TerrorVision

Directed by Ted Nicolaou
1986
Rated R
83 minutes

Summary from IMDB: A civilization on a distant planet has found a way to solve its garbage problem: turning it into energy and beaming it into outer space. A flaw in this system is found when the signal is accidentally picked up on Earth by the Putterman Family's home satellite dish. While this would ordinarily be just another mess, this particular transmission contains a hungry monster who quickly begins snacking on various Puttermans. Only young Sherman Putterman has any clue what is going on, but nobody will believe him. Is there any hope for the Earth?

My rating: ★★★ out of 5

"A stray energy beam from my substation may be headed for your solar system, and could possibly result in the total annihilation of your species. I'm so terribly sorry for the inconvenience."

I love cheese in it's many forms, especially when it comes to B films and the '80s had a lot of them. Video stores and cable television opened the doors for many Hollywood producers to throw together low budget or medium budget film projects for short release in movie theaters then make a huge killing on rentals and sales. Early pioneers of this kinda film making were Albert and Charles Band who ran Empire Studios in the '80s and later became famous for their works under the name of Full Moon Entertainment in the late '80s and early '90s. One such film they did was a parody feature which mocked many of the late late night horror and science fiction features that probably once were shown on drive-in screens. Charles Band threw together several actors and actresses that were available and a reasonably funny script then set to work on using a previously built house set in a studio warehouse available in Italy. Most of the budget went into the creature effects for the "TV Monster" and the quite unique set designs for the house of a swinging couple who have quite unusual tastes in decoration and lifestyle.

I first watched this movie on VHS tape when it first came out and it left an odd impression on me. The TV Monster while cheesy and looking quite like something out of Jim Henson's worst nightmares kinda got under my skin because of how it consumed it's victims. Especially when it finally was pushed to the edge and decided to just suck up the remaining survivors of the family into it's multi-toothed maw (which leads to a nice point-of-view camera shot of being sucked right into it's mouth). All of the actors in the movie did an admirable job of getting through the script and definitely looked like they enjoyed themselves while filming it. Grampa Putterman played by Bert Remsen really thrived in his part as a survivalist who teaches his grandson the best ways to survive the end of the world but doesn't hold up well against an alien invasion from within the idiot box.

One major noteworthy cast member from this film is Diane Franklin who plays Suzy the Goth/Punk/Valley Girl (yeah, she is like a mesh of all three) daughter of the Puttermans. Diane later went on to play Princess Joanna in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and before playing Suzy also played Monique Junot the french exchange student in Better Off Dead. Suzy's heavy metal rocker boyfriend is played by Jonathan Gries who later came to fame playing Broots on The Pretender TV show and Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite.

The one major thing that disappoints me is that after Empire Studios/Full Moon Entertainment kept going through several changes in ownership and even being renamed a few times is that many of their earliest films including TerrorVision have never been released on DVD (Although it was remastered and shown letterboxed on Showtime in 2007 when MGM purchased the rights for rebroadcasting on cable). I happen to own one of the few surviving copies of the VHS tape which I purchased used from the very same video store I first rented it from years later when they did an inventory purge. The soundtrack for the film was produced on a very limited run because of the film being on such a quick release period and is very valuable on the collector's market.