Seedpeople (1992)

Episode 211, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we are well into some requests this month. It’s been a bit of a while since we sat down just to have a good, fun, goofy, dumb horror movie, right? Yeah. So going through the list, I could see no better title than seed people.

Craig: Why not?

Todd: Why not Seedpeople? It was recommended by Mikey. So thank you, Mikey for this seed people is a Charles band production from 1992.

And, uh, as a Charles band production, I don’t know. I mean, we’ve done some Charles band films before. This guy has a studio called full moon productions, and he has produced over 300 movies. He’s directed. Almost 70 of them, and they’re responsible for such classics as Dollman and Puppet Master, Evil Bong one, two, three, four and five.

The Gingerdead Man. I mean it’s, it’s mostly straight to video. Schlock is generally what it is. There’s some good things in there, just depending on the movie, depending on the script and depending on the director. As it always is. So, uh, this film seed people is a straight off rip off of, um,

Craig: Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Todd: Thank you. Just, just any of these films where some alien, literal alien meter meteorite crashes to earth. And starts to infect people and you don’t know who’s a seed person and who’s not. Ooh, so scary. So this is a, this is the movie. This is basically what it is. Uh, I’d never seen it before. Never heard of it before.

Uh, but thank you, Mikey for recommending it. How about you, Craig? Is there any chance you’d run across this thing. No,

Craig: no, I never heard of it. You know, I’ve, uh, Charles Band stuff. It has a reputation for not being the highest quality, uh, cinema. But like you said, every once in a while there’s something fun.

I mean, there are at least, uh, kind of fun to sit through and giggle at. Um, and that’s what I was looking forward to here. I thought, okay, you know, it’s, it’s going to be good. Fee, it’s going to be silly practical affects. And I was down for that. Uh, when it was over, I found myself thinking, gosh, if you’re going to be this bad, like at least be funny.

Todd: Cause it

Craig: wasn’t even funny. Like there were a couple of funny parts where I laughed out loud, but for the most part it took itself really seriously. I’m like, how can you take yourself this seriously? This is. Not good stuff. Yeah, but that’s okay. You know, seed people, whatever.

Todd: He’s kind of like a low rent.

Roger Corman in a way, and the scripts usually are, I don’t know, they’re often kind of like this, like you said, it’s a silly concept and they take it too seriously. And so the acting quality is actually passable, I think for most of the movie. It’s not bad. It’s not. It’s not laugh out loud. Funny. Uh, in most parts, uh, for the acting wise, um, the script, you know what I was thinking when I was watching this movie, especially by the end, I thought, cause I’m going back and I’m trying to think why is this movie so bad?

It shouldn’t be this bad. And it wasn’t like I wanted to turn it off, but I kind of did. It was just blah. And.

Craig: I see

Todd: it, and I went back and I thought about it like the script. If you would take in the script maybe, and you had just put it in the hands of. A completely different team. It might’ve actually been a pretty good movie.

It almost had all of the elements, even kind of cliche. You got the new guy in town, or who’s returning to small town, a meteorite is there, uh, people are getting possessed. There’s a girl running around who kind of discovers it before anybody else. Then it turns out there’s the kooky, crazy, wacky, but super smart guy in town, and nobody takes seriously but really knows exactly what’s going on.

Get the sheriff involved. I mean, there’s just all these elements that could have worked. They wouldn’t have been particularly original, but it would have made a better movie. I think if it just didn’t feel so low rent, you know, every bit of it.

Craig: It did. And we were, okay. So we were supposed to record this podcast yesterday, but I couldn’t sleep the night before.

And so I was dog tired and then I begged Todd to put it off for a day. So that means that, uh, I watched this the day before yesterday and I barely remember anything about it. Like, that’s how impactful it was for me. Like, you know. I don’t know. Some like bushes roll around and jump on people.

Todd: That’s,

Craig: that’s, I mean, that’s, there’s a guy who’s kind of like a knockoff of doc from back to the future and he’s goofy.

Like that’s, that’s about it. I, I,

Todd: so

Craig: thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week,

Todd: but

Craig: no, I don’t know. Like, I just don’t know much, uh, what to say about it. So maybe we should just jump in and see where it goes.

Todd: Oh, God. There are a lot of characters in this movie too.

Craig: Too many, too. And all of the guys look the same.

Like I couldn’t tell except for the main guy who looks like. Okay. So the main guy’s name is Tom. Um, and he’s a geologist cause that matters apparently. And uh, when the movie opens up, he’s strapped into a hospital bed with a head injury, like a doctor’s talking to him. And then an FBI guy comes in and talks to them and he’s like, Oh, don’t worry, everything’s fine.

