Though much has been discussed and explored in other articles relating to the loathsome plot of the dreaded Mole People, it is a misguided and erroneous belief that Hollywood is the only place where the demented machinations of the Mole People can be found. Their hatred of "Above Dwellers", as they call us, knows no bounds, and their baneful influence can be seen in other countries' productions of awful and hideous works -- case in point, Juan Piquer Simón intellectual insult, 'Los Nuevos Extraterrestres', or 'The Pod People' (1983).
Staring a cast of young people pretending to be actors, a poor man's Grizzly Adams, and a child actor whose strangely laconic, high-pitched voice betrays his inhuman origins, Simón's film opens with a cast and crew credit sequence that is completely unrelated to the film, depicting some sort of alien invasion from a group of lizard-like aliens that are not featured, or even mentioned about, anywhere in his film (This of course is just one of the many baffling continuity errors and jarring edits that will be discussed in greater detail below).
After the aforementioned title sequence with no connection to the film, 'The Pod People' goes on to tell the story of a young, lonely boy named Tommy (Óscar Martín) who finds an alien egg out in the woods, and eventually dubs the hatched creature "Trumpy". Meanwhile, a group of musicians (assuming that one's definition of "musician" is liberal enough) traveling through the area on a camping trip decide to spend the night at Tommy's family's cabin after one of their own is attacked and killed by one of Trumpy's kin, whose bloodthirsty quest to recover Trumpy is hindered not only by Tommy and the musicians, but by a group of ancillary poachers as well.
Though director Simón was supposedly unpleased with the constant intrusion of producers and their forced cuts to his film, he still manages to do his dreadful Mole masters proud with this nigh incoherent and deplorable picture. Hoping to cause headaches and confusion in human audiences, the Mole People's Simón fills his movie with numerous continuity errors, jumping back and forth between daylight and night-time while having his characters' dialogue contradict the obvious, thus completely jarring the audience's sense of time and causing widespread confusion amongst them as they watch the film's cast of untalented actors push on without a sense of irony in their dialogue and with the collective emotional spectrum of a carrot.
But the eyes are not the only victim's of Simón's demented picture. The ears are also treated to a bizarre, demented torture when a song performed by the film's "musicians", "Hear the Engines Roll", is heard near the beginning of the film. Their voices dull and absent of anything akin to life, the actors and actresses sing a song whose nigh incomprehensible chorus no doubt contains subliminal messages meant to instill feelings of anxiety and dread in the audience, or at least baffle them into submission long enough for the Mole People to rise up from their abysms of disgruntled horror and enslave the human race.
This use of jarring edits and eldritch soundtrack, however, reaches its zenith sometime near the end of the second act when Trumpy the alien performs a series of preternatural feats, ostensibly for Tommy's amusement, but really its only an excuse for Simón to litter his film with more baffling and horrific images in order to mentally subdue the human race. A squeaking, obnoxious tune more fit for a child's cartoon show than a science-fiction horror film plays in the background in an infinite loop, while through the magic of "stop-motion animation", a number of toys and objects in Tommy's bedroom began to float up and down in a manic, surreal fashion that would be more than appropriate for an episode of 'Pee-wee's Playhouse' or literally nothing else but that, but which comes off as hokey, bizarre, and unutterably strange within the confines of Simón's movie.
Strangely enough, Trumpy's fellow alien creature does not seem to display these same powers, using the much more tried and true method of "slapping" his human victims to death. Yes, one firm slap from alien creature, and their human victim collapses into a pile of flesh and breathless life, their foreheads marked with a series of dots that are meant to represent the star-cluster from which Trumpy and his kin originated from. Even more strangely, Trumpy touches Tommy a number of times without his earthly companion dying -- but of course, these blatant inconsistencies in the alien's abilities are purposeful, their presence put into the film in order to fracture the logic centers of the audience's mind, which has already reached its breaking point by the time we arrive at the aforementioned scene in Tommy's bedroom.
Unlike previous films discussed and irrevocably connected to the Mole People Cinema Conspiracy, Juan Piquer Simón's 'The Pod People' is even more insidious in that it was originally filmed in French and Spanish, thus ensuring that audiences outside of the English-speaking world are not safe from the dreaded and demented Mole People who are Simón's masters. But fortunately, like the previously mentioned films, one can fight back against the Mole People by viewing their infandous creations through an "ironic lens" -- that is to say, to enjoy the film as an "unintentional comedy" of bad acting, continuity errors, and ridiculous plot contrivances. Though it might not defeat the Mole People, it will, for now at least, keep them at bay as they continue their assault on our senses and intellect and, ultimately, our planet!
Find the nearest Blockbuster near your home so you can rent this film almost immediately. Or, if you prefer that movies came to you instead, set up a Netflix account and start your ordering as soon as possible.
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