Sexy, Unhinged 70s Sci-Fi Comedy Is An Alien Sting Exploitation

By Robert Scucci
| Published 2 hours ago

Have you ever heard of the 1973 alien invasion exploitation mystery sci-fi comedy thriller, The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow? Wow, what a sentence. I’ll bet you haven’t, but you may have heard of it after it was renamed Invasion of the Girl Snatchers when it was released in 1985. I’ll bet those chances are still pretty slim, though. If you want to seek the film out on Tubi, just know that it has the original release date but the updated title. My guess is whoever was in charge of marketing wanted audiences to know they were watching a 70s movie, but also knew nobody would click on it if it had the original title. I know I wouldn’t have.

Heck, at least they got me to click on this one because it’s pretty brutal, but not without its charm. Stylistically, it’s all over the place. There’s a kidnapping sting operation, hapless detectives, and, for some reason, an alien death cult with a plan to replace beautiful women with alien doppelgangers, though for reasons that are never quite made clear.

As for its genre, you can call it sci-fi, but this thing is mostly a comedy of errors. As a feature film, it stinks like a paper mill, but there are enough standalone moments to make it worth watching. Not because of the alien plot, but because of how the detectives handle themselves. It’s supremely stupid all around, which is probably why a movie with a title like The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow now resides in the darkest corners of Tubi.

The Bra That Got Away

Invasion of the Girl Snatchers starts in, and spends most of its time in, a seedy motel room. Detective Sam Trowel (Hugh Smith) is running a sting operation to take down a drug and human trafficking ring with the help of his right-hand man Kaspar (Ele Grigsby), safecracker Frederick (David Roster), and a bruiser of a bodyguard named Noname (Harlo Cayse). They’re staying in a room connected to the alleged kidnappers’ room, and they’re going to send an undercover woman named Ruthie (Carla Rueckert) wearing a tracking device hidden inside her bra.

The plan is simple. Ruthie wears the tracking bra, gets whisked away by the kidnappers, and Sam and his crew track her down to their headquarters in the hopes of finding more abducted women who need to be rescued. Bing, bang, boom. It couldn’t be a simpler operation. There’s just one problem: Ruthie gets abducted while topless, so the whole operation goes to hell.

To make matters worse, we learn that we’re not dealing with an ordinary human trafficking ring, but some sort of death cult led by an evil sorcerer named Aph (Charles Rubin), who is enslaved by and reports directly to an alien named Utaya (McCain Jeeves). In case you’re wondering where the movie got its original title, the evil lair where they run their racket is known as The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow.

As far as I can tell, Ruthie gets killed by Aph after a painfully long ritual involving ratchet straps, black paint, and chanting. She’s not actually dead, however, but instead replaced by an alien that now lives inside her. Dazed and disoriented while trying to operate its new human suit, the alien meets up with another alien using a woman’s body as its host. Together, they plot against Sam, Kaspar, and the rest of the gang, who are just as confused about everything as I was while watching Invasion of the Girl Snatchers.

It’s Really Funny Though

While the storytelling in Invasion of the Girl Snatchers leaves a lot to be desired, I quite enjoyed the motel scenes involving Detective Sam Trowel and his cohorts because it’s basically a stoner comedy. Freddie spends most of the movie smoking joints and messing up the investigation, while Sam, a by-the-books but not particularly bright detective, constantly gets in his own way.

For example, when he plays the tape containing his mission briefing, it says it’s going to self-destruct in three seconds. It doesn’t self-destruct in three seconds, so he shoves it in his back pocket to play it safe. During one of the chase sequences later in the film, the tape finally explodes, and his reaction basically boils down to, “Man, what a day I’m having!”

It’s not high-brow stuff, but there’s always a built-in charm to botched sting operation plots because as much as you want to root for the good guys, it’s infinitely more amusing to watch them fail over and over again on their way to eventually solving the case. These characters play off each other well in that campy B-movie kind of way, but the alien plot is too out there and too underutilized to make the movie feel complete.

I’m all for low-budget alien movies, but the budget here is virtually nonexistent. The most expensive prop was probably the cassette player. The scenes involving reanimated women possessed by aliens aren’t without humor, but I think everything would have landed stronger if the women were simply brainwashed by a cult and the movie leaned harder into being a straight-up hard-boiled detective comedy.

INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS SCORE

If you’re into the idea of watching something that’s not entirely great but certainly has its moments, you can stream Invasion of the Girl Snatchers for free on Tubi as of this writing.