Don Dohler Mini Round-Up : “The Galaxy Invader”

First off, my apologies for the lack of new reviews on this page lately — in addition to the usual holiday season madness (and I hope everyone’s — or should that be anyone’s –are going splendidly, wonderfully, joyously, etc.) we had something of a tragedy strike the TFG household when, on Christmas morning, we had to put one of our cats, barely-five-years-old Marty, to sleep. I won’t go into details suffice to say he was a loving little furball who spent most of his life purring away in a state of contentment that you honestly had to see to believe, and was hit by a short-fast-acting illness that made his last hours on earth way more unbearably painful than he could have possibly deserved even if he had been truly evil — which he wasn’t in any way, shape, or form. Anyway, corny and absolutely impossible as it is, I like to think of him now purring away on a giant version of his favorite black-and-white Ikea throw blanket somewhere up in the sky.

Which rather leads us,in a much less roundabout way than it would initially appear, to our subject here today — namely, comfort movies. Mrs. TFG and I are having a heck of a time adjusting to coming home to only one kitty greeting us, and taking our mind off the new emptiness in our household is of paramount importance around here lately. As you can probably guess, traditional “feel-good” Hollywood crap doesn’t do much for me, but something simple, predictable, and straightforward-as-all-get-go makes fora damn fine distraction these days, and they don’t come much more simple, predictable, and straight-forward-as-all-get-go than Don Dohler flicks, do they?

I’ve sung the praises of suburban Baltimore’s premier backyard-monster-epic-maker before on these virtual “pages,” but honestly never could have predicted just how mind-numbingly reassuring films like the one we’ll take a quick look at today, 1985’s straight-to-video The Galaxy Invader, could be until now.

As with almost any Dohler film, the plot here revolves around an alien invader who crash-lands in the Maryland woods and for some reason decides to wander around rather aimlessly instead of sending out a distress signal or trying to fix his ship or anything that would actually, you know, make sense. If said alien is truly evil (not so much the case here), then he might kill somebody, thereby attracting the attention of the local yokels, and if he’s not, then he might just be seen by somebody and that’s good enough to get the country bumpkins to form a search party and head out looking for blood. In this particular instance, evidence the guy-in-a-rubber-suit’s passing is stumbled upon by a backwoods redneck-type, who sets out to assemble a posse and find the “invader” and/or his craft in order to get rich quick.

Sure, there’s some pointless sidebar drama revolving around the daughter of the hillbillyish family at the center of the story dating some guy from a rival quite-likely-inbred clan that her dad, predictably enough, doesn’t approve of, but none of that bargain-basement Hatfields-and-McCoys stuff matters much here — the country folk are going to go out and find the alien, a cheaper-than-cheap “battle” is going to ensue that will allow Dohler to show off some of his homemade special effects quasi-wizardry, and it’ll all end with the spaceman either getting killed or leaving. I’ll refrain from saying exactly which ending transpires here so as not to give away the entire film in less than a hundred words.

Needless to say, the plot isn’t the only Dohler constant here — the cast is composed of the usual assemblage of family members, people who would never act in another film, and people who would only go on to act in other Dohler productions (including cult favorite George Stover). The shooting locales are all within a stone’s throw of the late, great Don’s house. And the dialogue is impossible tin-eared, to be generous about it.

But you know what? Sometimes none of that matters, and in fact, if you’re on the Dohler wavelength, it all just adds to the charm of the overall production. This ain’t no Cecil B. DeMille production — it’s a quick cheapie (the total budget here was less than $10,000) churned out by a guy who made monster movies for two reasons — because he loved them, and because he could. If you don’t respect that, get off this blog and go read Pauline Kael or something.

Being that the rights to The Galaxy Invader have lapsed into the public domain, it’s available on multiple DVD releases(heck, it’s even received the MST3K treatment), none of them, I’m willing to bet, treating it to any sort of sound or picture remastering, much less going to the extent of including any extras or anything. The version is my possession, a pressed-to-order DVD-R from an outfit called Synergy Entertainment, serves just fine. Shot in 16mm, it’s presented full-frame, warts-and-all, and features mono sound. Works just fine for me. Nothing about The Galaxy Invader is supposed to be great, after all — it just is what it is (and truth be told, as far as Dohler films go, it’s even more routine and frankly uninspired than usual — it’s pure Don-by-the-numbers fare), and when you’re trying to take your mind off other matters, it does the job quite nicely without taxing one iota of your mental energy. So thank you, Don, and if I believed in heaven, I’d ask you to go on over and keep my cat company.