They (1974)

Dir-Prod: "Ito" (AKA- Bill Rebane). Scr: Barbara Rebane. Cast: Paul Bentzen, Debbi Pick, Nick Holt 

The film which Mill Creek presents under the generic title They is actually the head-spinning Grade Z masterpiece Invasion from Inner Earth. This movie was the first of the several Wisconsin-lensed fantasy films made by Bill Rebane.

His first foray into feature filmmaking was the early 1960s horror dud, Monster a Go Go. After its commercial failure, Rebane worked as an executive in charge of US productions filmed in Germany, but got tired of travelling abroad, and eventually settled into a farm property near Gleason, Wisconsin. Here is where his next, and most durable, phase of moviemaking began.

Like any regional filmmakers' work, Rebane's oeuvre is certainly evocative of the geographic location which produced it, lending an authenticity for a place and time that simply couldn't be replicated via the Hollywood star system. His movies are unique for their portraits of eccentrics, intellectuals and enterpreneurs cast amidst a bluish landscape of Wisconsin winter, in small towns with neon Pabst signs hanging in the windows. Rebane’s work is often ridiculed for its poor acting, scripting and special effects, but his films do have a unique atmosphere, with a feel for the narratives’ rugged isolated locations, and odd marriages of shifting tones.

The first “official” Bill Rebane feature is a bizarre science-fiction film which began in 1973 as The Selected (perhaps a more appropriate title), released the following year as Invasion of Inner Earth, which he co-produced, co-edited, and also directed under the oft-used pseudonym of “Ito” (to perhaps give the impression that one person didn’t do everything on the film). The script by his wife Barbara attempts thrills and allegory in equal measure, but the result is a mishmash that however has struck a chord with some viewers, this author included.

In the opening of Invasion from Inner Earth, we are bombarded with a pandemonium of images with people running, close-ups of eyeballs, red smoke rising from the swamp, a papier mache UFO, lens flares... what is going on? This question is never satisfactorily answered for the rest of the film. People everywhere are dying of a mysterious plague, however our five protagonists sit around a snowy lodge and talk (and talk!) about what it could be.

The film has a weak introduction to our main characters, as siblings Jake and Sarah Anderson tend to their lodge and see off their scientist guests: rich bitch Andy, stud Eric and bearded funny guy Stan. Jake is also a pilot who flies them back to the mainland, and here is where the movie has potential as a halfway decent thriller. They are shooed away from one hangar by an ill traffic controller, and seek refuge at another runway which is mysteriously deserted. Finally, Jake and the scientists return to the same lodge from which they came.

Meanwhile, they are menaced by a red light that shines on them, and a heavy-handed voice that speaks to them on the CB radio. (The inspiration for this alien menace may have been the monotonal creature that kept saying “You-have-two-seconds-left” in the “Corbomite Maneuver” episode of Star Trek.) Stan is convinced that the voice is of an alien, since it constantly asks for their location. (Wouldn’t the alien already know, if the humans are besieged by the red light?)

To show how global this epidemic is (or to save the viewer from the relentless tedium of seeing these people pontificate forever in the cabin), the Rebanes cut away to more scenes of people running down the city sidewalk, a drunk staggering out of a bar into a red cloud, a DJ ranting and raving, and even a late-night TV talk show that suddenly blacks out during their discussion of UFOs with some local yokels. In between all the talk, however, our protagonists individually get picked off by the red light: Andy when he selfishly tries to escape in the plane, Jake in his benevolent hunting for food, and Eric during their supposed flight to freedom once the survivors realize they’re sitting ducks in the cabin. Then, we cut back to the DJ still sweatily ranting, wondering aloud on the air if he’s the last one alive. Finally, Stan and Sarah walk (and walk and walk) through a snowy small town, and then mysteriously the film changes from its grey wintry locale to a vibrant green meadow in which an adolescent boy and girl hold hands and frolic off into the garden. Fleetingly in the background, we see a UFO. The end.

This mind-blowing conclusion comes out of left field, but in truth it’s no less baffling than most of what precedes it. Despite the way-out theory given by Stan (played by Paul Bentzen, who would soon return to Rebane’s universe) about how Martians are instead invading us from the earth’s core than their own planet, there is really no rhyme or reason given for the film’s strange occurrences. Perhaps Ms. Rebane’s screenplay was intended all along as an existential tome, much like Hitchcock’s The Birds. The conventions of a science fiction invasion story are used as a modern-day Biblical treatise, where the aliens are instead a deity using the plague much like the flood, systematically eradicating humankind so that Stan and Sarah can inherit the earth, as its new Adam and Eve. (Maybe the DJ is the snake.)

The movie fails in the acting and writing departments; the suspense is often drained by the slow pace, gaps of logic, and Rebane's customarily eccentric, juvenile approach to the adult material. This film is especially notorious for the "kid run amuck on a Casio" synthesizer score which lifts the theme from The Good The Bad and the Ugly!

However, this movie also has a strange appeal- I've revisited it several times over the years since my initial viewing of it way back in 1986, on CityTV in an unforgettable twin bill of late night movie badness (shared with the Dave Hewitt-James Flocker jawdropper, The Lucifer Complex.) Despite the incoherence and lethargy, it possesses a unique atmosphere and some fascinating ideas that one wishes were in a better film. Both the Genesis VHS and the Mill Creek DVD transfers are murky and red, however, I still remember the crisp print that City showed all those years ago. One hopes that some day, someone will restore this movie. In spite of its many faults, the film is still worthy of that effort.

MMM Rating: 1/5, or 5/5, depending on your point of view. (It's that kind of movie.)

Located on: Nightmare Worlds. (This movie pack is out of print, but you should have no trouble finding a copy. The film in question is also available by Mill Creek in packs other than the 50-movies.)