I just. Need to get your story so we know what’s going on. So, uh, tell us your story. And so then that’s what the whole movie is. It’s this guy narrating this story and it’s super obnoxious fashion, like really annoying voiceover narration throughout the whole movie. Like, uh, it just drove me crazy. Like, you be watching the movie and here he’s like.

You know, walking up to a building or something. And then I decided I need to go over to so-and-so’s house. Like we’re watching you do it. You don’t need to tell us what we have eyeballs. But he’s telling this whole story and he talks about how he’s going back to his hometown of a comet Valley. Cause you gotta, you know, get right on the nose right there.

Common Valley, the whole town is going to be closed for three days because there’s only one way in and one way out in this one bridge. And, uh, they’re going to be working on the bridge for three days to, nobody can go anywhere. And he’s gonna. Be staying at his ex girlfriend’s parents bed and breakfast, and her name is Heidi.

And the first thing that bothered me was this guy, Tom, looks like he’s gotta be, at least in his forties and this girl who’s supposed to be as ex looks like she should be his daughter. Like what other lifetime did they have a relationship because gross,

Todd: maybe what it was like 10 years ago I thought was sheep.

12 or 16 yeah.

Craig: And he was like in his mid thirties you?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And then, and then she’s got like, I don’t know what, like her sister died or something. And so now she’s helping. Being to raise her niece who looks to be like the exact same age as her, but this the actor who plays her niece that the niece’s name is Kim and the girl who plays her, his name is Holly fields.

Not that it matters cause I’ve never heard of any of these actors before. But this girl looks like she’s the same age as her aunt, but they’re dressing her in clothes that are ridiculously too young for her. Like, like they. This twenties yeah. They took this 20 something year old woman and put her in like pigtail braids and jumpers and they’re like, Oh, she’s 12 no, like,

Todd: like an eighties Dorothy Gale is exactly what she

eats

Todd: and she kind of acts like it too. Yeah. The whole setup is kind of silly. I will say that this script is smart in that it’s. The person who wrote it is seen a lot of movies and they do get to the point pretty quickly and they are pretty economical about getting all this information across. Even though it’s mostly just said through oftentimes a little cheesy dialogue, like you can tell they just needed an excuse to work in the backstory of each of these characters.

I love it when he goes in and he staying at his ex girlfriend’s place apparently was okay enough to book, but when he goes in. She’s kind of standoffish to him for no really good reason. Very

Craig: nice. The place looks good. You’ve changed the place a lot,

but

Todd: you haven’t changed.

Craig: Is this supposed to be a compliment? You miss my mom. Well, it is, and you look right. I’m not the complacent. A little butterfly was when you and I were an item

Todd: complacent.

Craig: When Sally died, I not only lost my sister-in-law, I lost my best friend, and I know it must have been hard.

Yeah, it still is. And I’m the designated mother for Kim.

Todd: Now

Craig: she’s going through a difficult age and I just take it one day at a time.

Todd: So what’s it like

Craig: changing your home into a bed and breakfast? What’s in, I think divorce was still living with your ex wife,

Todd: like the acting. It’s just so bad that everything is just a little flat, so you don’t really believe it.

You feel like you’re watching a movie. So all these relationships, like you said, the age of the actors immediately comes to mind. Some of the still to dialogue and the way it’s delivered, just it doesn’t really pull you in. To the story, you know, you’re watching a movie and then the whole premise that, and this is maybe my biggest beef with it, this whole premise there, you’ve got this town called common Valley.

There’s one bridge in and out of this town. Okay. I’m trying to imagine that scenario,

Craig: right? Like it’s on like a floating Island or something like that.

Todd: It’s clearly not. And this little rinky dink bridge is definitely not. Anything that would be an entrance or an exit to a town where that was so critical and so crucial, and correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t people driving across it the whole time, even though they’re supposed to be working on it?

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know.

Todd: And then he’s being called back into this town by an old friend whose name is Thurman. He’s being called back to give a speech on meteorites. So he’s presumably come in, I don’t know, from big city, New York or something to this tiny town. All expenses paid to speak about meteorites.

When he ends up giving this speech, it’s like to 12 people. Yeah. In what looks like a little room in the

Craig: high school gymnasium. Yeah, I know.

Todd: No, not a, not a gymnasium. It’s like a classroom

Craig: and

Todd: just everything about this movie is so small, you know, like there’s no ambition here

Craig: and he doesn’t say anything that I couldn’t say.

After looking in like a third grade geography book or not geography, geology book. He’s like, when rocks fall out of the sky, they’re called meteors, but when little pieces break off and land, they’re called media rights. That is his whole lecture

and maybe there is some here.

Todd: Well to be fair, he does work in the history of the town, and that’s where we get, that’s the whole purpose for the scene, right? It’s for us to know that there’s a reason this place is called common Valley and that is theirs. I don’t know if it was an old legend or something that’s just passed down by the generations, or if they just infer a whole.

