Two years before V hit the big time as an NBC miniseries, the network tested the waters with a similar concept: The Aliens Are Coming (1980.) I was originally going to write that I was surprised V got made considering the tepid results of The Aliens Are Coming. However, now I’m more inclined to believe the old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed…”
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I wrote last week that there’s not a clear delineation between decades; the line is fuzzy. However, with its special effects, The Aliens Are Coming straddles that line. Scenes of a mother ship approaching Earth and a shuttle zooming toward the camera close to the ground play like solid 1970s practical effects, but scenes of a glowing green alien inhabiting a human body play like funky 1980s digital effects.
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Yet another failed television series pilot, The Aliens Are Coming is built around a decent, if not original, plot. Beings from outer space land near Las Vegas as scouts for an impending invasion seven years later. Some people are aware of it, such as Dr. Scott Dryden (Tom Mason), who, with Chuck Polcheck (a young, nearly unrecognizable, yet still familiar, Ed Harris) monitors its approach. Dryden needs little physical evidence to encourage action.
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His boss, Leonard Nero (Eric Braeden) encourages him to get that evidence while Gwendolyn O’Brien (Melinda O. Fee) occasionally tags along as Dryden’s obligatory female partner. The more potentially impactful woman is reporter Joyce Cummings (Fawne Harriman), who wants a story, but not as much as she wants romance with Dryden. Is she playing him? That’s doubtful because she goes back home to San Francisco before the movie ends.
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The standout character is Russ Garner (Max Gail), the technician at Hoover Dam that is “possessed” by a glowing green alien whose mission it is to learn about hydroelectricity as a power source. He gets nearly as much screen time as Mason but is billed ninth among the cast. If we care about anything or anyone, it’s Garner, the family man whose personality changes and threatens to wreak havoc, but never quite does.
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Most disappointing, if not damaging, is the fact that the aliens are clunky robotic beings rolling around the mother ship speaking in monotone. Are there creatures inside the machinery? Perhaps we would have learned in subsequent episodes, had The Aliens Are Coming gone to series. We should probably be grateful that it didn’t, though, because then we might never have gotten V.
Visit the TV Terror Guide: 70's TV Movies playlist at ClassicHorrors.Club TV on YouTube to watch The Aliens Are Coming and other great movies from this series.
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