the UK poster image for Mike Hodges’ 1985 comedy Morons from Outer Space
They came, they saw, they did a little shopping…
Morons poster tagline
In 1985, Hodges was approached by an old friend, film producer Verity Lambert, at the time head of production at EMI. She wanted him to take a look at a script written by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, household names in the UK through the BBC television series Not The Nine O’clock News.
“The project initially interested me because I was looking for a base in the UK,” explains Hodges. “I wanted to begin working here on a regular basis. EMI was a UK company so I agreed to direct Morons if they would finance Mid-Atlantic, the screenplay I’d written back in 1975. Verity agreed and I found myself with a two-picture deal. It was too good to be true. And that’s exactly what it was!”
Morons from Outer Space began from the premise that extraterrestrials may not be the super-intelligent super-civilized creatures idealistically portrayed in the cinema. What if they have low IQs? Are uncivilized slobs? Complete morons?
Hodges took to this idea with alacrity. The film starts with four inhabitants from the planet of Blob cruising in outer space, holidaying in a decrepit hired spacecraft. They are Bernard (Mel Smith), Desmond Brock (Jimmy Nail), his pretty blonde wife Sandra (Joanne Pearce) and Julian (Paul Bown).
“I’m anti-Spielbergian. Anti his saccharine sentimental take on the world. I liked the idea of directing the antidote.”
Mike Hodges
Everything about them, from their gaudy spacecraft to their tacky costumes, suggests a taste for everything moronic, a mirror image of much in our own popular culture. Their Star Trek-type cockpit extends into a mock-timbered kitchen worthy of any trailer home. A disembodied female voice reminds them to “Keep Space Tidy. Thank you.”
They are lost. While the others discuss a course of action, Bernard goes outside in his spacesuit for a solitary game of spaceball. Desmond, even thicker than the others if that’s possible, accidentally touches the starter button on the control panel. Their small “podule” detaches itself from the mother ship and zooms away, leaving Bernard forlornly floating alone with his spaceball. Eventually the “podule” crashlands on the M1 motorway in England.
News of their arrival causes panic world-wide. Colonel Laribee (James B Sikking), a flamboyant, fast-talking special attaché to the US Embassy, and Commander Matteson (Dinsdale Landen), a top British security officer, are assigned the task of interrogating Desmond, Sandra and Julian when they emerge from their space capsule.
Graham Sweetley (Griff Rhys Jones), tea boy in a television news bureau, does his best to cover the momentous events (since everyone else is out of the office) and soon becomes heavily involved with the three aliens.
Extensive psychological interviews and physical tests are carried out on the aliens, under the supervision of Laribee and Matteson. The conclusion reached is unanimous and inescapable; they are morons – “pinheads from another planet”. Graham Sweetley, however, recognizes their enormous potential in a world obsessed by celebrity. He puts them under contract and is soon selling their life stories to the tabloids, booking them on television talk shows, even turning them into pop superstars.
Meanwhile, Bernard, having hitched a lift with a stray spacecraft only to be rudely ejected, lands in California where he has a bad time trying to explain who he is and where he comes from. Not surprisingly, he’s interned in a mental asylum (shades of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) but manages to escape. Reduced to becoming a down-and-out, he eventually makes it to New York. Desmond, Sandra and Julian are there to give a mammoth pop concert at Shea Stadium.
Bernard manages to visit them in their glitzy dressing room. They don’t want to know him and have him thrown out. During the concert a spacecraft lands in the stadium. A repo man has come to recover their hired spacecraft. They are forced to return with him to the planet Blob. Bernard watches the spacecraft depart, sad and alone in the empty stadium, as Graham approaches: “Hi Bernard! You don’t know me, but I know who you are. Have a cigar.” It’s a fat one. Graham can afford it.
Says Hodges: “Of course Morons from Outer Space is gross in many ways, but it is ‘grossness’ that it’s satirizing. It certainly encompasses many of my own observations of the world now. The satire is very bitter, Jonathan Swift in a contemporary sleeve. I confess to being anti-Spielbergian, anti his saccharine sentimental take on the world. And I certainly don’t go along with the idea that if there is life outside this galaxy it is necessarily more intelligent. You could argue that, if they’re on the same trajectory as our civilization only they are historically further along, they could just as easily be dumb, morons. My opinion seesaws on whether we are being ‘dumbed’ down. In some ways we definitely are: in other ways maybe not. Only time will tell. The race is still on between the ignorant and the bright. Maybe it’s a close-run thing, I don’t know. In Morons it’s over.
“Why are we constantly looking for an outside force, a guru, to save us? Whether it’s God or ET. I wish we could just grow up and learn to manage without God, ET, or the Queen for that matter. Only then will we get on and help ourselves.”
Morons from Outer Space wasn’t always a smooth ride. There was a serious glitch about half way into the shoot:
“Mel and Griff were shown a rough cut of the material we’d shot so far. That was a big mistake and caused a lot of unnecessary aggravation. I don’t care who you are, it’s difficult to assess a rough cut and I don’t think Mel and Griff read it right. They found my approach too subtle for populist comedy. And Verity Lambert decided the lighting was too moody, not bright enough for a comedy, and that I was shooting too wide. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, some of the team were elbowed. Both the producer and the production designer were removed, a major upheaval in the middle of the shoot.
