Invasion of the Pod People
2007
Story by Ron Magid and Jay Marks
Written by Leigh Scott
Directed by Justin Jones
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I seriously have to be scared of this root?
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Invasion of the Pod People asks the question: “What if the Bodysnatcher movies made everyone lesbians?” Well, buckle up, because we got lesbians and plant duplicates out the yin-yang! Another mockbuster from The Asylum, and one of the last efforts by Leigh Scott as writer before he cut and run. Leigh Scott’s Asylum films Dragon and Transmorphers have been reviewed before, and feature a bunch of the cast also in Invasion of the Pod People. Director Justin Jones has done a lot of assistant director work (and possibly was basically the real director on a few of those flicks!)
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All the asteroids from all those movies have teamed up to destroy Earth once and for all!
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Invasion of the Pod People was to be a mockbuster for The Invasion, a film so bad it got delayed for months, forcing Pod People to go it alone on the video store shelves. Some would say that was a blessing in disguise for Invasion of the Pod People…
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The guy the pod people never bothered to replace!
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I’m in an Asylum film!
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Raisins from Space!
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The credits start with lots of pods floating in space, in what looks like the same space graphics as the nanobots from Transmorphers (except skinned differently.) We open on Earth with a news report of meteors hitting the Monterey area and a mention that the Governor is MIA…the film killed Schwarzenegger!
Melissa gives no fucks, she’s too busy being having adult time with her boyfriend Andrew, which causes her to be late for her job at a talent agency. Her boss Vickland wants the firm to snag model Taylor Michaels as a client. The only problem is Taylor Michaels is a complete bitch. Another client named Baily Rogers comes by the office to give a plant to assistant manager Samantha. The client looks like she was attacked by a Collagen machine, which makes her carrying a ginger root in a pot around look even more surreal.
Supermodel Taylor also has one of the ginger root plants, and things get creepy thanks to the unnerving background music, which has music whispers and static set to a beat. It is actually pretty atmospheric and done pretty good, too bad the audio is screwed up enough you can’t hear it at all at times. The Asylum films usually have wack audio, but at least the sound isn’t thirty seconds off like it was in Transmorphers. The plant wanders off when Taylor isn’t looking and another Taylor hatches (the film couldn’t afford pods so all we see is duplicate Taylor screaming and pulling slime-covered saran wrap off. Taylor is podded by the evil duplicate Taylor (in a brutal murder scene that destroys the later argument from the podded people that they “transition” should be peaceful. Nothing peaceful about smashing your duplicate into the floor repeatedly!)
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The governor was off having illegitimate kids again…
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Ginger roots are the mummies of the spooky plant world…
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Writer Leigh Scott has a cameo as a distraught man who breaks into Melissa’s apartment and claims his wife wasn’t really his wife, so he killed her. He says he has to stop “them”, and then shoots himself. Perhaps he just had bad aim…
Melissa immediately buys a gun from a pawn shop where Jerry Garcia is working (that should have been your first clue something weird is going on…that and the fact there was no waiting period for the gun purchase!) No one even mentions the suicide in her house for a few more scenes, which made me think at first she’s the kind of girl who doesn’t get bothered when men kill themselves in front of her. Melissa goes out for dinner with her best friend and former coworker Louise, who might as well be wearing a pod-shaped target on her back.
Cranky boss Samantha is snorting coke and obsessing over her ginger plant, but she gets podded and suddenly is now a nice person with the hots for Melissa. A police officer named Detective Alexander finally talks with Melissa about the suicide, it turns out that Zack Richardson (Leigh Scott’s character’s name) was close with the model client Bailey Rogers, who we all know was already podded.
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Little known fact: Ginger root is a big shoe snob!
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Time to turn this IMDB flame war into overdrive!
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The whole agency goes to a club to try to hire Supermodel Taylor, and Taylor is ready to join up as she’s been podded like Samantha. Being podded is like being in the Freemasons, I guess. Or maybe its the Stonecutters. Someone check to see if Steve Guttenberg is a plant! Baily shows up and another woman and soon everything turns into a big lesbian orgy. The only one to miss it is Billie, who heads home early. Samantha and Melissa get it on, pod people style, after Melissa drinks a drink made from the alien plant (which would be ginger root soup, which doesn’t make you get drunk and become a lesbian. At least it has never made me….)
Melissa was given a plant that night, but tosses it in the garbage disposal where it screams and bleeds all over the place. She gives a sample of the blood to detective Alexander, while Billie at work gets a plant from Samantha as well. Detective Alexander wants his own plant so he can study it. Melissa’s boyfriend Andrew calls her and suddenly knows she went all lesbian despite her not mentioning it. So he’s podded. Podded Taylor comes over to give Melissa a new plant and some vague threats. The blood sample from before turns out to be Melissa’s blood (no word on how they got a sample of Melissa’s real blood to compare it to…)
At this point the film is begging to get confusing as to who is podded and who is being targeted as being podded. It mirrors the confusion the characters face, friend or foe? Vickland teams with Melissa to take down some of the pod people, but when another Vickland appears, Melissa shoots the real one (because she’s an idiot!)
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Oh. Help. Please. The ginger root. It’s. Alien. Or something.
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Plant Predator vision!
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Melissa is saved by Detective Alexander (along with Billie) and make plans to attack a nursery outside of San Diego where all the plants are coming from. But things don’t go according to plan. Or maybe they do, depending on who was making the plans. If anything, the ending is more true to form of a classic Body Snatcher flick than the rest of the film.
Someone want to tell me why the better-looking movie logo is at the end of the credits? Despite the good music, the constant lesbianism, and the ending, Invasion of the Pod People ends up being more of a downer due to the plodding plot and sadly unforgivable use of ginger root as an alien plant. I wonder if you are less familiar with the plant, would it seem more alien? But then why not use an even more obscure Asian plant, of where there are dozens to choose from at the many Asian grocery stores in the LA area? Despite all this, Invasion of the Pod People was still better than The Invasion.
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Heee-eeey! This is how we do it, lesbian plant people style!
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The reason this film got made, folks
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Rated 4/10 (ruined planet, manager dude, super grin, bloody plants!)
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Email us and tell us how much we suck!
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Ginger root is a hell of a drug…
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Fear me. Fear the Ginger root!
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What’s this awesome title screen doing at the end of the credits?????
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