Canadian science-fiction is a narrow genre at best, but even harder to find are those films featuring music numbers, cannibalism, toy robot aliens, a zombie mayor and a hero that owns a butchers shop. Spoofing everything from Plan 9 From Outer Space to more earnest Canadian productions, Chris Windsors sole directorial effort not only pre-dates Peter Jacksons Bad Taste but makes you wish he couldve gone on to a similar career. The plot involves a group of wind-up toy aliens who reanimate the dead so that they can steal Balonium, the revolutionary fuel source that has inexplicably formed in a local butchers septic tank, but Windsor also throws in a dance number (Baghdad Boogie) set in a boiler room, a Michael Caine-ish geek whos building a spaceship in his bedroom, and an immigrant family whose daughter keeps getting attacked by monsters. Inception, this is not.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
