Simon Bell - Morons From Outer Space

[dem]

Simon Bell - Morons From Outer Space (Virgin, 1985)

Blurb:
Into the dull lives of ordinary people burst four aliens.
They don't have two heads. They aren't green.
They don't even have wobbly antennae sticking out of their foreheads.
How did they come here?
Why did they come here?
To destroy us?
To enslave us?
To do a bit of shopping?
Here is the story of how three dim-wits from outer space achieved wealth and stardom on Earth - and how one didn't ...

Couldn't lose with this one as it was only ever going to be either a vast improvement on the film or, failing that, a serious contender for personal worst read of 2013. Instead, Morons From Outer Space is neither. It's just ... there.

Desmond's alcoholism is driving wife Sandra around the bend. On the advice of the Area Health Authority, she and mutual friend, Julian, charter a flight into deep space, giving Des a chance to dry out. They even chain a caravan to the mothership to achieve that Summer Holiday vibe. But Desmond does not react well to enforced sobriety and is soon crawling the walls of the ship. It doesn't help that the old rust bucket is falling to pieces and the computer is forever spouting gibberish about penises. The pilot, Captain Bernard, refuses to let the situation get him down. So he's ostracised by his gormless passengers, who cares when he can just pop outside for a game of spaceball and leave the three stooges to their bickering? While the Captain's away, Desmond, bored to distraction, fiddles idly with the control panel, presses wrong button. Bernard is jettisoned into the void and the holiday podule hurtles toward the nearest planet - Earth.

Graham Sweetley, a tea-boy at UK Broadcasting Company headquarters, has been left to man the switchboard while the newsdesk are skiving across the road in The Beetle And Wedge pub. It's one of those rare nights when the veteran reporter intuitively understands that there's nothing newsworthy will occur anywhere in the world.

The spaceship crash-lands on the M1 near Luton, the poor bastards. The Morons from Planet Blob have arrived.

Graham, sensing his big break, assembles a scratch camera crew and races to the scene, ahead even of the security services who can't penetrate the thousands of protesters, truth-seekers, hysterics, doom-merchants, saucerheads & Co. who descend on the crash site.

"He looked around with loathing at the motley crowd leaning over the ropes trying to see inside the gravel pit. A few wore t-shirts with 'I Was At Luton' hastily scrawled over the original 'E.T.' or 'Motorhead'. A man Matteson vaguely recognised as one of the Great Train Robbers was selling 'Extra-Terrestrial Hot Dogs' and there were the usual Union Jacks and portraits of Princess Diana."'

Matteson eventually fights his way to the edge of the gravel pit to assume control. The PM wants the whole alien invasion thing hushed up - at least, until it's established whether or not they vote Conservative - and the security chief has decided to play it as a pop concert gone out of control. He instructs the police to shoot any troublemakers dead.

Meanwhile, Captain Bernard has hitched a lift from an amorous animated corpse who keeps eyeing up his crotch. When Bernard assures him that he's a MAN, not a GIRL, the skeletal being launches the ejector seat. The Captain comes down in California State Park. America has its own moron.

46 pages down of 160 (including a generous 16 page photo inset). At least Matteson has livened things up.

[Shrink Proof]

Well, OK, he livened it up, but I don't think that'd be too difficult. IIRC, the movie was a turkey. This sounds better though...

[dem]

Aug 24, 2013 8:45:31 GMT Shrink Proof said:

This sounds better though...

He's making the best of a bad job. The raw material is so ropey, after four chapters i was planning to throw a party if Mr. Bell could raise even the ghost of a smile, which, from memory, is more than the film achieved. It's quite serendipitous (go dem, go, literature, etc) that Dr. Strange has just mentioned The Resident as here's another book/ film where I'm finding it difficult to care what happens to the 'heroes' of the piece, they don't engage me in the slightest. And yet ... am actually quite enjoying Morons ... in a perverse sort of way. It's kind of a Vault book, if you get my meaning.

[Shrink Proof]

Aug 24, 2013 16:52:54 GMT dem said:

It's kind of a Vault book, if you get my meaning.

I do. One of those things you know but can't actually define...

[dem]

You've nailed it, Mr. Proof! Don't get me wrong. It's not a great Vault book in The Partridge Family: Terror in the Night, Then Came Bronson #3 Rock! or The Nuclear Nazi's vein, but Morons ... is a Vault book all the same.

"Some years ago we were in the habit of sending chimpanzees into space. Someone, somewhere, has gone one better!"

It trundles on. Chapter 19 conveniently ends on p.100, so as good a time as any to grab some respite.

We're still at the crash site. Mustering all his courage, Graham Sweetley approaches Matteson, introduces himself as UKBC's representative on the scene and "I have to speak to the man in charge." A flattered Matteson orders him shot. Fortunately, Colonel Laribee, the American cultural attaché and CIA hotshot, arrives, and Sweetley is forgotten. Taking advantage of the distraction, he climbs atop the wrecked podule, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Alien's within. Which is when the crane lifts it free of the motorway and drags it to the top secret Military complex on Angdown Tor.