Hell of a lot from some abstract cave drawings in a cave that’s there.

Craig: Yeah. And, and there are these hieroglyphics that look like they were drawn in crayon in this cave, the size of a shoe box. You’re right. Anybody can just walk right in and out of it. Yeah. It’s like

Todd: that’s,

Craig: it’s not, it’s not even like, it’s not even like they’re discovering these hieroglyphics, like they’re there and everybody knows it

Todd: or they’re just going to check them out again.

Craig: Yeah. Just take a look.

Todd: It’s part of the circuit, you know? I know what this is like. You go back to a small town, there’s not a lot to do. You know, you hit up the pizza place, you always hit up, you go to the park and you know to that. He’ll let you always play ball on and sit and have a picnic, and you’ve got a circuit of things you gotta do before you get down to whatever your business is that you’re there for.

Right. And you see people or whatever. So I get it. I guess that’s what they’re doing. And like you and I are saying, everything is just so small. It’s like an ambitious script with a very low production quality and nobody really cares.

Craig: Well, it’s just that whole. Indian cave drawing thing just kills me. In my small town, we have native American, like rock etchings and stuff, and I’ve seen them, but it’s not like I have to revisit them every few months to remember what they look like, like they’re there, I know it.

It’s okay. Anyway, whatever. And then they try to establish conflict in just dumb ways. Like Kim, the young girl who’s not really is convinced that. The made at the bed and breakfast. Mrs. Santiago is, is acting strangely, and she’s like, she can read my mind. I’ll prove it. And like somehow later she’s going to prove that this lady can read her mind by videotaping her.

I don’t under,

Todd: I just runs around and videotape stuff, which is just an excuse to

Craig: get bad video footage.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that’s her quirk. Right?

Craig: Right. And then there’s ed, who’s a farmer who’s mad because people are out in the middle of the night. What he thinks, like looking for meteorites and his orchard or whatever, which it turns out is true.

That’s precisely what they’re doing that for bad reasons. And there’s, there’s Brad who’s a deputy sheriff who’s like interested in Heidi. See way too many people. I don’t care about any of them. I can’t keep track of who they are. So forgive me as we go through this, when I’m calling people the wrong names, because I didn’t know who was.

Todd: And then there’s a guy named Frank Wright who’s over at the bed and breakfast eating with them, and he’s the

Craig: father that’s, that’s, that’s Kim’s dad, right? Kim’s dad. Right. I’ve been trying to get to this part because it’s my favorite part of the whole

Todd: movie. What you’re going to say.

Craig: Exactly.

Todd: You’re going to start talking about, we could just make the whole podcast about the scene, by the way, and then I think, let’s do.

Craig: So, so he’s a farmer, he’s her dad. Um, and apparently I guess like what they farm in this town is apples cause everybody’s always out in these orchards. And so he goes out to like check his orchards or whatever, and he turns on the irrigation thing and then he walks into kind of this little kind of clearing and there’s this one tree that’s got.

Something weird on it. Now the, the quality of the video that I was watching was so poor that I really couldn’t even tell like, I guess what they were like alien flowers or something like growing on this tree

Todd: or something. Yeah. Maybe what you could

say

Craig: Harry pods and, and like he pokes the middle of one.

And it starts to like ooze a little bit and then it just comes all over his face.

Todd: I felt dirty, white,

thick,

Craig: white, slimy, Spood all over his body.

Todd: It doesn’t stop.

Craig: And I, and I was like, I feel like I’ve seen this movie before. Um. I think I have. Maybe

Todd: you probably did

Craig: anyway.

Todd: Oh my God. There’s a lot of it. It’s,

Craig: it’s a lot

Todd: more than more than humanly or alien only possible one would think,

Craig: well, I don’t know. I’ll sit and get some links.

Uh, but so anyways, so then like, he’s like on the ground, drowning in stuff, and, uh, I guess it kind of like dissolves him. And. Like an alien comes out and these aliens are like coconuts with arms and scary mouths and they walk, they don’t have any legs, so they walk on their arms and like the phone in his truck starts ringing.

So like the little coconut with arms. Like starts waddling over to the truck. The person on the other line is like, hello, and all of a sudden it’s Frank again. So basically what’s going on here is these people get it. It’s, it’s difficult to say because in this instance, it’s like his body gets decomposed and comes back as something else, but he can still turn into his human form.

But then later in the movie, it seems like under certain circumstances, they can just be cured. So I don’t really know how that works.

Todd: It’s just silly. They want, you know, they wanted to have a nice, cool, special effect with these aliens, but then they also wanted to create the situation where they didn’t have to have too many special effects.

So it’s invasion of the body snatchers where then these aliens can just. We don’t see them really well. Maybe once we see them transformed, don’t we? But generally they just, um, suddenly are people again, they walk around and then from here on out, the movie becomes pretty slow because there’s just a bunch of investigation going on.

