Funny Faces

By R.C.

STRANGE INVADERS

Directed by Michael Laughlin Screenplay by William Condon and Michael Laughlin

Tired of directors who spoof old sci-fi and horror movies? Who isn't? A genre spoof is usually an act of artistic masturbation: it exercises the adolescent imagination over an object that may have been too trashy ever to get excited about.In the process, spoofery tends to diminish both its own value and whatever power or charm the original work might have had. It is nostalgia calcified into camp.

Two cheers, then, for Strange Invaders, a fond burlesque of alien-visitors movies of the 1950s. Indeed, its story begins in that Eisenhower decade of blandness and paranoia. A spaceship full of E.T.s has come to earth on a 25-year leash; now time is up and, just before the aliens leave, some humans are getting nosy. Which are the victims, which the villains? Hard to tell, since the reptilian aliens have assumed human form -- except that they dress, speak and act as if it were still 1958 and they were all featured players on Father Knows Best.

Like the best science fiction, Strange Invaders is also social satire -- in this case, on the very '80s belief that style is content, that anyone wearing or talking in the wrong fashion must be as odd as outer space. By slapping the two decades to gether (in Susanna Moore's knowing decor and costumes), Strange Invaders exposes the banalities and excesses of the popular art they produced. The classy cast (Paul LeMat, Louise Fletcher, Nancy Allen, Diana Scarwid) plays it deadpan but without a hint of derision, and coaxes the movie toward a full-throttle inspirational climax. As an evocation of the American '50s going on '80s, Strange Invaders is what Twilight Zone: The Movie could and should have been. --R.C. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.