I Watch FIlms: The Puppet Masters

 

The Puppet Masters

Donald Sutherland plays Andrew Nivens, head of a CIA department tasked with investigating extra-terrestrials. When a UFO lands in Iowa and two of his agents vanish he goes in person, along with his son, also in the CIA, and some others. They find an obviously mocked up flying saucer, or perhaps non-flying saucer. Everyone’s acting a bit off. When they visit the TV station Mary, the female agent, undoes her top button but the manager is uninterested*. Confronting him there is a fight, the manager resists beyond normal limits, they discover a weird slug/manta ray alien on his back when they kill him.

The aliens can control humans, the first one they disconnect makes the human so depressed at being alone he kills himself, this effect is later dropped for others that they remove. People keep being asked to take their shirt off and turn around, which is less interesting than it might have been. Attempts to bring in the National Guard and Army have them infiltrated, so eventually they have to try a daring action sequence to defeat them.

There are some good action sequences, and some fun and clever ideas. The fake UFO to cover up the real one is good! Somehow I didn’t find it very convincing, though the aliens were quite menacing at times.

Watch This: A creepy alien invasion film
Don’t Watch This: If weird slugs and the film slowly getting stupider as it goes on sounds like a bad time

* The film was based on a Robert Heinlein novel called The Aliens That Turn You Gay