Dr. William Tracy (Richard Dyszel) receives a call in the middle of the night from David Harmon (Greg Dohler), one of his former students. David tells him that he saw what looked like a UFO or meteorite falling from the sky near a town called Harleyville. Dr. Tracy agrees to meet David outside of town, but it will take him six hours to get there. David agrees to wait.
The next morning, the Montague family is having breakfast. At the table are Carol (Faye Tilles), J.J. (George Stover), Annie (Kim Pfeiffer), and their abusive alcoholic father, Joe (Richard Ruxton). At the stove cooking is the kids’ mother, Ethel (Anne Frith). Joe and Carol get into an argument about Carol’s boyfriend Mike Smith (Cliff Lambert). When Joe slaps Carol she tosses a glass of water in his face and runs out of the house. Joe grabs his shotgun and chases after his daughter. Ethel sends J.J. after them to try to stop his father.
Joe and JJ run into a green alien (Glenn Barnes) from outer space. When Joe shoots at him, the alien drops a large glowing ball that is the power source for his weapon. Joe calls his friend Frank Custer (Don Leifert) to show him the ball and tells him about the alien. Frank sees dollar signs. Knowing the alien is worth a ton of money he convinces a bunch of yahoos at the local bar to hunt down the creature. They capture it and tie it up in Joe’s garage. When Dr. Tracy hears about the alien, he and David break into the garage and free it. Everyone runs away with Joe and Frank in hot pursuit.
Carol knows where the alien weapon is hidden. She steals it and heads out into the woods. When she finds him, she gives him back his weapon. Frank ends up shooting Dr. Tracy. The alien shoots Frank before he can kill David. When David runs away Joe shoots the alien and takes back the alien gun. As Joe sits in the living room getting drunk, his family devises a plan to get the alien weapon away from him, hoping to return it to the alien.
“Galaxy Invader” AKA “The Galaxy Invader” was released in 1985 and was written and directed by Don Dohler. It is a direct-to-video science fiction film. The cast of this Baltimore, Maryland regional movie is comprised of Dohler’s friends and family.
Don Dohler is well known for his crappy movies. This one included. It ends up being unintentionally funny at times. There’s nothing like drunk rednecks running around the woods at night with guns looking for aliens to liven things up. There is also a wildly ridiculous ending to the movie that is also absurdly funny. Toss in some bad acting and horrendous southern twang and it goes from science fiction to comedy, but not very gracefully. The creature costume is your basic guy in a rubber suit. I actually liked the silly thing.
Some of the movie was used in the 1990 Spanish film “Pod People”, although without permission from Dohler. Some have referred to this movie as “hicksploitation”. Sounds like a subgenre to me.
*Spoiler: The body thrown off a cliff at the end of the movie is made of PVC piping. Duh*