SEEDPEOPLE
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| Rated R
| | Copyright 1992 Full Moon Entertainment
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 30 March 2008 (updated)
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- Tom - Geologist, electrician, and film technician. Pretty much whatever you need in a character...except a weapons expert. He really needs to take a few firearms safety classes.
- Heidi - She looks like Christina Applegate, only thinner.
- Kim - Life has been tough for this girl since her mother passed away. It gets worse when she realizes the housekeeper is an illegal alien. Oh, and then she finds out that her dad is an alien. Wait a minute, is this a teenage angst movie or a rip-off of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers?"
- Doc Roller - Where did he find a circline ultraviolet bulb, and why is he wearing it on his head? Why did he have to die before I could ask him?
- Deputy Brad Yates - Local deputy sheriff. He really needs to buy two locks. One for his gun cabinet and the other for his girlfriend.
- Mrs. Santiago - Heidi's housekeeper is an alien plant! Ha! That's two puns about the same woman! I am on a roll!
- The Seedpeople - Creatures created when extraterrestrial flowers pollinate human beings.
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Tom is a scientist with an interest in meteorites. After one is found in Comet Valley, where he grew up, Tom decides to visit and look for some more. The Native American cave art that earned the town its name could have been misinterpreted; perhaps the town should be called Meteorite Valley instead (or "The Place Where Stuff Falls On Your Head").
My Native American naming fu is powerful.
We soon discover that everything is not peachy swell in Comet Valley, and I mean before Tom returned and started stirring up trouble by trying to flirt with Heidi (his old girlfriend) while staying at her bed and breakfast. Heidi does not want anything to do with Tom. She already has a steady relationship with Brad and is busy helping to raise her niece, Kim. The niece is at a difficult age and is trying to cope with her mother's recent death. Even worse, Kim continues to insist that Mrs. Santiago is not what she appears. The last thing that Heidi needs in her life is a geologist gigolo who wants to play bouncy-bouncy.
Heidi's life is about to become exponentially more complex, because her brother, Frank, investigates a strange vine growing on a tree in the orchard. One of the plant's blooms spooges on him! Yes, I said "spooge." The slimy extraterrestrial coating transforms the man into a wobbling Seedperson. However, the creature is able to return to human form. While it might look exactly like Frank, it sure does not act like him. I mean, from what little I know about Frank. He appeared to have more personality than an emotionless zombie. At the very least, Kim notices the change, so I cannot be far off base here.
Since he is in town to find meteorites, Tom gives a presentation at the local Grange about rocks and meteorites. Yes, this is just as boring as it sounds, even more boring (I guess the director was going for realism). At the end of the meeting, the locals all stumble away into the night, looking for some hard liquor to wipe away the after effects of Tom's lecture. One of them hangs around, not because he is a glutton for punishment and wants to hear more about Tom's space rocks, but because he found a weird rock and thinks it might be another meteorite. Tom takes the oddly-shaped object and is mystified by it. The "meteorite" looks like a huge peach pit.
Emma: "Emmett, what are you doing drinking on a Thursday?"
Emmett: "Emma, there was some city slicker down at the Grange tonight, talking about rocks. It was just about the dog gone most monotonous thing I ever heard - worse than Widow Johnson bragging about her cat."
Emma: "She's a nice woman..."
Emmett: "With a boring cat!"
Back at the afflicted orchard, a man named Ed starts poking at one of those flowers that spooged Frank. This time a stream of Corn Pops comes out of the pod! The shower of breakfast cereal is supposed to be alien pollen, and it sticks to Ed. The doomed man flails around for a bit before collapsing. Born from the fruition of man and galactic flora is yet another Seedperson. Now, Ed was not alone in the orchard; his buddy Thurman was with him. The other man flees from his mutating friend and runs down the winding country road towards the town.
Along comes Doc Roller in his pickup, drinking his hooch and wearing his funky fluorescent hat. Chasing after Doc Roller is a Seedperson in a Bronco who is trying to run the old man off the road. Despite having plenty of time to avoid the oncoming vehicles, Thurman stays in the road. Roller's truck squishes the frantically fleeing refugee from the orchard of terror. Doc survives the encounter and makes his way up to the valley's substation. Once there, he screws with the power until a deputy arrives. The police officer electrocutes himself pretty good due to Doc's tampering with the gear, making him easy prey for a roaming Seedperson.
As mankind's last line of defense against the aliens, Doc Roller is proving to be something of a double-edged sword.
Tom witnesses Mrs. Santiago in plant monster form in a scene that made me scratch my head. He starts to enter his room and the Seedperson knocks him flat on his butt, shutting the door in the process. Instead of looking for a shotgun, Tom just stares at the door until Mrs. Santiago comes out. Between that encounter and Kim finally capturing video footage of the monsters, Heidi and Tom are convinced that an invasion from outer space is taking root in Comet Valley.
