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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Mars Attacks (1998)

This one’s really weird. It makes fun of all those 1950s science fiction films, showing many of the common tropes and stock characters, but turning them into gags. There's a lot of graphic violence portrayed in a comedic style in this movie which was kind of a new phenomenon at the time it came out, at least for a major Hollywood scifi.

*****SPOILERS: The attached unauthorized trailer contains spoilers and graphic violence.*****

The gags in this film will make you laugh, but they’ll also erode your empathy and moral compass, so watch at your own risk.

accessible description:

Video opens with a new-age woman holding a crystal sitting on top of a car wearing new-age attire, and overlooking a huge crowd of people off in the distance who are gathered around a landing pad out in the middle of the desert. A sign says Welcome To Earth, there are a couple of news reporters giving on-the-spot news reports. The woman reporter is carrying a little chihuahua, a flying saucer comes down, it's landing gear extends and it sets down, then a big long ramp unrolls, there's a red carpet waiting for the aliens to come out, then cut to the president looking at his TV Set as an alien comes out of the spaceship, the alien talks in an alien language and a geeky guy translates it with some goofy machine, everybody smiles when the translation says “We Come in Peace”, then a hippie releases a dove and the dove flies overhead and the alien shoots down the dove with a laser, frying it to a crisp. Then the aliens start shooting all of the people and the soldiers who are in 1950s style jeeps and tanks. Quick cut to a guy in a Las Vegas casino who says “whoa”, one of the soldiers runs towards the alien carrying a gun and yelling, one of the reporters runs across and falls on the ground, crawls over to the other reporter, and they reach out to grab each other's hands, the camera shows the woman reaching and grabbing the guy's hand, then an alien fires a laser and cut back to the woman with the guy’s hand but the rest of the reporter is missing, it's just his hand cut off at the wrist. the woman drops the hand in shock then the little chihuahua quickly walks up and grabs the hand by a finger and drags it away, and only a skeleton of the reporter remains because he got shot by the alien. The aliens gather up some things and fly away and the new-age woman sits on top of her car in shock overlooking a scorched empty desert with no people left.

***** THIS VIDEO CLIP CONTAINS SPOILERS AND GRAPHIC VIOLENCE *****

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@Pat
I hope the alliens didn-t get you (just joking). Are you ok?

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