V Movie Review

Creepy and surprisingly smart sci-fi miniseries. Advanced aliens, known as Visitors, land their saucers on Earth in the spirit of friendship, or so they claim. But their humanlike appearance is a facade; hiding their reptilian faces behind fake skin masks, the Visitors basically want to consume Earth's resources, including fillet of Homo sapiens. The first half of this two-parter is sf in the best Twilight Zone tradition, comparing alien invasion to U.S. foreign policy in Central America and savaging the nation's media brainwash and popculture attitudes (a high-school band welcomes the Visitors with the Star Wars theme). Once hero newsman Marc Singer learns the Visitors’ true intentions, a resistance movement is born, and the saga rather disappointingly turns into a standard blow-up-the-bad-guys action/adventure. Robert Englund, later to be enshrined as Freddy in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, is a cast standout as a benign Visitor. Sequelled by miniseries conclusion V: The Final Battle, and a short-lived TV series.

1983 190m/C Marc Singer, Jane Badler, Faye Grant, Robert Englund, Michael Durrell, Peter Nelson, Neva Patterson, Andrew Prine, Richard Herd, Rafael Campos; D: Kenneth Johnson; W: Kenneth Johnson. VHS WAR, MOV