There really ain’t nothing that brings out the bad in an actor as playing townsfolk in the old west. I think it’s because a lot of the old westerns, especially the black and white ones, were acted in the pre-Brando-as-Stanley way of acting. Unnatural overacting for an audience instead of celluloid. My theory is that modern actors that aren’t that talented view these films and play the townsfolk as they were in those old films, not like they are actual people.
“High Plains Invaders” has that way of acting in droves. It does, however, do favor to the film overall because in conjunction with all the other elements, it becomes so bad it’s good. Those elements are for instance badly rendered CGI robot alien monsters. This is cowboys vs aliens, but it can’t be given too much credit for the Hollywood film, because the graphic comic that was based on came out 3 years before this film.
The science in this film is interesting. There is a guy who mines for uranium, knows it causes some kind of sickness, uses lead to store it. Smart guy. This film takes place 6 years before Marie Curie coined the term radioactivity and at a time when people thought uranium was in short supply and thus incredibly valuable. More valuable than gold and diamonds!
That causes the main tension between humans in the film. The aliens eat uranium. The science guy uses it to get the aliens off the human’s back and to trap the aliens. The bad people want the uranium to sell it. It’s an interesting idea. Inane, of course. We, as carbon-based beings, feed on carbohydrates for energy. The idea that there is a being based on something as unstable as uranium is beyond farfetched, but it’s just a silly movie.
But it’s an entertaining silly movie. That’s what matters. Also, James Marsters (Spike from Buffy) is in it and is a good balance to the overacting most of the other actors depict.