And what spurs it all is somebody gets killed.

Craig: It’s Thurman that gets killed first. Kim. Like plays a little cat and mouse game with Mrs. Santiago where she’s like trying to videotape her. Um, but she’s not really getting anything. And then like her huge video camera like malfunctions for a second or something.

And while she’s messing with that, apparently Mrs. Santiago turns into her seed person thing and like rolls at her. It’s so weird. Like I read that the way that they did this, they, because they roll like critters, like, yeah, there’s no better way to describe it. That’s exactly what they look like. Except bigger.

They roll around like the critters do. And um, the way they did it was they just like covered balls in some kind of material and then strung them along behind remote control cars. And it pretty much looks like that. It doesn’t look good at all.

Todd: Yeah, there’s some behind the scenes footage. I mean, they’re really proud of of this.

I guess if you rented a full moon video or you bought one at the end of every one, they have a behind the scenes stuff and previews of other attractions that they offer. I watched a whole 25 minute deal on this movie, believe it or not, that was up on YouTube that taught, that showed you all the special effects and everything that was going on in the background.

And honestly, it looked like a pretty good time. I mean, everybody. Was definitely having a ball. Making the movie was very proud of what they were doing and the special effects from the behind the scenes footage. Look. Kind of cool and professional, but on the screen itself, um, they’re lacking. But for a low budget eighties movie, we’ve seen much worse.

Craig: Oh, definitely.

Todd: Creature effects and things like that. So actually it’s. I put it middle of the road.

Craig: Yeah. I suppose that you could also say that it’s kind of a throwback to these monster movies of the fifties and if that’s what they were going for, I get it. You know, I, I see it there. It just doesn’t, it seemed like if you are going to do a throwback.

To this kind of cheesy movie from the fifties or whatever that you might be a little bit more tongue in cheek about it, but yeah, whatever you were talking about how Thurman gets killed. Okay, so Thurman and like a farmer or something. I don’t remember who it was. They’re out like looking around. And they find the weird tree too, and it’s my favorite line.

Ed, the farmer, I think it’s ed. I don’t know. Whatever farmer says what in a Dean dong have come a doodle. Hell is that? Yeah. Yeah. And that was worth watching the whole movie.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: Seriously. I’m done that. I mean, that’s it. That’s I, I’ve just been waiting to say that. Take it, take it away.

Todd: After his exclamation, they blow corn pops at him, this pit pod, so it doesn’t just, you know, splurge.

It also spits. So it doesn’t even have an internal. Consistency or logic,

but it’s these end up all over his body and he just kind of falls down and Thurman runs away at the same time. We’ve got this crazy guy doc. He is strung up with fluorescent tubes half the time and is just kind of running around chattering most of the time, and I guess he lives. In a house with a big greenhouse attached in the woods.

And at this point he’s, Oh, he’s also a drunk. So at this point he had gotten into his car, his truck, and was driving down the road drunk. And Thurman ran out in front of him and he hit him. And I’m not really sure why doctors doesn’t get arrested or

Craig: they can’t find him. Somehow they know. Like because they find a his hubcap or something.

They know it was him.

Todd: Oh, that was hilarious. He holds up this generic hub gap and says there’s only one man in town who has a truck with hubcaps like this here. Right. Like, it looks like every other truck.

Craig: Okay. Yeah. And then Burt, who’s Bert? I don’t know Bert.

Todd: He’s the greenhouse guy.

Craig: He’s like, doc roller, right?

Todd: None. Well, doc has a greenhouse, but Bert is like a, he’s got kind of a, I don’t know if he starts the trees or whatever. He’s got a greenhouse that he tends to, he’s a farmer.

Craig: Yeah. Another farmer. Yeah. He finds after the, okay, so they have that meeting that we already talked about and then he takes Tom out to his trunk and he’s like, look, I found this big.

Todd: I have

Craig: never seen anything like this. My friend

Todd: never,

Craig: what do you say? We pulled her out of here and take over to Thurman’s warehouse so I can run some tests on and give them a

Todd: better look at it. Do whatever you want to do. You think it looks like a meteorite?

Craig: Yes, sir. I sure did. I sure do. And even better than that, you see the sediment that

Todd: she’s stuck in here?

I can

Craig: pull this into a carbon date on it. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll be able to

Todd: tell when she fell to earth, it was about four or 500

Craig: years ago. You may have the rock in the pictograph there, my friend. This might be the comment down immediate, right, so what does he do? He takes it to Kim, the little girl, and she’s like cleaning it up.

And she’s like, it looks like a giant peach pit, and yes, yes it does. That’s exactly what it looks like.

