he small town of Grand Bosh has serious problems even before the alien invasion and epidemic of spontaneous human combustion come along to complicate things. Mayor Shrank (Carlson) wears loud checkered suits and delights in blowing up condoms from vending machines at the gas stations. Sheriff Ed Munchinson (Vanarsdale) despises his job and blows off every request for help, no matter how urgent, by showering the complainant with verbal abuse. The kids are a bunch of juvenile delinquents who call their parents things like "you slut." Mr. Buckner (Speeter) has a friendly smile so insistent that it doesn't leave his face even after a gunshot at close range leaves him with a spurting chest wound. Worst of all, threatening Earth's chances of survival, everybody says stupid, pointless things without any sense of comic timing.
We cut to the Department of Bureaucracy, in Washington, D.C. Alien-invasion expert Art Rumbo (Sutin) arrives for an important meeting. The black-and-white film stock suddenly switches to full color, just in time for the attractive receptionist to take off all her clothes for no reason. It's not her fault that this is not sexy except for the truly hard-up, or funny except for the truly stoned. The aliens, whoever they are, seem to have blanketed the Earth with a Lameness Ray.
Meanwhile, in Grand Bosh, a distraught housewife's head catches on fire, prompting her husband to smack her in the back of the head with a beer can. In Grand Bosh, these qualify as Wacky Hijinx. Ha, ha, ha. Stop, you're killing me.
Just blow up the Earth already
In just about every movie involving space aliens who impersonate human beings, the disguises wind up somewhat less than successful. They either lack emotions, or speak in flat robotic voices, or boast billboard-sized foreheads, or need dark glasses to protect themselves from bright lights—something that enables our human protagonists, once alerted to the extraterrestrial infiltration, to discern the difference between real people and people-shaped objects.
It Came From Somewhere Else offers its own twist on the formula. It's filled with scenes that we are intended to laugh at, which offer silly characters doing stupid things, and which are structured with buildups, twists and even punchlines, but which persuade about as poorly as, let's say, an unblinking, zombielike next-door neighbor in any other invasion movie assuring the heroes, "I ... am ... as ... human ... as ... you ... are." They are, in short, not jokes, but joke-shaped objects, so easy to distinguish from actual jokes that only copious amounts of beer or cannabis could cause anybody to muff the identification. Just about all of them land with audible thuds.
Take the scene where the mayor enters a gas station, excited to use his favorite vending machine. It turns out to be a condom vendor. He tries to blow one up like a balloon, pops it and tries to buy another, only to be assured that the gas station enforces a rule of one per customer per day. He wanders off dejectedly. The synopsis makes this sound like it could be mistaken for a Joke. Onscreen, the energy and amusement level are next to nil. It's just there, that's all. Nothing at all funny about it—and it's one of the cleverest moments in the movie.
The DVD is generous with extras, including commentaries, script pages, an alternate ending in script form, outtakes, deleted scenes and an easter egg I didn't bother to look for. But if you really want to subject yourself to the kind of joke-shaped object that gets cut out of a movie where the condom gag qualifies as a highlight, then here you go: A doctor asks a local girl how her diaphragm is working. She says fine, but sometimes it's hard to breathe. And clutches her throat. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Seriously: It's the kind of movie that can only be improved by the presence of a satanic goat.
