The Puppet Masters
(1994)
Director: Stuart Orme
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Eric Thal, Julie Warner
It's
interesting to compare humans with animals in a number of aspects.
While you may think that in many aspects humans would have nothing in
common with animals, a closer look will reveal that the behavior of
animals can often be similar to what many people go through. That
includes working with others. Certainly, humans work with other humans,
and there are many species of animals where one animals will work with
one or more animal of the same species. But there are some species of
animals that work with other species. I am talking about what
scientists refer to as symbiotic relationships. There are a lot more
that happen in nature that you might think. I can remember from my
childhood one of the first such relationships I learned. My father told
me that large animals like elephants have symbiotic relationships with
small birds. The birds land on the elephants because the elephants more
often than not have irritating insects living on them. The birds hunt
down these insects dwelling on the elephant's skin and eat them. So the
elephants get rid of the irritating insects, and the birds get an easy
meal. Since learning about that particular symbiotic relationship, I
have over the years learned about more, some that are more complex. For
example, while you might think that zebras and ostriches would each
stick to their own kind, in actual fact in the wild the two species
often mix together. Why? Well, each animal has specific abilities to
warn them about predators like lions. The ostrich has very good vision
(and the advantage of height), so it can see danger from far away.
However, it has a poor sense of smell and hearing. So it is the
ostrich's advantage to stick with zebras, since while zebras have poor
vision, they do have a great sense of hearing and smell. So as you can
see, both species have found it good to stick together.
There are other examples I could list of two species
finding it a
benefit to work together, such as the plover bird and the crocodile.
But there are also some relationships in the animal kingdom where
things are definitely one-sided. I'm not talking about animals that
hunt others in order to eat them. What I am talking about can be seen
in the following example, the relationship of the tarantula hawk wasp
with the tarantula spider. The female tarantula hawk wasp will hunt the
tarantula spider in order to sting it, a sting that paralyzes the
spider. Once the spider is paralyzed, the wasp will drag the spider to
some safe spot, and then lay an egg on the spider. Once the egg hatches
and the wasp larva hatches, the larva burrows its way into the spider
and feeds off it until it matures into an adult wasp and flies away.
Needless to say, this ultimately kills the spider. It's examples of
one-sided relationships in the animal kingdom that makes me feel lucky
that I am a human. Even if I got, say, a tapeworm, I could go to a
doctor to get it removed. But sometimes I wonder what might happen if I
or some other human were to encounter life that originated from some
other planet. Could we be on the unlucky side of a one-sided
relationship? After a little thought, I would say that in real life
there probably wouldn't be too much risk. Evolution on our planet would
have had to have been very different from evolution that happened on
another planet. And knowing that, it stands to reason that alien
species would have been conditioned to seek out species that came out
of the same basic environment.
So when I watch a movie like Alien,
where it had a scene where a hatching alien egg spewed out an alien
spider that somehow instantly knew upon sensing a human that it should
attach itself to the human's face... well, I think that would be very
unlikely to happen in real life. On the other hand, there's no
100% way
to determine what evolution on an alien planet could produce, from the
species' ability to the way the species thinks. Maybe alien worlds
could produce a creature that could exploit lowly humans. This idea has
certainly been popular with many writers of science fiction over the
decades. One of the earliest - if not the first - was thought of by
science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his story The Puppet Masters.
It was very influential, with many other books (and movies) ripping it
off over the next few decades. So it's kind of odd that the official
movie adaptation of it - also titled The Puppet Masters
- took so long to get made. It didn't do much at the box office, and
was quickly forgotten. Since imitations are usually inferior to the
original, I wondered if this official adaptation would beat the many
imitators I had seen over the years. In the movie, a mysterious
American security agency quickly learns that what appears to have been
a flying saucer has landed in the town of Ambrose, Iowa. The head of
the security agency, Andrew Nivens (Sutherland, Dan Candy's Law),
decides that not only will he personally investigate, he will bring
several agents with him. The agents include an exobiologist named Mary
(Warner, Family Law), and
Nivens' son Sam (Thal, The Gun
In Betty Lou's Handbag). Upon getting to Iowa, they
soon discover that the claim was a hoax...
apparently. The three can't help but notice that some of the locals are
acting strangely. Eventually, the agents discover the truth: Aliens
have indeed arrived, and they are not friendly. The aliens are
relatively small, but if they manage to get onto the backs of humans,
they insert tentacles into the humans' nervous system and then are able
to control their hosts' words and actions. And the aliens' control over
humans is slowly spreading - can they be stopped in time?