Todd: This is supposed to be their bonding moment. I think they’ve, they’re in the garage, real scientific location. They’re in the garage and he and her and Heidi are all three there. It seems like they’re trying to give the impression that he’s trying to win Heidi over by being nice to Kim, I guess, and give her things to do.

We’re going to see more of these seeds, which look like giant peach pits later. Doc’s got a whole bunch of them in his area.

Craig: Right. Well, and somewhere in there, Tom sees Mrs. Santiago as a seed person, but like isn’t particularly concerned about it. That’s so weird. Like, like, like she I think is in his room, like snooping around and the door is locked and so like he’s fumbling with.

The door. And then when he opens up the door, there’s like this eight foot tall monster that like lunges at him and he falls over backwards. But then Mrs. Santiago comes out and Heidi’s like, what’s going on? He’s like, I don’t know. That was really weird.

Todd: There

Craig: was something in there. So strange.

Todd: Oh, well. And then he just keeps, Oh, well. This is his investigation time, right? He goes to,

Craig: he goes to docks.

Todd: Well, he goes to Burt first of all, and he talks to him and, uh, Burt says, you know, doc, people say he’s crazy, but actually he’s pretty smart. I’m like, okay, maybe I can go to docs.

So then he goes to docs and pokes around and he sees a couple of these seeds, and I don’t know. Cuts one open or what is open and there’s gooey stuff inside. Moving around

Craig: like it looks like green worms, like big. It was weird. Yeah, it was gross. Um, and I didn’t really get it. Like, I didn’t really understand.

I didn’t, because then he opens up, um, like docs, like journal or science notes or something. Um, and on one page it says, today I did it sprouts. And so he thinks that doc is trying to. I don’t know. Sprout the seeds, I guess. Um, but then later when he confronts doc about, it’s like, no. He’s like, I’m not trying to do that.

You know, you saw those seeds in water. That wasn’t water though. That was like, um, herbicide or something, and I never really got it because on the one hand, it seems like. Doc knows that these things are dangerous and he’s trying to stop the spread, but then on the other hand, he’s also like scientifically curious and wants to know how they work.

It’s a mess.

Todd: There is a mess. I mean, a little bit later in the movie when we get kind of to the climax and they’re going to go after and they’re going to kill all these. He has kind of a little throwaway bit where he runs up to uh, Tom and it’s like, can’t we just keep one seed? Can’t we just keep one just for scientific experiments?

And Tom’s like, are you mad? And that’s sort of the end of that. There’s no real intrigue. There were some, you know, it’s not an alien situation where somebody is trying to sneak away something for, for their own benefit. At one point, doc goes and visits Tom in his garage and he’s acting all crazy and holds a gun up to him.

They have kind of a lame fight slash, standoff, and then the sheriff pulls up for no good reason and comes out and Tom walks up to him and says, Oh, I found doc and the Sheriff’s like, get out of my way. I’m going to handle this from now on. Antagonistic for no reason at all, and then goes in and has another super lame like prowling around aiming his gun around the door, trying to find doc thing.

I think at some point in here, doc says a poem too, which I guess is supposed to be sinister, but just comes across really silly.

Craig: Yeah. I forgot there was a poem. It was a poem. I suppose you don’t know that what you were examining is not mineral, so why don’t you tell me what it is and doc. This was the goal.

Of the leaf and the root. This little grade is the ultimate frog for this. The blossom burn, it’s our, this is the awesome vessel of our right. I do know at one point he very ominously says, plants are the most cunning and Savage of all life forms, and. And the, and Tom’s like, what are you talking about?

They can’t even move. And he’s like, well, maybe they can’t that seeds, cans, seeds are chasing us. I don’t even understand what is happening. Like I are are these are these seeds? Like, okay, so these monsters are the monsters themselves. Seeds. Well, I don’t think,

Todd: I think it’s sort of predicated on the idea.

And he says this too. Seeds are extremely durable, like you can freeze them, you can like, you know, keep them for, for thousands of years somewhere and then they’ll still sprout under the right conditions. You can send them into space is basically saying these seeds from space are not to be messed with.

It could be anything that could be thousands of years old. We don’t know where they’re from, but those seeds themselves are super, super durable. And that’s why, you know, that’s why they’re so. Scary. I get the seeds are, I don’t think the creatures that come from them seem all that durable at all.

Craig: Well, but Tom says to the, um, FBI guy, at some point, he, he’s like, did I get them all?

Did I get them all? And the guy’s like, Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. And he’s like, no, you don’t understand. You can’t just shoot a seed. You have to hack it into a million pieces. And then later, like, or earlier or whatever in the timeline. I don’t know. Jumps back and forth cause it’s all flashback at some point at the end when there’s like the big confrontation showdown, he does, he like takes a hatchet and like he’s like tearing up these seed people.

