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Decoys

Aliens pose as sorority girls to forcibly remove "male DNA" from fratboys, who freeze to death in the process. It's as bad as you'd expect, but with campy dialogue and an attempt to make some of the characters flawed and conflicted.

Our freshman hero Luke flirts with the hot aliens, hides in their closet and watches them reveal alien bits under their clothes, then spends the rest of the movie trying to prove they're really part of an invasion force. Since their tentacles only fly out of a hole between their tits when they're about to penetrate a man's mouth and spew frozen alien pupae into his chest, they have to be caught in the act. So naturally our hero has to hide video cameras where they'll be seen naked, like in the shower at the sorority house, and in his own dorm room when his roommate is about to lose his virginity.

Is there anything good about this beyond the stripping coeds and CGI effects? Not that you'd need anything else, but it has a few nearly redeeming features. The wacky kids drop hip, modern references and horrible jokes. For example, Detective Watts (Nicole Eggert) jumps in behind the hero with her gun drawn, yelling, "Baby got backup!" Luke aims his flame-thrower at one of the aliens and remembers which constellation she had talked about: "Belt of Orion? How about belt of O-Fryin'!"

The hero's chunky sidekick roommate Roger constantly talks about partying and drinking, but he also admits that he's a virgin. Playing against the typical party animal role, he quaintly stops an insatiable alien babe from molesting him in a bathroom because he wants his first time to be "special". Eventually the alien falls in love with him and says she doesn't want to do it because it will probably kill him.

For half a minute, they almost make it into a female revenge fantasy. Roger asks how she could kill other guys and why she feels different about saving him. The alien explains that those other guys were practically on the verge of committing date-rape when they were killed, and one of the guys who was killed had beaten his girlfriend. It might have made the movie different, but the line doesn't really fit. None of the alien attacks shown on screen have earmarks of date rape. The alien babes always ask for it, practically tearing the guys' clothes off. Maybe she was lying about the guy who beat his girlfriend, because that wasn't onscreen either.

And while we're talking gender, you have to notice the horror of switched roles. It's no coincidence that the girls are at their most dangerous when dark penises come out of their torsos and penetrate men. They have no bellybuttons, but the tentacles recede into a small, dark hole in their sternum. Just another one of those mysterious holes that girls have. The one sympathetic alien who's in love with Roger says that they've been having trouble getting the temperature right for this sexual process (the guys always freeze to death), but no one explains the details of what's supposed to happen. The closest we see to a proper reproduction is when huge insects crawl under the skin of Roger's stomach, up his throat and out of his mouth, then they explode in frozen shards. Not the first time that a living thing growing inside and popping out of a man has been shown as horror.

I know you're always on the look-out for images of vagina dentata. In the "Behind the Scenes" feature on the dvd, we see a close-up of the alien costume. Since the alien is standing still and waiting for a make-up artist to apply goo on the skin, we get a clear shot of the vertical slits on each of the alien's breasts. No teeth or attacking function inside them, but seeing vertical slits in wrong places is always part of a balanced horrorshow. Hell, seeing vertical slits even where they're supposed to be is sometimes scary enough.

That's all for the good stuff and the analysis. The dumb parts are also numerous. Party animal stops a girl from orally ravishing him in a bathroom because he wants his first time to be special? Dude, the precedent established by our 42nd president is that you can get blown and it does not count as "sexual relations with that woman," Miss insatiable tentacled ice queen. Let her blow you, then take some time setting up the candles and music for your special "first time" later on.

When they actually do get around to lighting candles and putting on mood music, the hesitant party animal stops her again because he wants to hear if the accusations are true, that she is a murderous alien invader with tentacles. They could have played it for laughs, but they tried to play it tender, with her admitting it's true, and him not very shocked at all. It's fairly casual, and he suggests they try to polinate anyway, knowing that other guys have been frozen to death from the same process. It was a cute switch to have her balking at killing him, and him offering to go ahead so he could save their species, but they glossed over it much too quickly to be credible.

Somehow I would have accepted it if they had said the aliens needed sperm, but what they say they need is "male DNA." I could have sworn DNA was the same for human males and females. Maybe I'm dumber than a Canadian sci-fi movie. Damn.

Another stupid bit was the coroner sawing open the chest of one of the still-frozen victims. Wouldn't they usually let the corpse thaw before doing all that stuff?

The most well-known actress of the bunch was Nicole Eggert from Baywatch and The Clan of the Cave Bear. Eggert plays a detective ex-girlfriend of Luke's, a role that seemed tacked on as an afterthought. No explanation for why or how a college freshman hooked up with a police detective. At one point when his sidekick Roger is still skeptical about the alien conspiracy, he tells Luke to loosen up and go get laid, specifically by a woman "a maximum of ten years older than you." Nicole Eggert is still hot, even though she's serious and lacking glam make-up in this role, but I assume they were making a crack about this noticable age difference. Their relationship isn't restored in the end, because Luke has to get together with the hot "tomboy" who tagged along all through the movie. At least the tomboy isn't pulling off a pair of glasses at the end to reveal that she's hot, but she does pull her hair out of a ponytail and shake it loose, as if she looked ugly or butch with it pulled back.

I could list some more flaws, but why bother? I had you at "aliens pose as sorority girls".