Strange Invaders

Strange Invaders (1983)

25 years ago, they arrived from another galaxy. Surprise — they're still here.

Alien beings, who settle in a small midwestern town, are disturbed by a young professor determined to rescue his daughter from their clutches.

Date of release
1983-09-16
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (89)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction
Director
Michael Laughlin

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $1.4M
  • Budget: $5.5M
  • Earned 0.2× its budget
  • Filmed in: New York City and Ontario
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Strange Invaders is a 1983 American science fiction film directed and co-written by Michael Laughlin, and stars Paul Le Mat, Nancy Allen and Diana Scarwid.

Production

Director Michael Laughlin teamed with Bill Condon, his co-writer and associate producer from Strange Behavior. The first image Laughlin came up with was that of a midwest landscape with an "old-fashioned mothership sliding in".

He wrote the first few pages himself and then he and Condon completed the screenplay in two parts, each writing different sections. They wrote the script without any deal in place but were confident that it was going to be made into a film. They even figured out the budget, scouted locations, cast the actors, and worked on the production design while arranging the financing. This pre-production was all done at the expense of Condon and Laughlin.

The film was a take-off of science fiction films of the 1950s. "I think that's when all this science-fiction view of the future was invented - the current idea of the future," said Laughlin. "America thought it had conquered the world. The Germans were no longer anything to worry about. The Japanese had been defeated. The only thing that sent a possible tingle through your spine was an invasion from outer space."

To help produce the film, Laughlin brought in his friend Walter Coblenz, who had been the assistant director on the Laughlin-produced film Two-Lane Blacktop. They shopped the script for Strange Invaders around Hollywood.

Laughlin's previous film, Strange Behavior, had been released by a small distributor and this time around he wanted his film to be handled by a major. Orion Pictures liked the script and was looking for a good film at a modest price with mainstream appeal. Orion provided half of the film's $5.5 million budget with England's EMI Films coming up with the rest.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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