So I don’t, and it is called seed people. So I think the monsters are supposed to be seeds, but I don’t know what they’re trying to grow. And I will. I don’t know. I don’t get it. Um, there’s a scene where, um, the girl, Kim sees people looking around out in the orchard with flashlights at night. She takes the video camera out there and it’s a whole bunch of people.

One of them’s are dad, and at some point, like one of the seed things rolls at her and she videotapes that and another one flies over her head like. Just in this one moment. They can fly too. I get that. But then she sees her dad like standing right in front of her and he’s like, come to daddy. And she’s like, yeah, you’re not my daddy.

And then she points the camera at him and in this really, really low fi camera view, we see him. Transform, and it was so obvious that they had to do it through this low fi lens just because the special effects work was so low budget, and that’s the only time we ever actually see anybody transform.

Usually it’s just somebody from off screen, like tosses one of those things at somebody or they’re rolling around on the ground

Todd: and then they wrestle with it as though the laws of gravity no longer apply. And you know right. You can’t just throw it off of you. We had this problem too with another Charles band production.

I think it was a puppet master.

Craig: Maybe. I don’t know.

Todd: This is the point at which, you know, we realize they’ll pretty much the whole town apparently now set for these few people have been transformed into seed people and they’re walking around more or less like zombies in invasion of the body snatchers and there’s this giant seed with little seedlets.

I guess.

Craig: Coming that they’re digging up,

Todd: that they’re digging up. So I guess the idea is this is, this is the big meteorite that the town is known for, uh, that they’ve all just suddenly dug up. So it’s right there. It’s just, it’s like, I don’t think it was dug up. It’s a mound. It’s like. Not just an inch or two below the surface, but it’s so obvious.

It was right by the road. Yeah. Right.

Craig: Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s huge, right? It’s like the size of a camper. The movie doesn’t even make any sense to me. Okay. So Frank got spooked on and then that other guy got covered in corn pops, but then like Frank can just kind of hypnotize Heidi and Kim into being seed people and then all of a sudden they are.

For a while and there

Todd: are something

Craig: in like reaches out one of his seed people arms and then all of a sudden they are seed people too. But at some point, I don’t know, like, so Tom is still normal and he’s running around with doc, I guess. And in some, in some points, the seed people are like chasing after them and trying to attack them.

And then in another part. I feel like doc and Tom are standing, I don’t know, like in a garage or something and Heidi and Frank show up in a truck and like start loading or unloading a truck or something and Frank’s like, they can’t even see us. And ducks like, yeah, they can see us. We just are in consequential.

Like since when, like they’ve been chasing you for the whole rest of the movie. Now they just don’t care.

Todd: But then they do care. Cause then they go into the shed and they run at them and they kind of duck out of the way and they fall against a table and there’s an ultraviolet light that’s swinging overhead because they’re in a grow room.

I don’t, none of this makes sense to me because ultra God. Alright. And so. We were introduced the ultraviolet light thing in the greenhouse where Bert worked. He apparently has all these ultraviolet lights strung up over the plants. Now, I don’t know if you know anything about ultraviolet light, but pure ultraviolet light is going to kill plants, right?

I know this because we turn on ultraviolet lights here at the school where I work. We actually have them installed in the rooms so that like once or twice a week, it sort of sanitizes the room and everybody’s got to take the plants out. Before we turn that on. So they do have a negative effect on plants, and that is ultimately the crutch that they find the swing ultraviolet light swings back and forth.

They fall against this table and suddenly they’re staring up at it and they look, and the doc and Tom look at each other and they’re like, it must be the ultraviolet light, and suddenly these two are back to normal again. They’re fine. There’s no transformation, there’s no whatever. It’s just like I’m purified, I guess.

So I guess it. It did kill the plants. Now doc himself has been streaming himself up with ultraviolet lights this whole time, so you get the impression that he knows that, that he already knows their weakness, that he’s discovered it. But here it’s like he’s rediscovering it for the second time or getting proof that it works.

I don’t know. Then they go to Bert. Bert isn’t a greenhouse and that, and he has tons of ultraviolet lights. And so they, you know, our take dig, they enlist him to take all that stuff down. They’re going to make a big trap for these seed people. Why does Burt’s greenhouse have so many ultraviolet lights installed in there?

If they kill plants? Maybe there’s something I don’t understand. I mean, grow lights are different, right? They like mimic the sun,

Craig: right?

Todd: But what we’re talking about here is ultraviolet lights, which would kill the plants and it’s going to kill the seed people. So anyway, it doesn’t make sense to me. But Burt’s easy to convince about this whole scheme with about a few sentences, older seed people invading.

Okay. I knew something funny he was going on, uh, and they grab up all the lights and then they go and they make, uh, essentially, gosh, it was like return to the living dead to right where they make, um, kind of a tunnel except, and I think returning, living dead too. They were, they were rigging up with electricity.

