The
late, great Gene Hackman did not make a lot of genre films, unless you count Westerns,
but when he did, he made them count. In fact, the first time many of my
generation noticed Hackman was when he portrayed Lex Luthor. Frankly, for most
of us, he is still the only Lex Luthor. A little more than ten years prior, he played
another science fiction bad guy on TV—and he was pretty darn good. Fortunately
for humanity, David Vincent still manages to disrupt his character’s plans in “The
Spores,” the episode of The Invaders guest-starring Hackman.
“Tom
Jessup” is the alien project manager overseeing the titular spores. If they can
successfully incubate and grow, the alien species will muscle humans off own
planet. Fatefully, an incident on the highway leads to the death of Jessup’s
two underlings. They just seemingly disappeared before Sgt. Ernie Goldhaver’s
eyes. Much to Lt. John Mattson’s frustration, Goldhaver told his story to the
local radio before he could contain it, which in turn attracted Vincent’s
attention.
Of
course, our crusading architect zeroes in on Jessup as a prime suspect, especially
given the way he clings to his metallic briefcase (which was much more
suspicious-looking in the 1960s). Even though his Jessup persona is quite rough-hewn,
he still loses the spores to a local punk, who assumes it must be more conventionally
valuable. That dangerous Macguffin keeps changing hands as the episode
progresses.
Frankly,
Hackman is unusually fierce for a network episodic guest star. At the time, you
might not watch him and think “this man should play Popeye Doyle.” Yet, in
retrospect, you can see some of that pent-up fury and his knack for projecting a
sense of physicality beyond his actual size.
The X-Files gets credit for taking paranormal paranoia mainstream,
but Quinn Martin got there first. Keep in mind, his alien infiltration series
was created by future low-budget genre master Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, The
Stuff), which makes sense, doesn’t it? It is interesting the revisit the
two-season series, post-X-Files and post-Men in Black. You can
get in at the beginning when Me TV resets their reruns of The Invaders from
the beginning, in its super-convenient Time-slot: 5:00 AM, on Sunday mornings.
In
the pilot, “Beachhead,” architect David Vincent pulls over exhausted, while
driving home late at night from a business conference. Instead of shut-eye, he
gets an eyeful of a flying saucer landing. He tries to alert the authorities,
but they do their best to discredit him. His partner Alan Landers similarly tries
to assure him it was all in his pretty little head. Of course, Vincent has seen
too much to forget, so he sets out in search of the witness who contradicted
him. In the suspiciously empty town of Kinney, he finds a decommissioned power
plant retrofitted for nefarious purposes and Kathy Adams, a widow, whose late
husband may have learned too much.
Frankly,
all the gaslighting of the first act gets a little boring. However, the scenes
in the ghostly looking Kinney are surprisingly cinematic (and impressively
helmed by Joseph Sargent). In addition to tapping into the Cold War paranoia of
classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars (which
Cohen himself identified as influences), rooted in the loss of individuality
and free will, Beachhead also appeals to the mounting anxiety over the
vanishing small-town way of life. Here, the insidious aliens represent urbanization
as well as Communism.
As
Vincent, Roy Thinnes had already perfected the dogged earnestness that would
make the lonely crusader a minor genre icon, but he sounds awkwardly overwrought
when making his case to others. However, Diane Baker really stands out for her
subtly turned guest appearance as Adams.
