28A

Apparently Earth is the Australia of the Universe, because aliens sure love dumping their criminals here. Our movie begins with these bug alien guys sentencing one of the more psychopathic degenerates to living eternity on the backward planet we call home. As a further punishment, the bug monsters have genetically changed the murderous being so that he appears human, but apparently they haven't worked all the bugs (pun unintended) out of the system, because no sooner do they drop him on the surface of the Earth and leave that his head explodes. Never one to be scuttled by a minor setback, our alien in exile simply steals somebody else's head and jams it onto his bloody neck stump.

Our cranially challenged protagonist soon finds two things out about himself. First off he discovers that he's in LA, and therefore nowhere near the weirdest thing wandering around. He also soon comes to know that he's basically un-killable except for the pesky fact that his stolen heads keep on exploding and that he needs to constantly replace them (such a nuisance).

The other half of the movie revolves around a cop team trying to track down some rapist jerk who is secretly harassing the female member of the cop team in a manner which is both ridiculous and would seemingly get him caught right away. Now you'd think that eventually these two plots would intersect, right? Well they do… at 5 minutes before the movie ends! That's right, the movie screws around with build up for an hour and twenty, and then when the two halves finally meet, it abruptly ends, leaving the audience frustrated for the lost potential that a movie involving an alien who has to steal heads to replace his constantly exploding head seems to promise.

Bullshit or Reel?

Reel, the movie in question is “The Borrower,” This movie is an example of a sub-genre of movies that enjoyed a small heyday in the 80's, the “cops versus invincible alien criminal” genre. There's quite a few movies that fall under that genre's blanket, including “The Dark”, “The Hidden”, and “I come in peace” to name a few.

28B

Radiation makes everything magical, doesn't it? It gives the world a healthy glow, makes all of society's loners into super human humannaughts, and grants road gangs unlimited gasoline to pursue their wicked schemes. Of course there is one downside to this wonder wave, and that is its natural cinema tendency to turn any creature unfortunate enough to be exposed to it into a giant, human eating monstrosity. Throughout movie history, everything from the lowly ant to the mighty tarantula have been monsterized through the Gamma ray, but hold your horses because Earth's newest towering monstrosity is waiting… in the microbial world?

This little yarn starts cookie cutter enough, a chemical factory in a rural town is up to no good (damn you, industrial revolution!), and they're dumping radioactive waist in the county watering hole. These chemicals kill pretty much everything that lives in the lake, to which end the chemical company's talking heads spin it as a water purification method, which the town seems to approve of (despite the fact that the old fishin' hole is now full of trout corpses. Crystal clear, hu?). Now as disinfectant adds have warned us all these many years, it's almost impossible to kill that last 0.01% of those pesky germs, and they quickly become huge off of the toxic pond water and hungry for Manwhich.

There are some fun monsters in this flick, from swarms of flying, barrel sized CG Paramecium, to an Amoeba that choppily wobbles through town, knocking over buildings and generally ruining the harvest fair. There's a real joy in watching a Paramecium be shot to pieces by a red neck with a sawed off shotgun.

Moment of Madness: One of the super monsters is a form of tapeworm that eats people's brains and gains their memories. It becomes smarter and more dangerous throughout the movie, at one point it even cuts the breaks on a pick-up truck. Eventually it starts feeling bad about the terror it caused after eating one of the main characters mind and gaining his memories. It even goes so far as to learn how to speak and professes it's love to the dead man's cheer leader girlfriend in a scene that's suppose to be touching, but just becomes kind of uncomfortably weird.

Bullshit or Reel?

Bullshit, This crazy little concept was the spawn of about a dozen old school “Doctor Who” episodes, most notably “Ark in Space” and parts of the “key of time” series.