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POD People
1983 - Not Rated - Not Available Mins.
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| Director: Juan Piquer Simón | | | Written By: Joaquín Grau, Joaquín Grau | | Starring: Ian Sera, Nina Ferrer, Susana Bl |
| Review by: John Ulmer |
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"Pod People" isn't about pods. It isn't about people. It isn't really about anything. It is quite possibly one of the poorest films of not only our time, but all time. Its actors make Jerry Lewis look like Jimmy Stewart. Its cinematography makes that crappy B-movie you saw on TV last week look like "Alien." Its direction style makes "Battlefield Earth" seem simple. And its special effects make the old Godzilla movies look like "The Matrix."
Its plot--what little (or nothing?) of it there is--seems to be about a group of singers stranded in some American backwoods. There's lots of mist in these woods. In one scene, a local tells a young man, "Wait 'till day to search for [the alien]," but this film is so poor that it confuses day for night many times. The mist is just as strong during the day as night. And in one scene, two men go driving, only to arrive at their destination two seasons (yes, you read that correctly) later. Two seasons. Wow, maybe he should invest in a faster car?
This film is quite possibly the choppiest film I've ever seen. You have to see it to believe it. BUT WAIT! Don't see it. It's not worth it. It will scar you for life!
In one scene we see poachers in misty woods, then suddenly we jump to a band of singers blaring into microphones. Then we cut to something that looks like Smuckers Rasberry Jelly, then we cut to a kid looking for centipedes, then an RV driving along a road (which they film for about five minutes, just with aerial shots of this RV driving around). I can hear the director (if there is one): "We paid for the thing, we're gonna film it!"
After that we jump to the interior of a cave, where the camera literally goes blind. I wish I had. Then we come out at a campsite at night where, after the elapsed time of 57 minutes and 31 seconds, we finally catch a glimpse of the alien of our film, which looks more like the lovechild of Alf and the Elephant Man. It kills people by making jellybeans appear on there head. No doubt Smuckers jellybeans. Talk about product placement.
Then we cut to some whiny orange-haired kid finding a pod in the Smuckers Cave and taking it home, where he plans to hatch it himself. Poor kid. He must not have had many friends. Then the thing hatches, and eats and eats. Somehow, it is amazingly smart, and learns English. The orange kid names it Trumpy. I think he meant to say "Trunky," since it looks like an elephant. Or maybe he was just playing an homage to Donald Trump.
Trumpy is mistaken for the other alien, and the two aliens run around doing stuff. Trumpy is small in one scene, huge in the next. Amazing how much growing goes on during a cut-away. Then Trumpy escapes into the woods where he lives peacefully for the rest of his life. Well, until a poacher comes along and hits the jackpot, at least.
Unlike some films that are "so bad they're good," "Pod People" isn't. It is truly mind-numbingly bad. In one scene a man picks up a phone, which is dead for some reason or another. As he tries to get the phone to work, I can imagine what he's really thinking: "Great, there's no way to get out of this film now!"
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