They - 1974

 Also known as Invasion from Inner Earth and Hell Fire.

Bill Rebans makes another appearance on this set after The Alpha Incident.  Now, in that review, I talked about how surprised I was that I was liking a Bill Rebane film after my previous knowledge of him from Monster A Go Go, and hey maybe thats just his worse film and its all up from there?  Cause a few minutes of research reveals I also kinda liked his movie Rana early on in the blog.

They is similar in feel to The Alpha Incident in minimalism.  Alpha was all basically in one room with minimal amount of actors and happenings, and this movie is as well a lot in one room, or shot outside, with a minimal amount of actors and happenings.  They both suffer from essentially similar problems as well, in that to keep minimalism going you need a good script, and both don't quite have an adept enough hand, but also have plenty of entertainment value nonetheless.

Early on in They, a couple of isolated people way out in the middle of nowhere are only tenuously connected to the rest of the Earth by a radio, a radio which they begin to hear strange reports on.  It seems the world is descending into chaos, and all sorts of crazy happenings are going on.  When they fly to a nearby town, they're told not to land, and the air traffic guy literally throws himself onto the tarmac to stop them from doing so.  Seems there is a crazy new disease spreading, and it's basically total chaos.

This movie had some interesting factors rewatching in 2023.  The elephant in the room here is that it felt reminiscent of Covid, especially my experience, where I lived in the backwoods of Idaho and mostly heard about things going on in cities and around the world, where my own experience was seeing nothing and having my daily life change very little.

It felt more like they had something to do with the characters in this over Alpha Incident, but this movie still had some lags, and I think it also had a few plot holes.  There's a recurring bit where the people in the house gets calls from a weird alien voice over the radio, and I guess it's not a spoiler to tell you, we never figure out what that was all about.  Its hinted at for sure, but then again there is never a clear resolution to what happens in the movie at all, and the ending is a great wtf moment for sure.

I liked this and I thought the music especially was awesome.  I'll give it 4 stars.