Don Muvo I sincerely miss movies like this. There are a few lame sequences like the car in the warehouse, but the premise of this movie is very appropriate to today, and the cast and crew pull off a very exciting action movie. I found the movie very rewarding, and worth the extra length needed to tell the whole story. Yes there is methane in LA, which is why the rail was cancelled. The ecology tie-in is spot-on. Ecology-friendly politicians are opportunists and a lot of politicians and eco-propagandists run around with chickens with their heads cut off, but this movie makes it quite clear that individuals under pressure will always make the right choices. Cigarette smoking is another important theme, since smoking was about to become virtually illegal in California, and it is what the Aliens needed to simulate their home environment.

david-sarkies The Invaders is more of a mini-series than a movie but I will treat it as one. I saw it over two nights and thought that it was okay. The Invaders has many echos of the Charlie Sheen movie The Arrival. The plot is almost exactly the same. Aliens have landed on Earth and have established themselves. They are now infiltrating the world and slowly terraforming it so that they may be able to survive on what is to them a hostile environment. The movie ends in a way that the battle is won but the war is far from over.Compared to the Arrival, I found The Invaders to be a much more subtle and horrific movie. Though both movies had a hidden alien agenda, the Invaders deals with the aliens using humans to destroy the world for them while the Arrival has the aliens destroying the world themselves. Though both movies have aliens disguised as humans, the aliens in The Invaders use controlled humans to execute their plans while they just stand by and watch. These aliens are far more intelligent than they are in the Arrival.I find that the Invaders is by far a better movie. The actors are unknown which brings the focus more onto what is happening than onto the star whom most people go to see. The plot is very much in the vain of an X-file, with the truth not being exposed to the viewer until near the end. The hero (or more of an anti-hero in the case of the Invaders) is alone in his fight against the aliens. The victory that was won was a very small one, much smaller than the victory in the arrival. At the end the audience is left with the wondering of whether the victory really did something at all. The aliens are entrenched and there is no realistic way that they are going to be removed quickly. I liked this movie. The characters were reasonable and non-stereotypical. Some might find aspects of this unrealistic but I feel that this leads to a new level in characterisation. There is no true pure hero. The setting is very dark and gloomy and so are the characters. There is a huge amount of futility for though the aliens are known the evidence just does not exist. The ending does not offer a solution either for the hero does not become a hero in the Hollywood sense of the word.This movie is spooky and well thought out. It is one that brings out thoughts and really entertains the audience. Though it is long, one does not worry about this for the suspense brings it quickly to the end – and the end leaves you wondering; which to me is the sign of a very good movie.

Reginald D. Garrard Quinn Martin had scored in the mid-sixties with a show starring David Jaansan about a man running for his life from the relentless pursuit of a law officer (Barry Morse). "The Fugitive" was also seeking to find the murderer of his wife: the elusive "one-armed man." This cat-and-mouse drama played out for five successful years.Martin revamped the concept by having architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes), after discovering aliens on this planet, starts his own quest to bring them down, traveling, a la fugitive, throughout the country.This TV-movie tries to update the classic series by having a popular sci-fi star ("Quantum Leap's" Scott Bakula), a popular family show star ("The Walton's" Richard Thomas), and having Roy Thinnes, himself, appear as protagonists.Well, the plot is basically the same, with updated effects, and "contemporary" political and military intrigue. Unfortunately, the characters and the situations are not very involving and the movie only "gains steam," literally when Bakula is aboard an out-of-control subway train.That's when Jon Politto (late of NBC's "Homicide") does the most credible acting as the subway supervisor who must figure out a way to stop the speeding transport. His nail-biting performance is a feat of intensity, unmatched by anyone else in the cast.'Too bad the rest of the film isn't as good as he is.

DC5guy The Invaders by Quinn Martin with Roy Thinnes was successful because, in my opinion, we never saw the true form of the alien beings from a dying world.....There were also certain rules that we learned about what they were and their terrestrial limitations. We learned, for example, that they had taken human form and had to remain in that form while on Earth or they would die. They had been here for untold years before David Vincent's fateful encounter with them one dark night on a lonely road at a deserted diner, thus they had infiltrated positions in society from a prostitute in a bar to positions of power within the Department of Defense. They could be men, women, and even children. Paranoia was rife because one could not be certain that anyone from the paper boy on his bike to a high ranking politician on telly was human. In every way they looked and behaved like normal human beings.We also learned that the aliens did have limitations that could reveal their identity. Though they had the outward appearance of being human, they were very different inside: They had an irregular skeletal structure, no heart, and no blood; when cut, they would not bleed. An X-ray, blood test, or any number of medical procedures would quickly disclose their less than human nature, however a simple test was just to take a pulse which would give the appearance that they were dead even though they were fully conscious and ambulatory.They had to regenerate periodically to remain in human form. Only in human form could they breath our weak 20% mixture of oxygen for limited periods of time before they would have to regenerate; pure oxygen would bring on an instant requirement for regeneration. They knew their limitations and would regenerate long before the need became critical. When, on occasion, the need became critical, they would begin to return to their alien form, but since they could not live on Earth in their native form, they would die before the transformation was complete. Either by design or happenstance, they would incinerate at the moment of death in our atmosphere. Before they could turn to their native form, they would begin to glow (an indication that they were dying and that incineration was imminent). Thus they could be killed as easily as any human, but since David Vincent's need was not just to kill them individually, but to have a living specimen to prove to a disbelieving world that they were here and the nightmare had begun, and since their dedication to their purpose and anonymity was greater than their fear of death, he just could never bring off a perfect disclosure.IN THE FILM VERSION, we were given the hype that this would answer the question of what became of the aliens and David Vincent in the quarter century since the show was terminated without catharsis. The reality was that the only hint of a tie-in was the presence of David Vincent for what amounted to a cameo appearance in the first and second part. They did not have the polished human appearance of those in the series; they looked and behaved like whacked-out zombies and instantly drew suspicion that all was not well. The rules were all changed and they made the mistake of trying to show the aliens in their native form. This killed the mystique and violated the principle that THERE IS NOTHING THAT THE EYE CAN BEHOLD THAT IS AS HORRIFIC AS THAT WHICH CAN BE CONJURED IN THE MIND. With the series, we each had a mental vision of what they looked like that was far more terrifying than the Hollywood magicians could give us at their best, let alone the 1950s style, rubber masked freaks that were offered here.Artistic infidelity is not just limited to book to film translations. The film version of the classic television series of The Invaders shows that in various media, some things do not lend well to artistic license and should be left in the form for which they were designed.