This is almost no different because they rig up this kind of frame. Over the road with all these ultraviolet lights in it, and they have a really long extension cord to plug it into this power thing that is continuously and constantly sparking

Craig: and they set up, it’s like a frame is what it looks like of these ultraviolet lights.

And, and I think it’s Brad. And Heidi. I think the seed people still think that Brad and Heidi are seed people so they can infiltrate and they like are driving the truck that they’ve loaded the seed people have loaded all these pods into,

Todd: yeah, they kind of pretend to be them again, don’t they? That surprised me because I didn’t see a scene in between.

All of a sudden I saw the two of them driving a truck all of a sudden, and I thought, how did they get. Back there.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. They just went back, I guess, and so I get, they think that the seed people are going to, are going to lead them right by this power plants or whatever it is. They call it the substation.

I think they think that they’re going to lead them right by there, but at the last minute, the seed people like try to divert them away so they have to blow their cover and drive the truck. Really fast towards this substation and they get there, but the seed people are like attacking them. And so they very haphazardly go into this light tunnel and like they crash it up.

A good part of it. And I’m thinking, there’s no way this is gonna work now, but apparently also in crashing it like. They moved it just enough so that the extension cord won’t read.

Todd: I have this, I have this problem in my living room all the time, by the way,

Craig: and it’s, it’s, it’s right out of. And, okay, so every, you know, everything’s going crazy.

The seed people are fighting the Nazi people, and doc meanwhile has these two ends of the cord and it’s not even like, and it’s the extension cord. It’s like the wire has been severed, so he’s got to live wires. And he can’t get them together. So the way that I viewed what happened, and tell me if I’m wrong here, didn’t he like use himself to close the circuit?

Todd: Yeah. So idea was he was being electrocuted through the, you had to close the circuit,

Craig: right. So then all the lights come on and all of the seed people are cured. Except for Mrs. Santiago, apparently for reasons unexplained, I guess the light didn’t touch her or something. And so she jumps in the car and starts driving off, and then Tom is in the back of the truck trying to stop her, but a big monster attacks in, and that’s when he falls and hits his head.

Now he remembered that he’s telling this story, so I don’t know how he knows what happened. Benz after he fell and hit his head and was unconscious.

Todd: There are a lot of these moments where there’s no way he knew what happened. Yeah. He’s narrating some scene. He was never there for.

Craig: So after he gets knocked out, apparently Mrs. Santiago, I don’t remember why, drives off a cliff. And the, the truck explodes as they always do when you drive off a cliff.

Todd: Once again, this could have been a really, and they were trying so hard, they were trying so hard to make this a thrilling action scene and all the pieces were there with his truck driving by and him in the back and him almost falling out.

And he does fall out. I mean, there’s stunt work and stuff, but you can’t help but notice that even though this truck is supposed to be going, I don’t know, 40 50 miles an hour, it’s not blowing their hair around.

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: it’s, it just looks so much like a truck just being shaken in a dark room, you know, with just enough lighting to see what’s going on.

Uh, so low rent, low budget, uh, which is, uh, it’s a bit of a shame. It just, like I said, that’s how I feel about the whole movie. Well, there’s some touch at the end, right? So he finishes telling the story to the doctor and to this G man, or whatever. They basically say, thank you, thank you very much for the story.

And the G man turns to the doctor and says, okay, like you can finish it or whatever.

Craig: Well, the and, and the, the FBI guy has been shady, the whole movie and, and he just, every single time we cut back, he’s like, Oh, that’s, that’s an interesting part of your story. What about doc? What about doc? What happened to him?

What happened to him. Like he has just been asking the whole time. And finally at the end, the guy, I don’t know why he couldn’t have just told them this from the beginning, but at the very end, he, I guess he says, well, he’s dead because. He got electrocuted or whatever, and then then the guy’s like, Oh, okay, well thanks.

That’s all I needed to know. Thank you for taking an hour to tell me.

Todd: I didn’t think about it that way.

Craig: Didn’t you? I mean, you saw this coming a million miles, 10 minutes into the movie. You knew what was going to happen at the end, so the FBI guy’s like, don’t worry, everything’s cool. Heidi and Kim are just in the other room and he’s like, okay, well. I’ll bring them in and Heidi comes in and you can tell just by the way that she’s acting that she’s a seed, said

Todd: everything’s fine,

Craig: doc Rover is dead.

Then we don’t have anyone else to worry about doing that anymore.

Todd: Ah,

Craig: the end, like

Todd: you gonna take over the world now. Once they get across that bridge to the rest of the world, they

Craig: open up that bridge. It’s over. Gosh, I don’t know. Here there is a good thing about this movie and that is, it is short,

Todd: tight, hour and 20 minutes.

