launching my #monsterdon thread for #InvadersFromMars1986! Monsterdon is the thing where we watch a monster movie every week and make fun of it; please mute the hash tag if this sounds not fun to you.
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"I'm so glad we got the kid a telescope" is a great #Monsterdon line for this scenario. #InvadersFromMars1986
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The next morning they are enjoying an earthling breakfast, and then the dad wakes up, forgets what coffee is and is missing a slipper. He makes some normal earthling conversation, which is a clue to the audience that he is actually an Evil Alien! Also the Bluefin parasite from that one Star Trek TNG episode has infected his neck, which is another clue.
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Anyway, I would like to say that I think cinema needs more neutral aliens. Like we got the good aliens, like the venus dudes who want to stop nuclear war, and we get the evil aliens, who send zombies to take over earth, but #monsterdon doesn't have too many *neutral* aliens.
This seems strange to me, as most people are kind of neutral, so maybe most aliens should be neutral too? They can have neutral goals like stamp collecting or winning a bake-off.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 after a very normal earthling breakfast, where the zombie alien dad eats a pez dispenser all at once, the kid goes to school and it is frog dissection week, because the 1980s was a cursed time when we killed innocent frogs to teach kids biology facts that they will not remember anyway.
To protest all these rules, we have a frog fight. A girl is tragically frogged and then the kid is taken to the nurse for his part in this amphibian violence.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 the kid is sent home, and the audience is led to conclude that starting a frog fight was a ruse to allow him to go home and investigate the spaceship and also why his dad is not a normal earthling father,
Anyway, he walks home and the door closes on its own and then the TV is flickering weird and turns on a glowing light movie, distracting the kid from his mission. Then a toy R2D2 knockoff surprises him, being driven by his mischievous mother.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 after not much happening, it becomes a night time and we decide to go outside, where the suited father and another suspicious guy jump out of the goddamn bushes and act like normal earthlings. The other dude is I guess also an alien zombie, and he works for the phone company, so he'll probably wander off to do something evil like invent Comcast.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 additional evil zombie like people have appeared in the form of two cops, who also make normal earthling conversation.
I will stress to the casual viewer that these are not the shambling type zombies. they are more like "yes please do not notice that i am six space ferrets in a human suit please" type characters who just act off and do weird things. Like right now on my screen the dad is stealing the kids pennies for some reason... that's weird?
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 the kid wakes up and sees his dad taking his mom over the hill where the spaceship landed, ostensibly to also turn her into an evil zombie. The next day she is acting weird, scratching her neck where the space parasite is, and preparing the Extremely Long Bacon in an Unsettling manner. She just makes a giant plate of burnt bacon and it is somewhat alarming.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 the parents decide to loom over the kid, say that he's not feeling and well and that they should go to a picnic on top of the hill, which makes the child suspicious. They attempt to suppress this suspicion with an awkward hug.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 The parents decide to not zombify the kid yet, and he goes to school, where another child accosts him about the spaceship story he has been telling everyone. He catches one of the spooky cops from earlier talking to his teacher about some evil plan to destroy something that involves George, who I think is the dad's name. The child catches the teacher writing "Field Trip" on the backboard as eerie music plays.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 investigating, the kid follows his teacher to the secret sample room and catches her eating frogs. that is unnatural behavior; you are supposed to vivisect frogs in this society and not eat them, because we have rules.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 characters so far
astronomer kid
suburban dad (space zombie)
suburban mom (space zombie)
biology teacher lady (space zombie)
nice nurse lady
spooky cops (space zombies)
spooky phone guy (space zombie)
other girl child (possible space zombie?)
other boy childso far none of these characters are tanks, to my dismay. there is a spaceship character though, but it is invisible now.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars So far this movie seems a little better than the original, in that it is doing a better job at being unsettling. It seems to be playing more on the distrust children have of adults than the original. Also, the sound track is tense and doesn't quite slap but is still pretty good.
However, so far there is not near enough gratuitous tank footage, the original movie's main redeeming quality.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 anyway, the kid goes to the nice nurse lady, and tells her everything the audience knows, after checking to make sure that she doesn't have a thing on the back of her neck. the nice nurse lady protects the kid from the biology teacher and helps him escape; he hides in the biology teacher's van; the biology teacher revealing that the parents plan to convert the child.
we get a montage of spooky biology props ooo spoooky!.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 protip kid, if you raise your head in the back of a van the driver should be able to see you, because vans have rear view mirrors.
remember this the next time you are hiding in a van from space zombies who can drive.
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#Monsterdon #InvadersFromMars1986 having eluded his very near sighted biology teacher, the kid wanders through some sandy terrain and finds a smooth glowing tunnel, which was probably made by aliens and is probably where the spaceship was hiding.
He explores this dungeon and we see some cool practical effects as a weird bug technology looking sliding door opens and he follows the biology teacher in to watch her commune with Very Round Aliens around a dance floor.
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Hi #Monsterdon, what's your favorite martian spaceship set dressing?
#InvadersFromMars1986