Joanie (Janice Fabian) and Billy (Christian Lee) are teenagers hanging out at the local movie theater. The theater is showing an all-night science fiction movie marathon of old “B” films from the fifties. As the marathon gets underway, an alien spaceship lands on top of the theater. The insect-like aliens begin taking over the owner and employees of the theater.
The aliens are under the authority of a one-eyed lump the others call the Master. The Master has a plan to take over the world. The first part of his strategy is to make the patrons of the theater numb by over stimulating their brains with bad films before implementing Plan 9 at midnight. Joanie and Billy see what is happening and hide so as not to get caught by the aliens.
As the audience watches what is happening on screen the aliens begin replacing them with pods. Joanie and Billy know that they can’t stop the aliens by themselves. They enlist the help of their friends Tim (Larry Bagby) and Mike (Dana Young) to secure the evidence needed to prove the aliens exist and to put a monkey wrench into their plans.
“Invasion Earth: The Aliens Are Here” was released in 1988 and was directed by George Maitland. It is a science fiction comedy film.
The alien invasion scenes of the film are interspersed with footage from old science fiction movies from the fifties. Don’t get me wrong, I love stock footage, and stock footage of old science fiction movies is right up my alley. The problem is that is all there is. Even the stock footage is inter-spliced with other stock footage. There were parts where scenes from the movie corresponded with scenes from some of the movie clips that were shown which added a little texture to the movie. The number of clips was staggering and, for the most part, the editing of them was actually good. It took a while to appreciate that the editing was the best part of the movie.
The main drawback of the film was the new footage. It was rather boring with bad acting and bad dialogue. At times I got annoyed because the clips were interrupted by insect aliens telling lame jokes and doing some slapstick. The plot, such as it was, wasn’t really developed very well. In the right hands it could have been a much better parody of science fiction classics. I could see where they were trying to go with it, but they never really made it. Instead, it is a good clip compilation movie with an irritating story.
The movie was filmed at the Old Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro California.