Strange Invaders (1983) on Netflix
PG19831h 34mHorrorMysterySci-Fi
In 1958, alien beings took over Centreville, Illinois, turning its people into blue orbs. Twenty-five years later, Charles Bigelow arrives to look for his ex-wife, Margaret.
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- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb5.4/104,067 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes63%
Trailer
Plot summary
Charles Bigelow, a lecturer at Columbia University, learns that his ex-wife, Margaret, went missing in Centreville, Illinois, where she had gone for her mother's funeral, and he travels there to search for her. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1958, alien beings had invaded the town quietly: beams that came from their hands and eyes turned the people into pulsing blue orbs, and the visitors put on artificial skin and hair, lived as the townspeople they copied, and hid what happened. The town has not changed since. Its stillness arouses Charles's suspicion, and the aliens try to convince him that nothing is wrong.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Strange Invaders (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Michael Laughlin wrote the part of Charles Bigelow for Michael Murphy, but EMI refused to let him be cast to the director's confusion; the financiers suggested Mel Gibson and Powers Boothe instead, and Laughlin picked Paul Le Mat for his "Joel McCrea quality".
- Effects artist James Cummins, a veteran of John Carpenter's The Thing, had his name removed from Strange Invaders after heated arguments with Michael Laughlin over how the effects were used, and Laughlin then let him reshoot the scene where the aliens shed their human guises.
- Financiers Orion and EMI demanded script changes that shrank Strange Invaders: in the original script the American government was a far bigger threat, with a sequence at an Air Force base, and Michael Laughlin was bothered because the script lost a well-defined middle section.
- Louise Fletcher's government agent Mrs. Benjamin was written as a man, a "Bob Balaban bureaucrat", but Bill Condon and Michael Laughlin changed the character to a woman during screenwriting and cast Fletcher, who had been in Strange Behavior.
- Bill Condon and Michael Laughlin wrote the screenplay for Strange Invaders with no deal in place, then planned the budget, locations, cast and production design while arranging financing, paying for that pre-production themselves.
