FANTASIA OBSCURA: Beating the ‘Alien Trope’ in Ways Only the 1960s Could
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Although sometimes, in the face of an alien invasion, the jokes don’t quite work that well…
The Monitors (1969)
(Distributed by Commonwealth United; Dir.: Jack Shea)
The alien invasion trope: It’s a classic that’s been a part of science fiction since 1897. Such stories are our efforts to come to terms with our history of population movements and territory acquisitions, a way to approach a touchy subject that few other artists would try to tackle. With, of course, one very noted exception.
It’s also a very well-worn, tired outline that fits an overly familiar pattern: Aliens show up, disaster befalls us as they take away/destroy everything we hold dear, a few brave folks stand up to them, we get our planet back. You could almost apply Alan King’s observation about Jewish holidays to most alien invasion films: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”
The exceptions are few and far between. The best is, of course, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, while another exception was The Monitors by Keith Laumer, which used a similar plot device about the benevolent aliens who come down to keep us from hurting ourselves. Published in 1966, Laumer approached the story with a dry, sardonic humor that tried to read like a comedy of manners as the alien Monitors, in their orange jump suits, suffer us poor humans in our efforts to resist their actual improvements to our lot, which we just don’t want.
It was a dry piece of humor that might have remained lost amidst the many other science fiction novels that came out that decade, had it not been optioned by The Second City.
Like the citizens of Mohenjo-daro, there’s just no one who left any records to explain why this existed or how it came about. The fact that the film came out in October of 1969, and looks to have been filmed on the cheap in Chicago during the spring of that year, suggests that the story of peaceful repression might have been an antidote to Mayor Richard Daley’s use of the police the August before. Someone at the troupe must have had enough passion to bring the production into existence, although the fact that the only two active members of Second City at that time who appeared in the film, Martin Harvey Friedberg and Burt Heyman, were not used as leads, confuses the narrative.
Not that the narrative could suffer from any confusion, as it’s pretty straight forward: The Monitors, who with their bowler hats for the film look like models for a Mr. Chips cookie package, have come to save us from our tendency towards war, social and economic inequity, and general self-destructive behavior. Having brought us to heel, they exert their influence over us with TV jingles, propaganda that’s less Leni Riefenstahl than Stan Freberg, and being just about everywhere, a kind of uber-budinskis.
Our hero, Harry Jordan (Guy Stockwell), is no fan of the aliens, out of a sense that humans need to decide their own fates for themselves. He has the hots for actress Barbara Cole (Susan Oliver), who’s in cahoots with the Monitors, directly communicating with alien leader/head missionary Tersh Jeterax (Shepperd Studwick).
After attempting to stop the Monitors from breaking up a riot with peace gas (which must have struck a few nerves with an audience that remembered cries of “the whole world is watching!”), Harry ends up in the resistance, which is being spearheaded by P. A. Stutz (Larry Storch) and Harry’s brother, comedian-wannabe Max (Avery Schreiber).
Yes, that’s right: Humanity’s fate is in the hands of Corporal Agarn from F-Troop and the “Doritos Crunch” pitchman. You can imagine how well that works out.
In fact, not a lot really works out well in the film. Many of the jokes fall flat as the director and most of the actors (who were better known for doing TV work before and after the film) came to shoot in Chicago a script that carried many of the hallmarks of Sixties comedy, which meant lots of gags at the expense of sense. Much like Help!, What’s New Pussycat?, and the first feature version of Casino Royale, they try whatever they can throw at the wall to see if it sticks. Even if it means throwing the kitchen sink, which ends up leaving a really nasty hole in the wall that you just can’t spackle over, no matter what.
If nothing else, it’s an oddity that like any good piece of science fiction, raises more questions than it answers. Granted, the questions raised are more along the lines of, “Who thought this was a good idea?” and, “Did people really laugh at stuff like this?” and, “Hey, since this was in 1969, when Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, and Brian Doyle Murray were joining Second City, why didn’t they end up getting used in the pic?” as well as, “Wow, would it have made a difference had they been in it anyway?”
And like the questions raised by better science fiction films, we may debate these forever.
NEXT TIME: What doomed the dinosaurs? In this case, a very talented scene-stealing character actor…
