yourself if I'm right or not.

'The Puppet Masters' is famous for... well, not much really. It kind of slipped under the mainstream consciousness in the wake of the (far superior) X-files and the general craze that aliens were about to knock on our door with ray-guns blazing. However, just because it tries to be every (alien-related) X-files episode in one go doesn't actually mean it's a bad film. Especially the opening anyway.It starts off pretty damn good... an alien 'something' crashes in a small American town and we join a quartet of government agents sent in to investigate. And, one of said agents is the wonderfully-dry Donald Sutherland, who cares about nothing more than thwarting the plans of those extraterrestrial nasties at all costs (and no matter who he has to whack with his walking stick to do so). Naturally, they soon find that this is no hoax and the whole world is under attack from leaping jellyfish-like space monsters who want nothing more than to insert their slimy tongues into the backs of our necks and ride our collective bodies like race of particularly docile broncos.However, once this is unveiled the agents leave small town America and go back to their base to study the creatures and work out a plan of counter-attack. This is where the film kind of slows down a bit, which is a shame as it comes about an eighth of the way through the film and we still have practically an hour and a half left of run-time.What follows becomes a lot less tense and far more predictable. Donald Sutherland is sadly too old to really be the true 'hero' of the film and we're left with his far less charismatic on-screen son to fight the good fight. Don't expect any Independence Day aerial dogfights either. The aliens are barely seen and there isn't a lot of action in it. Overall it comes across as a bit of a 'made-for-TV' movie.However, just because the film trails off early doesn't mean that I can bring myself to hate it. The Puppet Masters has always been a bit of a 'guilty pleasure' film of mine. It's cheesy and low budget and desperately wants to be a big budget A-list film, only it doesn't have the star power or money behind it to make it so.If you like your alien invasion movies (or are stuck in a perpetual time warp where you're in the nineties and still believe Area 51 holds the bodies of the Roswell aliens) then this one isn't so bad. I think one of the reasons it never did that well at the Box Office is because most people may resent paying full price for it. However, in this age of internet websites which stream movies like this as part of a package, it's definitely one to add to your watchlist if you fancy something that won't stretch your mental powers too much.Mulder and Scully were obviously on holiday when this alien invasion occurred.

It really makes no sense how this film could not have worked. Working off a script based on a Robert A. Heinlein novel, with the venerable Donald Sutherland in one of the lead roles, and with alien invasion the subject matter, this should have been at least a seven star Science Fiction film. As Sci-Fi goes, the superior ones focus more on futuristic and/or scientific concepts, with action and/or special effects adding to the spectacle. That is why films like the Star Wars saga really aren't Sci-Fi, but action/adventure first (and in the case of Star Wars, fantasy) and science fiction second at best. This film does delve into the biology and culture of the aliens, but just barely. Mostly it focuses on hokey special effects and a few watered-down action scenes to fill up screen time. The aliens themselves are quite realistic and original, a plus for the film. The chemistry between Donald Sutherland as the leader of a secret government agency and his son, played by Eric Thal (an unknown at the time) is actually quite good. In addition, Julie Warner actually does well as the scientist working for Sutherland and of course plays the romantic interest for Sutherland's son. While not a superior actress, she performs adequately, although her talents are more suited to television, as it appears this movie was. While most will think, as I did, while reading the plot synopsis of the film that it is a rip-off of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (Sutherland starred in the remake of this film in 1978), the actual book was published in 1951, prior to the original film as well as the novel written by Jack Finney. Bottom line: not a bad movie to watch when you know you will be distracted as it requires very little of your attention and there are enough action scenes to move the pace along, but science fiction and Heinlein fans will be disappointed.