Director: David Keith
Year: 1987
Country: USA/Italy
Alternate Titles: The Farm
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
When a meteorite crashes near a farm, the family living there are at a loss of what to do and decide to ignore it only to slowly realize that something is wrong, and able to trace it back to the meteorite infecting the drinking water the unaffected family members try to get away from the infected ones.
Review:
This one is slightly disappointing with a few good qualities. The main element working for this one is the fact that the slow build-up works at times, mainly due to the fact that it's a series of small events with seemingly no relation to each other suddenly starting to build up. From the mentions of the water being unleashed to nearly every member of the community to the freak-out at dinner to the apples, cattle and skin suddenly start going rotten, this one builds nicely and has some sense to do it that way by tying it into the work of the meteroite when it crashes into the area.
The other really big part to this one is that there is some really nice make-up work in here, especially the subtle wounds on the face. They slowly show up and become more prominent, another product of the slow build-up in the first half. Once the creature transformation occurs, it becomes really great as this has a couple of high-quality action scenes built from this, from the landing of the meteorite which is a spectacular fiery spectacle complete with high quality crushing in the countryside and leaving a flaming trail of trees in the path, the series of animal attacks throughout here and leading up to the final assault in the house which has a really great brawl mixed in with several fights and the action-packed spectacle when the house starts to fall down. These make the film watchable.
There are a few flaws with this one. The most obvious one is the utter lack of action in the first half of the film. This one decides to spend almost all of the beginning concentrating on the talking, and outside of the meteorite crashing nothing happens until the middle. That leaves the beginning with absolutely nothing, and that is drawn down even more by the film's constant religious banter. This is aggravating on several areas, since there's a valuable chunk of the movie taken up with a time-wasting factor, plus all it does is just get to the point where they're using that as an excuse to keep the plot moving. It could've been ended early during the first questioning section, but by playing the religious card, it keeps it going for no reason. These here all combine together to make the film seem really dull.
The other big factor here is that the special effects are really hit-or-miss, with some being passable and others just being atrocious. The subtle special effects for the face are great, but once they start to go in between the two, the intermediate stage of the monsters look rather cheap and really terrible, and with the constant shoving of it in the viewer, it soon becomes laughable. The last big one is that there's a severe lack of kills in a monster movie. This one really only knocks off a couple, while the others are responsible from others. This makes the creature seem less like a possible threat due to the fact that it really doesn't have much time to really get out and give it a chance to become threatening. These here are what really keep the film down.
Overview: **1/2/5
There isn't a whole lot to love about it, but there is a couple good points in here to make this feel watchable. It's worthwhile only for those who enjoy the cheesy creature features of the time, while those who aren't that big on those should be well advised to seek caution with this one.
Comments
Post a Comment