The Puppet Masters (21 October 1994)
directed by Stuart Orme
starring Donald Sutherland, Eric Thal, Julie Warner, Keith David, Will Patton, Richard Belzer, Tom Mason
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MPAA rating: Studio: Hollywood Pictures Script: Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, David S. Goyer Based on the book by: Robert A. Heinlein Music: Colin Towns Running time: 109 minutes Tags: aliens; father-son relationships; invasion; Iowa; murder; novel adaptation; posession; Science Fiction Tactical strength: [6/10]
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for violence, sci-fi gore and brief language
The Puppet Masters screams low-budget production. Except for Donald Sutherland, the casting director drew from television actors rather than names know for big-screen productions. And yet, the scriptwriting and directing saves this otherwise low-end production.
The Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) detects a UFO landing in Iowa and sends Andrew Nivens (Donald Sutherland) and a team to investigate. The team consists of Andrew's son Sam Nivens (Eric Thal), exobiologist Mary Sefton (Julie Warner) on loan from NASA, and the designated driver Jarvis (Richard Belzer). Andrew and his team quickly figure out that the UFO carried parasitic aliens that ride on the backs of humans, interface with the human nervous system, and control the human's body like a puppet. Conveniently, the aliens can hide under the clothing of their hosts, so the OSI teams ask a lot of people to take their shirts off, but don't get the wrong idea, you never see anything more provocative than a few bras.
As the aliens spread to the human population, the OSI projects that the aliens would control the entire human population in just a few days. The president (Tom Mason) authorizes the army to attack and kill the infected humans, which one can easily detect because infected humans have a higher body temperature. The smart aliens use infected children to assault the army, and since many of the soldiers won't fire on the children, the entire army unit succumbs to alien infestation. Things look really bad, and at various times Andrew, Sam, Mary, and Jarvis each get infected by the parasite. When Mary gets infected, she makes her way to the parasite hive, and Sam dutifully goes after her on a seeming suicide mission.
Normally, a B-movie sci-fi feature makes you groan with the bad acting and the poor dialogue, but The Puppet Masters has fairly level acting. No one plays their part to far over the top, and the actors manage to deliver their dialogue with a reasonable amount of plausibility. I would probably have to attribute much of this success to scriptwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who just recently wrote the script for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Elliott and Rossio deliver dialogue far above the typical B-movie grade, and the actors do a passable job at delivering their lines. Stuart Orme seems to keep all the action under control. He keeps the story moving at a pretty good pace and even builds a fair amount of tension toward the end of the film. Again, nothing really stands out in The Puppet Masters, but none of the usual B-movie flaws drag it down ether, which leaves you with a mildly pleasant sci-fi feature.