Way back when I reviewed the horror movie Tentacles,
I mentioned that in a horror movie such as that, just as much care was
needed with the portrayal of the human characters as with the horror
menace hunting those humans. As it happens, a science fiction movie
like The Puppet
Masters
also needs care with both of those things. Maybe more, since it's
expected to be more cerebral. Because I started my analysis of Tentacles with
the humans, I'll switch things around with this movie and start with
looking at the aliens. When it comes to the look
of the aliens, the movie is pretty sound. We get some pretty good looks
at them throughout the movie, and they not only look appropriately
slimey and creepy, they look alien
- unlike any life form on Earth. However, when it comes to exploring
the mind
of this alien life form, the filmmakers make their first stumble. You
would think that by attaching themselves to humans and using the humans
as hosts, they would be able to express themselves and eventually
explain their motives and philosophies. But surprisingly, this never
really happens. There's one scene in the movie where the humans have
captured an alien attached to a human, and attempt to interrogate the
alien via the human. The alien (through the human) vaguely mentions
something about the aliens wanting "peace" and "new hosts", but never
gets farther than that. In the end, the aliens act just like aliens in
many other science fiction movies, lacking real personality and just
commit hostile acts towards humans. Making matters worse are some
unanswered questions about these aliens. For example, the humans
eventually uncover that the aliens have no sensory organs. In other
words, the aliens can't, among other things, hear or see. With this in
mind, it isn't very clear as to how the aliens can find human hosts to
attach themselves to.
There's also the question as to how these aliens managed
to get to Earth in the first place. Did they control hosts taken from
another planet? This is also not made clear. Anyway, talking more about
how these aliens come across poorly would be redundant, so I'll move on
to how the human characters in The Puppet Masters
come across. Sadly, they are also a washout, though not because they
are thin and lacking personality. They have personality, but
unfortunately it's one of some real stupidity at times. When Nivens and
his team first enter the small town of Ambrose under the guise of being
tourists, they are all wearing fancy suits. The fake U.F.O. that they
subsequently see looks so cheap and small that it doesn't make sense
that several hundred people would pay money to take a look at its
interior. Later on in the movie, when they discover that the aliens
plant and attach themselves on the backs of humans, they do realize
immediately that everybody should take off their coats and shirts so
they can show each other they don't have aliens controlling them. But
believe it or not, this logical and effective safeguard is almost
totally forgotten about for the remaining running time of the movie!
Further stupidities also include when the town of Ambrose is sealed off
but one entrance to the town is guarded by just two police officers.
The sometimes stupid actions by the humans are bad enough, but also
what hurts these humans is that they are sorely lacking personality.
For example, it is established early on that the relationship between
Nivens and his son is somewhat strained. But we never really get a good
explanation as to why the father and son have for a long time had a
tough time getting along. As well, the relationship doesn't really seem
to make any progress as the story goes along, making the final scene
between the two characters ring false.
I will say one thing good about the human characters in The Puppet Masters.
As head agent Nivens, actor Donald Sutherland does give a pretty good
performance. He has the challenging task of making his character
somewhat cold and by the book, but at the same time sympathetic.
Despite his icy behavior, I always got a sense that his character was
the right man to head the investigation, knowing instantly what to do
many times. However, I suspect that this good performance was brewed by
Sutherland without any help from director Stuart Orme, since Orme
apparently didn't seem able to punch up any of the other material in
the movie. To be fair, the budget of this movie, while not downright
cheap, does seem to have been limited; there are often a minimum of
props and other production niceties, and there are some special effects
that even for the time look somewhat tacky for a major studio movie. It
wasn't a surprise when my research uncovered that Orme has worked
primarily in television, since there are a lot of close-up shots and
the lack of a "big" and "wide" feel, even in the action sequences. But
the biggest problem with Orme's direction is that there is no feeling
of passion anywhere in the movie. You would think that a slowly
spreading alien invasion would build a feeling of urgency, a feeling of
a big threat, some kind of
great feeling. But that's not the case. There is more often than not an
almost casual feeling, with the so-called big moments playing out with
low energy. This sedate feeling may also come from the fact that the
movie runs way too long at 109 minutes; some tightening may have put in
a little spark. But as it is, The Puppet Masters
is a tired exercise. While they say that copies never do as well as the
original, this is one case when many of those aforementioned rip-offs
prove to be an exception.
(Posted March 10, 2021)
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Check Amazon for availability of Robert A. Heinlein's book
See also: Galaxy Of Terror,
Journey To The Seventh Planet, Lifeform
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