{"id":16665,"date":"2014-10-03T22:33:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T02:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=16665"},"modified":"2015-10-03T22:37:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T02:37:57","slug":"stranded-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/03\/stranded-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"Stranded (1987)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stranded87\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the hell is that?\u201d
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, but it\u2019s got tits and a ray gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be lying if I said \u201cStranded\u201d has aged well, but then I\u2019d also be lying if I denied loving it mostly based on nostalgia. \u201cStranded\u201d is a childhood favorite I recall borrowing a billion times from my cousin and loved every minute of it. Today it\u2019s still a solid science fiction horror film, but one filled with flaws. Surely, it mixes \u201cET\u201d with \u201cThe Desperate Hours,\u201d but its charms are undeniable. And it\u2019s tough to hate anything with Ione Skye. There\u2019s just no arguing that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cStranded\u201d is set on an average farm where orphaned Deirdre lives with her well meaning grandmother Grace. After a botched attempt by Grace to fix her grand daughter up with a boy, Deirdre storms off in to the night and bears witness to an apparent crash in her backyard. Before long, she and her grandmother realize the denizens of the crash have entered their house, and they\u2019re not human. A confrontation with locals has rendered one of the alien travelers with a mortal gunshot wound, and police have tracked a lynch mob to the house. The mob intends to murder the aliens, but Grace suspects they\u2019re harmlass, and may be just as terrified as she and Deirdre are. What ensues is a typical hostage movie paired with heavy handed themes about racism and prejudice. The alien friendship sub-plots inside the house amount to interesting dramatic material, but outside a lot of the cop drama feels forced.<\/p>\n

Joe Morton plays a new sheriff in the town who has to gain his fellow officers\u2019 respect, based solely on the fact that he\u2019s African American. He wages an uphill battle to control his men and aim for their respect, all the while the lynch mob has other ideas. The attempted irony is that the sheriff begins judging the aliens based on their appearance, which is quite disastrous, to say the least. The make up is pretty solid all things considered, especially with the character the Jester, who is the epitome of the friendly alien who bonds with grandmother Grace. There\u2019s also the very sleek soldier Warrior, who is a deadly female alien with a wrist blaster who poses a real danger to anyone that threatens the stranded group. That said, there is zero explanation as to who these travelers are, why they\u2019re running, and why they\u2019re being chased by an assassin.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the implication that they\u2019re either royalty, or the remnants of a doomed planet, but there\u2019s absolutely no clarification. I\u2019d chalk it up to ambiguity, but it just feels like a poorly developed tacked on back story. There\u2019s also a really silly plot twist mid-way where the officers are overruled by a militant female government agent intent on seizing and murdering the aliens, who ends up being something else entirely. It just doesn\u2019t make sense someone would pop up during a crime scene claiming to be a government agent and they\u2019d just be taken at their word. In either case, \u201cStranded\u201d is a fine science fiction thriller with a spooky atmosphere, great action, and spirited performances by the entire cast. It\u2019s a shame this doesn\u2019t garner a lot more attention, these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat the hell is that?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know, but it\u2019s got tits and a ray gun.\u201d I\u2019d be lying if I said \u201cStranded\u201d has aged well, but then I\u2019d also be lying if I denied loving it mostly based on nostalgia. \u201cStranded\u201d is a childhood favorite I recall borrowing a billion times from my cousin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[58,88,302,874,885,906,1012,1087],"class_list":["post-16665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-aliens","tag-drama","tag-romance","tag-s","tag-science-fiction","tag-survival","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16667,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16665\/revisions\/16667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}