Movie Review #19: Terrorvision

For the past couple of days my friend Cap Blackard of Nerdy Show has been hanging out at my place on his way to E3. We used his time here wisely: by watching movies.

Last night we watched Terrorvision, a movie Jeff discovered and has been itching to watch for a while.

Short review: It's a ridiculous movie you'd probably enjoy watching with friends. The premise is weird, the effects are impressively awful, and everybody overacts so much it's just fun to make fun of the movie.

SYNOPSIS

It's the 80s, and after a father sets up a new satellite dish it accidentally receives a monster from another planet.

There really isn't much more to say.

FULL REVIEW

From the very beginning, you know that you won't be able to take this movie seriously, since obviously it doesn't take itself seriously.

After a cold opening showing an alien planet where its inhabitants ominously blast a mutant creature into space, the opening credits roll before taking you to a fascinating, bizarre household.

Really, the family is the star of this show to me. They're a fascinating group of people. At first they seem like a fairly regular 80s family with too much disposable income and a taste for sexually explicit paintings on their walls, I guess. The dad is kind of a idiot, the mom is materialistic, the daughter is an 80s teenager, the son is an active kid who looks up to his pro-war, pro-gun grandpa.

Then the daughter brings in her new boyfriend, a metalhead dude named O.D. For a moment, as the family stares down this guy, covered as he is in studs and chains and spikes, it seems for a moment that the parents going to flip out on the daughter and reprimand her for her poor taste in men.

But they don't. Very suddenly they give O.D. a warm welcome, tell their daughter not to be out too late, then announce that they're going to be out swinging tonight.

Yep, swinging. As in, finding another couple and swapping partners for casual sex.

The father then slaps his wife on the butt, and they head off to go change for their activities, leaving the grandpa to watch the son.

Honestly, it was almost a shame to watch that monster come out of the TV and kill off the family one by one; a process that takes far longer than it maybe should have, as at some point the kids befriend the beast for a while and... good lord, you pretty much just have to watch it.