Tom is not the sort of person I want on the front lines when the leafy alien overlords arrive. If I had a close encounter like that, the next time Heidi saw her housekeeper the creepy woman would have been lashed to a post, with me preparing to recreate the last moments of Joan of Arc.
No, I do not think that Joan of Arc was an extraterrestrial.
At long last, Tom catches up with Doc Roller and hears everything the old man knows about the Seedpeople. The two of them then go to get Heidi and Kim, but arrive too late. Both of the girls are under the control of the invaders (if an alien plant pollinates a human they become a Seedperson, which can then hypnotize humans). A stroke of fortune smiles on Homo sapiens when a close encounter with an ultraviolet lamp frees Heidi and Brad from the alien mind control. Working together, the four humans steal the truck filled with alien seeds and lure the plant creatures into an ambush. It is successful, but at the cost of Doc's life. Never volunteer to be the understudy for a roll of copper wire.
If you have watched "Seedpeople" you are probably wondering the same thing that I am: why were the seeds stuck to the outside of the big meteorite, rather than inside of it where they would be best protected from possible harm?
During the final encounter, Tom sustains a serious head injury. The entire movie is told as a flashback, because the wounded geologist is strapped down on a medical gurney. The "GOTCHA!" ending does not make any sense at all. Last we saw Heidi and the other townsfolk, they were free of the aliens' influence. Heck, two out of the three Seedpeople were definitely dead, and the third was almost certainly becoming one with the carbon cycle. The ending feels tacked on, like the script ended with, "And the aliens won!" It is not the best movie to fall out of somebody's butt, that is for sure. It does contain some funny quirks; Doc Roller's "industrial lighting" outfit and Ed being pelted to death with Corn Pops were my favorites.
Shadow invited everyone to review a Full Moon film, with the expected results (outright hostility). Despite that, all of us picked a film and turned to.
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- Staying at the bed and breakfast run by your old girlfriend poses some problems, especially when her new boyfriend is a cop.
- Plants are perfectly capable of a "money shot" that would put Peter North to shame.
- The alcoholic content of the punch is directly related to the number of teenagers present.
- Make sure you give the local "old crazy coot" some respect, because he is the only thing standing between you and alien domination.
- Having your head turned into a coconut is usually fatal.
- Arguments about horticulture are the primary contributing factor in many cases of domestic abuse.
- The space shuttle's thermal tiles are made from compressed wheat germ.
- Riding in the back of an open truck that is moving at fifty miles per hour will not cause your hair to blow around.
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- 12 mins - Those look like spores from the Toxic Jungle. Get your flamethrower!
- 30 mins - This scene contains 100% of the U.S. recommended daily allowance of denim.
- 34 mins - Why is Brad doing laps around his car in the background?
- 35 mins - He is also carrying a hatchet and wearing a light bulb on his head.
- 48 mins - Gah! My eyes! Why can't you wear baggy "Rock Raiders" pajamas like every other geologist?
- 50 mins - Finally, a couple of ground guides for the truck. Maybe we can end the "people getting run over" trend.
- 62 mins - Humanity's future depends on this truckload of light bulbs; please drive carefully.
- 78 mins - Who did not see this coming? Anyone?
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- Ed: "What in the ding-dong-heck-a-ma-doodle-hell is that?"
- Doc: "Plants are the most cunning and savage of all life forms!"
Tom: "Yeah, but they're rooted, Doc. What can they do?"
Doc: "But seeds...seeds are travelers. Creepers, hoppers, parachuters, hitchhikers. Seeds can chase us. We are being chased by seeds which were sown on the winds of the universe!"
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | seedpeople1.wav
| Brad: "He may have murdered a police officer, and you let him WALK out of here!"
Tom: "Oh, so what was I supposed to do? Eat the gun and throw him over my shoulder?"
Brad: "I dunno know Tom. You're the guy that went to college. You should have been smart enough to think of something."
| | seedpeople2.wav
| Tom: "The meteorites are seeds."
Heidi: "The meteorites are seeds?"
Tom: "Yes, and there's something terribly wrong going on here."
Heidi: "Oh, is everyone going crazy?"
| | seedpeople3.wav
| Doc: "Let's see if you bleed chlorophyll."
| | seedpeople4.wav
| Tom: "Frank, Ed, and Mrs. Santiago aren't people anymore. They've been taken over by some alien life form."
Doc: "Come from seeds, like the one you found."
Burt: "You talking about my meteorite?"
Tom: "Your meteorite's not a meteorite. It's a seed, and that's how they got here!"
Burt: "My meteorite's a seed?"
Tom: "You got it."
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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