“I contemplated resigning but decided against it. I couldn’t afford another dispute. I was tired of fighting for the moment. And it wasn’t a film that should be taken too seriously. It affected me though. I let certain actors get away with performances that normally I wouldn’t have tolerated. And I put more light on them which is not my style at all. In the end, Morons from Outer Space is awash with caricatures. The aliens, on the other hand, gave brilliantly truthful performances – all of them.
“It was a shame Mel and Griff didn’t have more time to work on the script. The idea was so great I kept asking them to take it more seriously. Maybe they didn’t want to take it seriously? On the other hand maybe I take things too seriously? That said, if there had been more subtlety in the writing, I think it could have been a major comedy – without those OTT performances. But I’m afraid I am guilty of letting it happen.”
The idea of Morons from Outer Space may be brilliant but it seems the critics missed the point.
“The Americans got it. But I think they’re less snobbish about television comedians turning to the cinema. Here in the UK the critics were waiting for Mel and Griff. Not only did they have it in for them
“Some critics were extremely hateful, one actually declaring, ‘Die before you see this film’. I have to admit that’s my favourite of all!
” Mike Hodges
but they resolutely refused to get the idea behind the film. Maybe the title put them off. It was originally called Illegal Aliens but was changed during post-production. Some critics were extremely hateful, one actually declaring, ‘Die before you see this film’. I have to admit that’s my favourite of all!
“Whereas Mel and Griff were shaken by that kind of critical response, after being used to rave reviews for their television work, I was used to it! And besides, I thought, and still think, it is a really well-made film. Money well spent. It’s all up there on the screen.”
Whatever the shortcomings of Morons from Outer Space, it has great production values. Although the humour can be fairly low brow (but not by today’s standards), beneath its apparent silliness the film is rife with satire and irony.
The best comic moments come from the early interrogation of the aliens. One of the interrogators has seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers too many times, believing their stupidity could be just a mask. With a logic that seems irrefutable to him, he keeps coming up with statements such as: “When you’re in the tub, and a man-eating spider crawls out of the faucet, you don’t ask him to hand you the soap!” Hodges claims this sequence originally contained questions about democracy on Blob. The morons had no idea how their planet was governed. Sadly they were cut because the sequence was too long.
Chaos reigns surreal throughout Morons from Outer Space. Unfortunately the film fails to sustain its basic comic premise for more than the first half of its modest running time. Perhaps the aliens become just too moronic to sustain interest?
After Morons from Outer Space was completed, Verity Lambert left her job at EMI. The two-picture deal was never honoured and Hodges never got to make Mid-Atlantic. Instead, his first play, Soft Shoe Shuffle, a black comedy starring Frances Tomelty, was performed at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. Although a success, it would be another 15 years before Hodges would return to the theatre.
Instead, he went back to filmmaking and agreed to direct two television dramas. The first was a 30-minute episode for The Hitchhiker series called W.G.O.D. (1985). The second was a feature-length movie called Florida Straits (1986), both for HBO.
The Hitchhiker was HBO’s first – and most popular – original dramatic series and won eight ACE Awards to become the highest-ranking series on pay television. Presenting sophisticated tales of terror, horror and suspense, the series debuted in November 1983. The show was not only at the forefront of original programming for cable, but also helped establish the standards of excellence for such programming. The series also helped establish the acceptance of cable programming as an avenue for top film and television talents, and ran until February 1991.
This half-hour dramatic anthology series presented modern morality tales with contemporary players. In 85 chilling stories, men and women struggle with the best and worst in themselves, battling with – and all too often succumbing to – their deepest lusts, obsessions and fears. With powerful and controversial adult productions, the series’ tales of terror were infused with stunning film-noir production values and movie-marquee talent.
The compelling mini-features attracted an impressive, international roster of film talent, both in front of and behind the camera, resulting in tremendous popularity and critical acclaim. In its 10 years, The Hitchhiker attracted the talents of directors and actors, including Paul Verhoeven, Philip Noyce, Daniel Vigne, Willem Dafoe, Kirstie Alley, Page Fletcher, Peter Coyote, Virginia Madsen, Gary Busey, Ken Olin, Micheal O’Keefe and Elliot Gould, and brought feature film production values to television.
Attracted by the prestigious nature of the project, Hodges signed up to direct Tom Baum’s teleplay entitled W.G.O.D. in which Reverend Nolan Powers (Gary Busey), a money-hungry radio evangelist preaches on the air waves about the Bible. “The airwaves belong to God on 1350 AM,” he booms, before taking calls live on air for those needing to confess.
“God sees you,” he says to a woman needing advice on her private life. “Dump this turkey!”
