Invasion: UFO (1980) - Mastodon watch party this Sunday evening!
> UFO is a 1970 British science fiction television series about the covert efforts of an international defence organisation (under the auspices of the United Nations) to prevent an alien invasion of Earth.
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> ...
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> Tony Jones of starburstmagazine.com gives the series a favourable review: "To a large extent, UFO is still very watchable [...] even if effects have moved on considerably in the past several decades. The music works, the costumes are memorable, and even if some of the future looks rather dated now, the stories themselves are still strong".[23] Paul Mounts comments that even if many episodes "seem ponderous by today's standards", the series is "really all about those extraordinary visuals, the thunderingly exciting Barry Gray signature music [...] thrilling title sequence [and] overarching scenario". He argues that the final nine episodes, filmed after the move to Pinewood Studios and featuring increasingly "action-orientated" plots, were an improvement on the first 17.[24]
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> Other reviews have been more critical. In 1972, a commentator for the Los Angeles Free Press wrote that UFO "plays like a combination of the worst traits of Batman and Star Trek".[25] A 1973 review by Cleveland Amory criticised the writing and dialogue, the "plaster cast" of supporting characters, the level of violence, and a perceived sexism from some characters, commenting that "outer space, even in 1980, is still crawling with male chauvinist pigs." He also wrote that "[t]he idea that anything in outer space must be an enemy is perhaps one of the most offensive things here."[26] According to Gary Westfahl, the series has "an intriguing premise [...]; the special effects were impeccable; and even the acting was better that usual. But Anderson proved unable to imaginatively develop his story, as later episodes reveal that the aliens were People Who Look and Act Just Like Us, and the show slowed down to stupefied inertia as the aliens increasingly focused all of their energies on repetitive schemes to kill the show's hero, Stryker [sic]."[27]
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> According to a retrospective by Den of Geek, UFO "caught perfectly the depressive and fatalistic Zeitgeist of 1970s cinema, with relentlessly bleak endings and a hell of a lot of suffering on the way to them. It mixed inventive scripting with frequently trite dialogue and vice versa; it put highly charged emotional, adult situations in the hands of actors who were often wearing absurd purple or platinum wigs [...] It kept you off-guard in a manner that few other shows have ever achieved, intentionally or otherwise."[28]
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> In the 1970s and 1980s a number of the episodes were cut and compiled to create compilation films. Among these was Invasion: UFO...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(British_TV_series)
Invasion: UFO (1980) is the movie for this Sunday's "[monsterdon](https://wiki.neuromatch.social/Monsterdon)" watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, May 17 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 1am Monday UTC
- and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live text commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something.
How to watch the movie:
- tubi (availability varies by country): https://tubitv.com/movies/100052644/invasion-ufo
- youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQO6OSt55_w
- youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuoguhQ24Gs
- uBlock Origin adblocker on Firefox should work for that tubi and those youtube links
- archive: https://archive.org/details/invasion.-ufo.-1974.1080p
- it's usually streamed on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/invasion-ufo
>
> ...
>
> Tony Jones of starburstmagazine.com gives the series a favourable review: "To a large extent, UFO is still very watchable [...] even if effects have moved on considerably in the past several decades. The music works, the costumes are memorable, and even if some of the future looks rather dated now, the stories themselves are still strong".[23] Paul Mounts comments that even if many episodes "seem ponderous by today's standards", the series is "really all about those extraordinary visuals, the thunderingly exciting Barry Gray signature music [...] thrilling title sequence [and] overarching scenario". He argues that the final nine episodes, filmed after the move to Pinewood Studios and featuring increasingly "action-orientated" plots, were an improvement on the first 17.[24]
>
> Other reviews have been more critical. In 1972, a commentator for the Los Angeles Free Press wrote that UFO "plays like a combination of the worst traits of Batman and Star Trek".[25] A 1973 review by Cleveland Amory criticised the writing and dialogue, the "plaster cast" of supporting characters, the level of violence, and a perceived sexism from some characters, commenting that "outer space, even in 1980, is still crawling with male chauvinist pigs." He also wrote that "[t]he idea that anything in outer space must be an enemy is perhaps one of the most offensive things here."[26] According to Gary Westfahl, the series has "an intriguing premise [...]; the special effects were impeccable; and even the acting was better that usual. But Anderson proved unable to imaginatively develop his story, as later episodes reveal that the aliens were People Who Look and Act Just Like Us, and the show slowed down to stupefied inertia as the aliens increasingly focused all of their energies on repetitive schemes to kill the show's hero, Stryker [sic]."[27]
>
> According to a retrospective by Den of Geek, UFO "caught perfectly the depressive and fatalistic Zeitgeist of 1970s cinema, with relentlessly bleak endings and a hell of a lot of suffering on the way to them. It mixed inventive scripting with frequently trite dialogue and vice versa; it put highly charged emotional, adult situations in the hands of actors who were often wearing absurd purple or platinum wigs [...] It kept you off-guard in a manner that few other shows have ever achieved, intentionally or otherwise."[28]
>
> ...
>
> In the 1970s and 1980s a number of the episodes were cut and compiled to create compilation films. Among these was Invasion: UFO...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(British_TV_series)
Invasion: UFO (1980) is the movie for this Sunday's "[monsterdon](https://wiki.neuromatch.social/Monsterdon)" watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, May 17 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 1am Monday UTC
- and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live text commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something.
How to watch the movie:
- tubi (availability varies by country): https://tubitv.com/movies/100052644/invasion-ufo
- youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQO6OSt55_w
- youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuoguhQ24Gs
- uBlock Origin adblocker on Firefox should work for that tubi and those youtube links
- archive: https://archive.org/details/invasion.-ufo.-1974.1080p
- it's usually streamed on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/invasion-ufo