Craig: Yeah. Well, not even, it says, I think on IMG B it says it’s like an hour and 27 minutes or something like that, and then, yeah. When I pulled up the file, it was only one 21, and the movie was really over by one 15. Then it was just there. Then there were credits, and then there was, you know, the full moon, like preview, uh, after that.

So the movie really is not more than an hour and 15 minutes long and thank goodness cause it felt. Like days long.

No, that’s, that’s an exaggeration. It didn’t really feel that long. It just wasn’t good. Like I was looking forward to watching something fun and goofy and it’s, it’s not like I was. Self-harming to get myself through it or anything. It was fine. We’ve seen worse. Um, it was just kind of a disappointment. I was, I was looking for something a little bit more fun.

Todd: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head is that it just took itself so seriously. It was just so adapt that you’re not in on any joke. I mean, it’s, if it is a throwback to these fifties movies, it doesn’t play like one, you know, it doesn’t play like a parody or a loving homage or anything. It just kind of plays like a lame rip off.

And the production value is so low and we’ve seen lower, I mean we really have, but it’s so laughable at points, but not in a particularly fun way because what’s going on. Just kind of low stakes. I mean, we never really get terribly invested in these characters. We don’t really care too much about what happens to them.

They don’t even seem like real people. Uh, everything’s really contrived. It’s hard to even follow this little investigation or, you know, part of it, I guess, is that the movie kind of comes in when everything’s already happened. Or happened. Yeah. Usually at the movie like this, you know, there’s some build, right?

You see a comment, Oh, what was that? And you’ve got the first guy who discovers it, right? And so you see it kind of. Dare. I say sprout in the beginning and grow out, but here it’s like the maids already got it from the very beginning, the maids. Got it. You don’t know how she got it. Maybe this is a good one.

This is a good movie for our times. You know, you don’t know how this stuff spreads. You just wake up one day and suddenly everybody’s got it, but it starts the movie there. Yeah. You know, so there’s not even that kind of build. Yeah. By the time you realize there’s something sinister going on, it’s kind of already almost done.

Craig: Yeah. The, uh, the director. Okay. So Charles van gets a writing credit just for having the idea. Um, and then it was written by, the screenplay was written by a guy named Jackson Bard. I didn’t really look into him, but the, the director. Um, Peter Manoukian, I looked at his credits and he directed demonic toys for full moon.

And I haven’t seen that movie since I was a kid. But I remember thinking that movie was fun and funny when I was young. So we may have to revisit that at some point. Cause I remember. I remember it being darkly comedic and kind of crass. I mean, I was little when I saw it, but I had looked him up before I watched the movie.

I’m like, Oh, we did demonic toys. Cool. Like that was kind of a fun movie and this, this just wasn’t, I mean, and that’s fine. You know, especially with full moon, you know it’s going to be hit or miss. Um, and even the hits are not like amazing, can just kind of be fun diversions, uh, every once in awhile. Um, so for what it is.

Fine. Okay. You know, it felt very much like something that you would catch really late at night on cable back in the day. Yeah. Kind of feels like drive or drive in fair. I’m just not a great example of it.

Todd: It’s an artifact from an era, and I think we talked about this too when we talked about David Makoto and his output, and that was, there was a time in the early to mid eighties where you could just make a genre movie.

And sell it to the home video market. All you needed was some money and a script and have the resources to put something together. It didn’t matter if it was good or bad, it was gonna sell. And so there were full moon, basically full moon. Roger Corman became that everything. David Makoto did, you know one of my favorite guys, uh, Jim white, Norske, all these guys were just in this trauma.

We’re just going to churn out as much as we can. It doesn’t matter if it’s that great to just use the money we get, we know it’s going to sell. And, uh, and that’s what, that’s this is the kind of move you get out of that sometimes, like you said, sometimes there’s something just quirky and it just really works.

Most of the time it’s like this. Yeah,

Craig: but, and, but this movie feels like it was late to the party. Like it’s difficult for me to believe that this was made in 1992. It seems like something that should have been made in 1982. You know, like, I don’t know. It. Maybe this was the tail end of the era and it was kind of peering out, but this wasn’t the bang it should have gone out on if that’s the case.

But whatever. I mean, I love watching obscure things that I’ve never heard of before, and for that reason alone, um, I’m glad that Mikey, uh, recommended it. And it was, it was frankly a lot more fun to talk about than it was to watch.

Todd: Yeah, that’s true. And thank you, Mikey, again for your requests. We really appreciate it.

And if any of the rest of you have any requests, you can just look us up. Two guys in a chainsaw or anywhere online. Now we have a Facebook page. We have a YouTube channel. We have a website. Just leave us a comment. Any one of those places. We are plowing through a bunch of requests right now, so it’s not too late to send us yours.

You enjoyed this podcast. Please do share it with a friend and help us increase our listenership. Until next time, I’m Todd,

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: With two guys and a chainsaw.