But the comments from the Hitchhiker (Page Fletcher) at the start of the episode are all too telling: “A confession is good for the soul. If you’re the Reverend Nolan Powers it’s also good for business. But no matter how big he is there’s one caller out there he doesn’t want to hear from …”
Soon afterwards, live on air, Powers gets a call from a man who says the Reverend is “afraid of the truth”. When asked what his favourite song is, the voice replies, “What a Friend You Have in Jesus”.
Show over, the Reverend drives home to his tacky mansion. As it happens his mother (Geraldine Page) is listening to a recording by his dead brother. The song is “What a Friend You Have in Jesus”. Although he is a good son, she tells him, his younger brother (who vanished years ago) was perfect.
Tabloid news reporter, Harry Sato (Robert Ito), picks up on the story about Gerald’s mysterious disappearance and starts to investigate.
During the Powers radio show the following day, the anonymous voice calls again and Powers rudely cuts him off. Completely crazed, Powers drives, in the lashing rain, to a find a grave. He starts digging frantically. The voice, fading in and out wherever he is, forces him back into the studio. There, in a complete breakdown, he admits to killing his brother out of jealousy for his mother’s love. Suddenly, he realizes his confessions have been transmitted live on air. The film closes with the Hitchhiker’s closing comments: “The Reverend Powers had a long-buried secret, testament to his envy and wrath. But when he consecrated his tower of power, he also gave a voice to his unholy past.”
The focus on fundamentalist religion and its power in America today was of obvious interest to Hodges, who was offered a choice of several half-hour scripts. In the original screenplay, during Powers’s battle with the voice of his brother, he starts getting electric shocks from the microphone. Hodges immediately changed this sequence: “Religion is about blood. So instead of electric shocks I had blood dripping from the microphone and oozing from the soundproofing. The walls even start heaving. It was like a Francis Bacon painting!”
Shortly after the transmission of W.G.O.D., Hodges signed up for the next HBO project, the feature-length TV movie called Florida Straits.
The film is set 20 years after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Carlos Jayne (Raul Julia) persuades Lucky Boone (Fred Ward) and Mac (Daniel Jenkins) to sail their fishing boat into Cuba where a fortune in gold bullion had been buried during the abortive 1961 military action.
Their daring trek to the mountains of Cuba takes them to a huge abandoned power station described as “the ruins of an ancient empire… initially funded by the Batista government, but abandoned when Castro took power”. They are captured by El Gato and his band of rebels but manage to escape.
Carlos leads them to the gold but then insists they wait while he finds Carmen, the real reason for his return to Cuba. But Carmen has made a new life for herself, even marrying a police officer. Her husband agrees to turn a blind eye if he leaves immediately.
Carlos does just that. He, Mac and Lucky head back to the boat. El Gato reappears but Lucky lures him into a minefield and to his death. The trio, now at sea, are spotted by Cuban patrol boats. Carlos is shot and the boat badly damaged. But Mac and Lucky are rescued. And so is most of the gold.
The script wasn’t brilliant but Hodges took the job. He needed to earn some money and the film was to be shot in Mexico, a country he loved.
“Off I went to Mexico, had a great time choosing the locations and returned thinking I could make the script work. With Fred Ward and Raul Julia on board, I thought to myself this might not be so bad after all.
“Next thing the phone rings. It’s the producers calling to say they don’t want me to shoot in Mexico after all because they can’t afford it! I never heard anybody say they couldn’t afford to shoot in Mexico. Instead, they tell me they want it shot in North Carolina. I couldn’t believe it. The whole story takes place in the jungle! North Carolina is more like Dorset! To this day I’m not sure what the real story was. You can be sure it’s not a pretty one. Lies and deceit stalking me again. I would love to have told them there and then to stuff it but I couldn’t afford to.
“So I fly out to Charlotte in North Carolina and they drive me to a little town called Shelby. This place is like Peyton Place! It turns out they’d done some stupid deal with a production studio there. It was a complete nightmare! And I was stuck in this place for six months. I had committed myself contractually.
“Luckily, I got to bring over my own team, which included Voytek (Squaring the Circle), the cameraman, focus puller, editor and even my two sons. The crew were brilliant and we just about pulled it off.
“I came back, edited it, delivered it to HBO and thought that was the end of it. I should be so lucky! The producer then decides he wanted to re-cut the film, even though HBO had been happy with it. The Directors’ Guild of America intervened on my behalf but, when he fired my editor, there was nothing I could do but return to England.
“I learned later they had shot additional scenes with a double of Raul Julia, a man half his size and wearing a terrible wig. Worse still they had ladled some awful music all over it, throwing out all the amazing Cuban music I’d found in New York. This piece of garbage was shown on HBO. Later it was even released in France as a feature film, and with my name on it. But I had the last laugh. The Directors’ Guild of America traced this release and the producers were made to pay me a substantial sum of money as compensation.”
That wasn’t the only good thing to have come out of Florida Straits. It took him to North Carolina and it was there that the creative seeds for Black Rainbow were sown. He began writing it immediately after he got back to Britain. But before it could be made, Hodges had another offer …
