I don’t remember how this came around – I was probably loitering at the bowling alley or smoking behind the gas station or drinking beer on the roof of someone’s house and throwing bottle caps at cars or running naked through that bar that had two doors or stealing those old standup ashtrays from that old hotel or whatever else but there I was and here was this movie kind of getting into my personal space and maybe even making eyes at me and might have brushed my shoulder and could have accidentally or not touched my thigh on accident maybe hmm I don’t know but there we were and that’s how things happened and here is The Falling which I really kind of liked even though some of it is totally stupid and it’s called Alien Predator on IMDb and had lines like “he’s Hollywood’s number one driver, you know” explaining how a guy in a dune buggy is outracing and outwitting some other schmuck in some sort of cheap sports car and this and that and no one else would probably like this one but I think it was semi flirting with me and made me feel good about myself so I played along and watched it and I kind of liked it so there ha ha touched my leg what?

This movie begins by telling us NASA launched Skylab and then it crashed. Obviously anything coming from space has to be infected or covered with something always and this time some sort of space molecules this or that come back to earth and infiltrate a cow – I actually think it was a bull because I think I remember giant bull balls back there but either way some cow out in the desert got infected or whatever by these space pirate spore things and that’s not the end of the movie as some sort of cautionary tale about how we should stop meddling in space or some sort of American congressional committee’s assertion of some Spanish production company publishing subversive materials right there in front of our 80s children. It’s just the beginning.

After the big opening, we follow three Americans in Spain, travelling down one of those unlit roadways we all love. The driver is falling asleep! Is he a pitiful take on the perserverance of the United States? Or is he simply a college level kid whose been driving for way too long? Or — is he Hollywood’s Number One Driver? Next to him is his lunkhead, meatball friend who appears to be chugging a beer instead of doing something patriotic like interpreting a colonial map or quoting The Jefferson Papers. Why is he drinking alcohol? Is he slovenly and just sits around in his kitchen back home, regretting the loss of his job in the coal mine and drinking cans of beer all night, instilling shame and despair into the life of his only child? Or is he the best friend of Hollywood’s Number One Driver and is along for this vacation across Spain, hoping to get lucky and leave his American jizz all over Europe? All we really can glean from this segment is that they are both sleepy and really hungry from long hours of travel, likely both horny and unfulfilled and just looking for a place they can park the RV for the night.

As we quickly do what we all do individually when it comes to prayer and start devoting ourselves to the best wishes of these two does the impossible happen! An attractive and blonde female rolls down out of the top of the camper and promises to cook them some food! “ARGH!!” They groan. “Female cooking!” Despite being at the wheel or in the passenger seat, they both pull their right hands up around their necks and pull an imaginary rope like they’re being hanged and start rolling around on the floor with their tongues hanging out. “GACK GACK GACK!” they writhe, the RV careening around all over the goddammed place. “GACK ARF WOOF! Someone call poison control!! The Nazis are bombing Europe again!!”

Not all of that happens exactly but you might get the gist of things here and we’re off to the races when the RV rolls over something disgusting in the road. HINT: it’s the remains of something I was talking about before this hint.

“So there we were in the middle of nowhere rolling around in some sort of sticky blood when something started screaming its fucking brains out so we split, man! We split as fast as possible and then we were in some village and some asshole threw a beer at us and Jesus! Did I tell you how blue my balls were?? Anyway we make it out to some gnarly hill and finally catch some shut eye and we wake up and I’ve been sleeping all cockeyed and my hair is hosed and our girl’s made some coffee and it tastes like shit and I wish she’d just fall in love with me already and there’s this weird family outside and somehow our gas line is ruptured and we might as well just eat some gas since she can’t cook but I learned how to fix gas lines in junior high when I was training for Vietnam but we have to get a wrench and something to eat besides gas and her sausages and eggs lucky we’ve got our trusty dune buggy we hauled across Europe so we went to town and I acted like I was shooting things in the street for no reason but man was I badass. Man. Talk about glory days!”

That excerpt was taken from the unpublished diaries of actor Dennis Christopher that our dedicated, gritty and cunning investigators at Film Miasma were able to scare up. After the fire.

According to The Record, our heroes went to town in their dune buggy, where they were very very very slowly served by a crabby waitress who looked liked this:

Yet! The next time she appears she looks like this! Why?? We are all left in the dark!! The only hint way get might come from the grizzled Spanish NASA scientist who seems to know what came from space, knows what’s creeping around in certain people’s bodies and suggests their minds are being altered! What does that have to do with her hair?? No one has any clue! Hopefully Hollywood’s Number One Driver can help us figure this shit out!

In attempt to keep away from a 45 minute post – I’d like to say that there are some good things in here. They do a few cool, rotating camera movements (that feel real out of place) and I really liked the way the blond girl and her “tude” were worked out. There’s also some good throw away lines that had me happy – like when the scientist is building his space spore serum and someone asks “what are those people doing out there??” And he casually remarks, “oh, probably killing each other.” Or when a guy gets booooo-ed for rushing some people along when they want to make out like they were filming this somewhere in Sodom or something.

Then there’s also some dodgy material like the lady and her hair and the guy with the mask:

And some strangeness down in some sort of hole in the underground of a Spanish NASA base that looks like a castle on the outside. And that dune buggy chase scene that goes on for a loooong time and you can tell they only had permission to use one road in that town. And we might just try and forget what happens at the gas station at the end. Buuuuuuuuuuuutttttttt

I thought this was a good, fun movie from the 80s. It seemed really cheap, corny and ripped off other movies blatantly and intentionally but things like that don’t really bother me too much. In fact I’ve tried to live my life not letting things bother me too much so there’s that.

FILED UNDER: GAS LINES AND BLOODY TRICYCLES AND COW GUTS AND THE CHICKEN SURPRISE SPECIAL DINNER AND BLOATY THROATS AND SOMEONE RAN FASTER THAN AN EXPLODING BUILDING SOMEHOW AND TRAINING FOR VIETNAM AND SPACE SPORE SERUMS AND SODOM