Mill Crick Reviews: They (1974)

Terrorists from outer space land, drop a bunch of red smoke flares everywhere, and corner some pasty Wisconsin Canadians in a snowbound lodge, where they hang around for days and days. And I actually kind of like it.

** 1/2 / ****

____

In honor of being snowed in here in the nations capital under one of the top 10 blizzards on record, lets put on some hot cocoa and have a look at They, a chilly end-of-the-world picture by B-movie director extraordinaire Bill Rebane.
We open with a few clumsily cut in frames of some kind of panic in the streets that then just suddenly go away. There are I dunno, what are they, titles? outer space process shots mixed with music and sound effects. Some of these Rebane recycled for The Giant Spider Invasion the following year. [cut in] Cut to a brother and sister, Jake and Sara, in a wintry cabin. Theres backstory of the Little House on the Prairie variety. Jake thinks Sara should leave their remote homestead, move into town and start a family. But Sara has no interest, and you sense this is a conversation theyve already had many time before. [Sara hates towns]
Then okay, titles again. Only this time there are actual titles, over extended shots of a twin-engine airplane in flight that were surely tough to get on Rebanes budget.
It makes sense Sara would detest city life since she grew up in a cabin so remote Jake and some of his friends have to use this plane to get to the nearest civilization, an airfield with an adjoining lodge called Bear Creek. Another friend, Sam, calls them from the airport to beg them not to land there because the areas afflicted by plague. Hes hysterical.
They land anyway and find the place desolate. While theyre looking around another pilot, presumably plague-ridden, crashes his plane. They split up. Jake and Eric go to the crash site. Dan and Andy stumble to Bear Creek Lodge, where they encounter strange radio signals and a haunting red light. [example]
Having grasped the enormity of the problem, the quartet fly back to Saras cabin. Turns out the plague is widespread, accompanied by UFO sightings, a fact Rebane with his limited budget conveys by having the clan listen for news updates on the radio. Telling rather than showing Is a legal move here in my opinion, given Rebanes resources, but then he tries to actually re-create some TV broadcasts which A is weird because they werent watching TV, and B is unforgivable, because it sucks. [example]
Jake sends Dan and Sara out to attach an antenna on their HAM rig, though when theyre subsequently seen in the woods, theyre hunting. Guess continuity had the day off. They come back and, after a depressing false rescue in which they mistakenly think theyve found a signal only to figure out its just a loop, [example] they all get cabin fever, and Andy bugs out. Dan goes a little more psycho, and in the process actually figures out more of whats going on [example 55:00]. Then suddenly they realize that though they thought Andy had left on the showmobile, hes actually left on the plane, which he then crashes. This ruins Jakes life and, even though the apocalypse is unfolding all around him, he fixates on the airplane since hed bought it with life insurance money hed gotten after his father had also died in a plane crash. The loss of the plane also strands the rest of the cabin-dwellers, and they spend the rest of the movie awaiting the inevitable. Dan, empath that he is, deduces the true nature of the invaders who have brought human civilization to an end, and the rest of the clan tries to figure out what to do with lives they now know are over.


Its probably not a coincidence They came out the same year as UFO: Target Earth. The interest in UFOs around this time seems to have been more than a fad. It seems to have been some kind of mystical obsession whose intensity we scarcely recall today. Like Target Earth, They is also very shy about telling the real nature of the alien menace the clan in the wintry cabin faces. The whole storys set up to keep Armageddon at a distance; not only does this let Rebane tell a large-scale on a small-scale budget but it sets up the cabin clan as something extraordinary. Theyre so remote they catch the interest of the alien intruders, who start answering their radio distress calls and asking nosy questions about them. Their isolation makes them good subjects for study, evidently. It also makes it easy for Rebane to shift into clumsy biblical allegory at the end.
Category: Film & Animation

Tags: they bill rebane mystery science theater aliens invasion from inner earth fiction mill creek snow madness hallucinations extraterrestrial probes ouch

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• they
• bill
• rebane
• mystery
• science
• theater
• aliens
• invasion
• from
• inner
• earth
• fiction
• mill
• creek
• snow
• madness
• hallucinations
• extraterrestrial
• probes
• ouch

[Nerdsansintelligence]

lol you spelled "creek" wrong. Did you notice the main credits music is a ripoff of the music from "The Good,the Bad, and theUgly?" You should review "The Alpha Incident" next.

[MisterRiffley]

@Nerdsansintelligence

1:16

[Vonyco]

Dude... this review was amazing. :0 Seriously, this is a really high quality review compared to a lot of Youtube reviews out there. And I'm glad you gave "They" the attention it deserves. Yeah, it's an extremely crappy movie, but for some reason it's also very enjoyable. :D

Definitely subscribing to you. And I don't subscribe to just anyone.

[MisterRiffley]

thanks a gazillion man. :) poke around in that nightmare worlds collection, there's some weird little gems in there. and i'm 100% with you on "they," it's this complete failure of a movie but i've seen it at least three times and really think there's something inspired about it.

[MisterRiffley]

ha, i think if ed had done the effects they probably would have been better.

i sorta like GSI. you have to see the uncut, unmistied version. there's nudity!!!!

"xtrothemutilator" mentions "They" in his latest VHS roundup (totally a coincidence...) apparently Rebane had more creative control on "they" than he had on GSI and Monster-a-GoGo...

[DarkAngel182]

P.S. Hey, I LIKED the "Giant Spider Invasion"!

[DarkAngel182]

LOL, did Ed Wood do the flying saucer effects?

[glynn508]

Excellent review, I'm glad Lampyman recomended your chanel or I may not have found it. Keep up the good work!

[davidscribe]

Great review, and I was thrilled to have actually seen this one. Must admit though, I was wondering when you were gonna mention the giant ants. About half-way through I realised I hadn't seen it and was actually thinking of something else.

Still, it looks interesting. But not to be confused with Them.

[MisterRiffley]

i call the one guy "dan" throughout but his name's apparently really "stan." i'm not gonna say mistakes weren't made.