 |
| From https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ en/5/55/Intruders_VideoCover.png |
Director: Dan Curtis
Screenplay: Barry Oringer and Tracy
Tormé
Based on the non-fiction novel Intruders by Budd Hopkins
Cast: Richard Crenna as Dr. Neil
Chase; Daphne Ashbrook as Lesley Hahn; Mare Winningham as Mary Wilkes
Synopsis: Psychologist Dr. Neil Chase (Richard Crenna) is dealing with the case of Lesley Hahn (Daphne Ashbrook), a woman with deep
psychological issues stemming from her claim she was abducted and experimented
on by aliens. He will encounter Mary Wilkes, a housewife from Nebraska who will
also claim to be an abduction victim, causing him to question his scepticism
when details that are more inexplicable are uncovered.
Let's go to 1992 - by this year
the craze over UFOs was decades long and still going. When Intruders was commissioned as a mini-series by CBS Television, even the thrash metal band Megadeth recorded a song about Area 51, Hanger 18, in 1990, this adaptation of a non-fiction book by Budd Hopkins, said to collect alien
abduction testimonies, was just a year from The X-Files (1993-2002) becoming a cultural phenomenon.
Intruders is a slow burn to say the least, one which does have
plenty of little grey men but could've easily been a domestic psychological
drama fully confined on Earth. Your appreciation of this film, effectively one
single three hour work even though it was originally split over multiple nights,
is that it's a tale where its immediately established that the aliens exist in
the prologue, but, even as someone who hates when you immediately crowbar a
film as in metaphor, is all about the psychological damage to two women from
trauma. Though it's not hidden the cause are aliens, this greater metaphorical
touch, which is clearly wrapped into the story as it tries to show a greater
psychological complexity and try to make the idea of alien abductions credible,
is where Intruders gets a lot of virtue.
It's also the journey of sceptical
psychologist Dr. Neil Chase to becoming a believer, one which there was clearly
an attempt for the production to not blindly leap into it being pro-alien but
at least, in its earnest attempts, leaving enough time and evidence in this
world so its credible why Chase believes the UFOs are real. Intruders as a result is immensely dry,
but the attempt to write this material as thoughtfully as possible is as much a
positive as somewhat a potential issue for finding a modern audience.
Of course you do get your aliens,
early nineties TV budget CGI for flying saucers and grey alien costumes, very
rubbery, alongside very minimalist alien ship sets. In terms of a time capsule,
it does offer the stereotype of television from once ago - long dialogue scenes,
edited at a moderate paced, idyllic Americana, both rural and urban, which is invaded
by aliens. Notably director Dan Curtis
is most well know for Trilogy of Terror
(1975), a beloved cult horror trilogy notable for the segment where actress
Karen Black is stalked by a possessed
doll, which to my surprise was actually a TV movie despite coming from the
seventies, where Amicus and others
was very into releasing horror anthologies theatrically. Intruders does qualify for the horror genre as, even with the time
passing and some datedness, the mini-series does get creepy. One scene is
legitimately freakish, where telephone repairmen appear at night in front of
someone's house, only to not be who they presumably are in uniform, but the
really creepy aspect is how Intruders
depicts these abductions and their repercussions.
Entirely from the perspective of
two female characters, there is an implied sense of sexual violence to this
abduction which is, [Spoiler Warning],
proven to be true as they are being impregnated only to have their alien-human
children stolen from their bodies after some time. The ending does leave a
problematic issue in how, in an odd coda, the aliens are shown to be actually
good, caring despite everything they've done to these human women and many
others. [Spoilers End] Despite how
the ending does leave on a troubling note in trying to write the aliens as
anything but menaces, before then Intruders
is completely concerned with chronically how these types of abductions would be
horrifying. It is a dark story where these women are being abducted and the
film thankfully tackles from their side as victims; we make jokes in popular
culture about the various things aliens and UFOs do, but the idea of anyone
(male or female) being a guinea pig in actuality is a horrifying one, the mini-series
doing its best to deal with this.
It doesn't hide the aliens are
real as mentioned - the prologue is of a cover-up at a military base when a
general buries a discovery of a UFO on the radar - but the mini-series does
talk about scepticism through Dr. Neil Chase, our protagonist. He does lead to
ideas of these visions of alien being repressed trauma of molestation as a
child, or how the abductee Mary Wilkes, from Nebraska rather than Chase's home
in California, is mentioned to having miscarried earlier in her life. And, to
its credit, his scepticism is nuanced, not a man just dismissing alien
abductions out of contrivance or an egotism from the creators, but one which
changes to him being out of depth when Mary's son is being targeted and his
logical views are challenged completely. Like a good horror tale, there's a
very good reason when he starts changes his tune.
If anything, Intruders gets really rewarding, in spite of the sense of caution
trying to adapt this material before The
X-Files and other dived head first into conspiracies, by using its overtly
sedate tone to touch some interesting drama. Intruders gets ridiculous, but even when Dr. Chase confesses his
new views at a psychology conference, that scene is carefully lead to and
calmly depicted in what happens, with people willing to talk to him even if his
boss is outraged. It pains itself to go through its subject, theories on
psychological explanations talked of, and in arguably my favourite scene, even
the idea of a government cover-up when that old chestnut is subverted, a
military general meeting Dr. Chase and calmly, and openly, explaining their
reasons to not reveal the truth about the aliens. The resulting dialogue, of
struggles in research and the awkwardness of having the president speak about
it on TV, is one of the best depictions of this subject in pop culture sci-fi,
a scene in itself that could redeem Intruders
for any faults you could have with it.
There is a sense of the
mini-series being designed for a wider, ordinary (and potentially older)
audience when it premiered. This is not "I want to believe" a la X-Files, but in the midst of a period
where films like Communion (1989)
and Fire in the Sky (1993) were made,
looking to me like the era trying to calmly integrate these ideas from the
fringes before The X-Files kicked
the door open. Even when there's an exaggerated performance by Steven Berkoff, as an expert in UFO
abductions who abruptly appears in Dr. Chase's life with Asian takeaway at his
home, the character is still humanised, through a lot of humour befittingly,
just in details like the character being a profession in anthropology who takes
his work completely seriously from an open minded view. The emphasis in
domestic drama is also an immensely rewarding one for me, an acquired taste in
that slowness, but a nice change of pace in trying to tell this story through
the day-to-day aftermath of trauma. Even for sceptics of UFO abduction culture,
this story for two female characters and the families that have to cope with it
with them is the kind of story I wish existed more from science fiction on this
subject.
Still to this day, you have TV
shows purporting real UFO and alien incidents, and whilst it's no longer the
zeitgeist, especially as the 2016 reboot of The X-Files hasn't necessarily set the world on fire, this humane
take on the subject was a breath of fresh air in discovering it.
 |
| From http://www.wickedhorror.com/wp-content/ uploads/2016/07/intruders-1992.jpg |
No comments:
Post a Comment