Full Disclosure: This title was purchased at our own discretion from Severin Films.
Wackiness ensues as an alien meteor housing crash lands in to a forest. Then there’s a weird little boy named Tommy who collects bugs all day. Then there’s a pop band that goes on vacation in the woods. And there’s an old couple in the woods living in a cabin. The aliens are now on the loose in the forest. And there are these armed poachers hungry to kill some animals. And then Tommy (Óscar Martín) finds an egg that he realizes is an unborn alien. Said alien, nicknamed “Trumpy,” is desperate to get back home. How will these hilarious storylines converge? Will Trumpy consume mankind?
If “Extra Terrestrial Visitors” (aka Los nuevos extraterrestres, aka The New Extraterrestrials, aka Pod People) seems like it doesn’t make sense, that’s because not much of it does. The movie literally feels like Juan Piquer Simon took three different movies and forced them together to hopefully form one coherent product down the line. But not an inch of editing or dialogue can save “Extra Terrestrial Visitors.” It’s just one big beautiful mess packed to the brim with characters that do nothing, monsters that have zero substance, and no clear villain. The poachers might be the villains, but then the aliens might be because we’re never quite sure what their whole goal is.
Then there’s Tommy who just feels like a young Dahmer in training. Piquer Simon sets his movie up like a horror film, but mid-way desperately tries to transform it in to an “E.T.” clone. At the behest of the studios when Piquer Simon was making “Extra Terrestrial Visitors,” the success of “E.T.” prompted them to demand he alter his film to blatantly cash in on the success of Spielberg’s movie. The results are delightfully embarrassing and bizarre. But oddly enough not so bizarre that it’s unwatchable. You can only really just sit and marvel at the sheer incoherence and courageousness to try it’s best to become an alternate version of “E.T.” Speaking of bizarre, the movie is so poorly made that it opens to DTV footage from another movie entirely, named “Galaxy Invader.”
It’s so poorly tacked on and awkwardly inserted that for a moment I was worried I watching the wrong movie. If that’s not bad enough the movie ends on a down note where you can sense Piquer Simon was just trying to wrap it all up as quickly as possible. Poor Trumpy. He was not prepared for Earth. At the end of the day, “Mac and Me” was so much more blatant and shameless, but Juan Piquer Simon seems to be fighting an uphill battle from the moment the movie begins. It’s so jarring; one minute we’re watching “Xtro,” and then suddenly the movie becomes “Spaced Invaders.” There’s a clear reason why “Extra Terrestrial Visitors” is considered a small cult classic. It’s so marvelous in its sheer awfulness.
The “Friends of Trumpy” Bundle (Limited to 500 Pieces) from Severin Films came packed with an “I’m a Virgin” T-Shirt, as well as an exclusive Trumpy plush doll.
On the bonus features for the Blu-Ray and CD combo, you’ll be getting “The Simon’s Jigsaw: A Journey into the Universe of Juan Piquer Simon,” an exhaustive one hundred minutes documentary that looks in to the works of Juan Piquer Simon. It’s Spanish with English subtitles. “A Weekend in Hell – Interview with Emilio Linder” is a fifteen minutes interview with the actor who played Brian, the band manager.
“Composing the Cosmos – Interview with Librado Pastor” is a nineteen minutes interview with composer Pastor, as well as an eight minutes Private Concert with the musician. Included is the alternate opening credits for the “Pod People” domestic release which includes the aforementioned footage from “The Galaxy Invader.” Finally, there is the CD soundtrack single, which includes four tracks.