Just when you think you’ve seen everything, there is the odd movie (or should I say weird) that is still out there. I’ve been meaning to watch “The Man That Fell to Earth” (1976) for a while now and finally got the chance. Watch out on this one! The story follows a humanoid man; Thomas Jerome Newton who is new to Earth. He has come in hopes of bringing water back to his home planet to save it from a drought. He first meets up with patent lawyer Oliver Farnsworth and shows him multiple inventions which enables him to build an electronics empire worth millions. In his travels he meets up with Mary-Lou a young aspiring no body from a motel and they have a bit of a relationship. Thomas experiences things like sex and booze. Things turn bad when the empire’s competition starts to fight back and Thomas is later attempted to be exposed as an alien visitor. This stops his plans of launching a space ship and is taken hostage to a mountain side retreat for testing. The government finally allows him to leave after months but his business is lost and so is the millions he was going to use to fund his departure. The film ends showing Thomas has come to terms that he is not going to get home and has integrated himself into society.
The movie stars David Bowie (the singer) as Thomas. He played his part well and was very creepy about it. The movie also featured a younger Rip Torn who played his usual shifty character. The acting overall was alright. There were some special effects but nothing major. For a movie set in the 1970’s, it was what it was.
This issue with this film is the plot, now although the storyline is interesting; it was also confusing and contained a lot of holes. You don’t really know why he is there until closer to the end. The storyline mixes multiple vignettes from Thomas’s home world life but to make matters worse there were extra scenes of gratuitous nudity that did not fit in. All of this compounded to interrupting the story flow. For the most part, I sat there confused wondering what the point of it all is. What I did find out is that the story is based on a 1963 novel and spawned a TV movie as well, so it looks like the story is popular.
Did I like this movie? It was okay. I’m thinking you should view it from another angle though, just maybe I should watch it again. I’m not sure what the director was trying to achieve, perhaps art? I was hoping for a decent science fiction movie though. I will say it definitely had potential to be better but and has merit for what it is. I rate it 6/10. I would recommend viewing it only because it’s supposed to be a cult classic.
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