| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE
Rating: 
UK. 1985.
Director – Mike Hodges, Screenplay – Griff Rhys-Jones & Mel Smith, Producer – Barry Hanson, Photography – Phil Meheux, Music – Peter Brewis, Special Effects – Jeff Luff, Production Design – Brian Eatwell. Production Company – Thorn EMI.
Cast:
Mel Smith (Bernard), Griff Rhys-Jones (Graham Sweetley), Joanne Pearce (Sandra Brock), Jimmy Nail (Desmond Brock), Paul Brown (Julian Tope), Dinsdale Landen (Commander Mattison), James B. Sikking (Colonel Larabee)
Plot: Three idiots from the planet Blob crashland their spaceship on the M1 motorway in England. They are captured by the combined British and American military and taken to a decontamination area. But there the military are unable to believe how stupid they really are. They make an escape and then find success as rock-stars. Meanwhile a fourth alien, Bernard, left behind by the others, comes down in America but is locked up in a psychiatric institution when nobody will believe he is one of the aliens.
This sf spoof was an outgrowth of the British tv comedy series Alas Smith and Jones (which appeared over various seasons between 1984 and 1998) and was construed as a feature vehicle for stars Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones.
When it is funny – like the silent pantomime that Mel Smith goes through trying to scratch his nose through his space-helmet before the inside of the visor is splattered in snot – the film can be very funny. It throws a series of gags in the direction of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – the giant mothership landing turns out to merely be a repossession agency, while the musical contact with the aliens is done by jukebox – and Star Wars (1977) – the opening shot of the film is a huge spaceship rumbling over the camera and then being revealed to be towing a caravan. But the plot is rather disheveled and not particularly cohesive. And there really aren’t enough good gags to stretch to make an entire film and it soon runs out of ideas. The central idea that the aliens are idiots is not exactly a great one and is one that soon becomes monotonous through repetition. The plot sidetracks off into an unnecessary series of gags about the aliens becoming rock stars and it all falls into entire disarray by the end. A pity because the digs at old sf cliches and jokes – aliens mistaking garbage cans for people, the problems of intergalactic hitch-hiking – reveal a certain knowing genre sophistry.
Director Mike Hodges also directed the Michael Crichton adaptation The Terminal Man (1974), wrote the script for Damien: Omen II (1978) (which he was originally set to direct), the Flash Gordon (1980) remake and the superb and underrated clairvoyance thriller Black Rainbow (1989).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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