Meanwhile in California State Park, Captain Bernard eats a vast quantity of squirrels and improvises a costume from their pelts, his spacesuit having disintegrated during the plummet to earth. Taking it to be one of this strange planet's ruling species, he attempts a conversation with a peddle bin. Eventually the Captain ventures into the road where he's hit by a car. After three days Hospital treatment, "Squirrel Man" is incarcerated in a lunatic asylum.

Sweetley, masquerading as a scientist, is among the elite delegation who enter the podule just as Desmond and Sandra are vaguely enjoying a grapple. The ensuing protracted interrogation is a huge disappointment to the Boffins who fast suspect they're dealing with "twits", "morons", total "spasmos." They are not wrong. Desmond is a violent, nose-picking hooligan, Julian sub-idiot, and Sandra's head is full of Alan Porritt, Blob's greatest pop star (sample song, Tempt Me Sideways: "Oooooooh! Oh! Show it to me!/ Oooooooh! Oh! Show it to me!/ Yeah! Huh! Yeah! Oooooooh! Where are you now I'm up?"). Only Laribee - who loves a good conspiracy theory when it serves his lust for torture and state execution - argues that their stupidity is feigned, that the moment they're released the visitors will tear off their false heads, breed a million like them in seconds, and conquer the planet. Matteson, who has designs on Sandra, is appalled. What will become of the Morons? !!!

[dem]

To lay this one in its grave....

"Come on, show me your tentacles, come on! Throw off the disguise! Let's have a look at the real alien!" It is down to the torture chamber with Desmond, the CIA chief refusing to accept that the extra terrestrial is a genuine retard. No, he, Sandra and that big girls blouse Julian are mind-suckers, anyone can see that, and if there's one man can be relied upon to beat the truth from them, it is Colonel Eamon Laribee! The scientists, bored to distraction and fearful for their own reputations - imagine having to announce to the world that a culture capable of conquering space travel are even more stupid than us? - are easily swayed to his insane point of view, and it is left to unlikely hero Graham to rescue the morons from a baying lynch mob. Fleeing the complex, they liberate Matteson's limousine, but the by now maniacal Laribee has the kill lust upon him and pulls a machine gun. Luckily for them, Matteson is so besotted with Sandra, he shoots dead the American (didn't like him anyway), allowing the terrified trio to escape to the relatively benign streets of Kilburn and Graham's flat

Across the pond, having failed to instigate a mutiny among his fellow lunatics, Captain Bernard, the luckless fourth alien, is dragged to the dreaded 'Special Ward', strapped to a bed and forced to listen to a Meat Loaf album ("Twenty minutes of this could turn a sane man to jelly." Motorhead, Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne lie in wait for persistent offenders). But that same night, he organises a successful mental case break out.

Graham's flat is under siege. When a brick comes through the window and hits him smack on the head, the tea-boy snaps and steps outside to face down the mob. His impassioned cry for tolerance hits home, and the crowd turn on Matteson and his security force, before chairing the visitors through the streets, and all of it played out live on TV. The Morons are an overnight sensation, monopolising chat shows and impressing all with their winning line in comedy masquerading as abject stupidity. At Kensington Palace, they are greeted by Royals and heads of state. Graham is now their manager. When Sandra boasts to a reporter that, back on Blob, she's a pop phenomenon second only to Alan Porritt, the trio are booked to play a three week season at New York's Shea Stadium.

Eventually Bernard learns of his three erstwhile friends' good fortune. There could be no worse ambassador's for Blob and yet look at them, basking in global adoration while he's living the life of a vagrant. The Captain resolves to end it all be throwing himself from a bridge. For a couple of paragraphs Morons ... reads like Chetwynnd-Hayes on a downer.

"He'd take what was called the 'easy way out'. Looking down into the black swirling waters, it didn't seem so easy. Anyone who hadn't faced the awful realisation that there is nothing left to live for wouldn't understand that, of course, thought Bernard. No, it was the cold unsympathetic phrase of people whose lives seemed to be uncomplicated by unhappiness. He laughed bitterly and nearly fell off the parapet, giving himself a nasty shock. He'd have to be careful, it was a long drop. And then he remembered that that was the purpose of the whole exercise."

Failing to drown in the shallow foulness of the open sewer decides Bernard to declare himself the fourth alien as drunkenly referred to by Desmond on a chat show, but he's at the back of a very long queue of claimants. Nothing for it but to hitch to New York for the Morons' opening gig. He's not to know it, but a second spaceship is heading toward the same venue ...

"Fly me to Gob and let me play among the meteorites/ Let me know what spring is like among the stalactites/ To put it another way, i Love you ...." Sandra wows the Shea crowd. Sigue Sigue Sputnik were big at the time.

That was ... an experience. From what I remember of the film, Mr. Bell stays faithful to the story, meaning entire chapters are a real slog and sometimes it was only curiosity as to the next pop culture reference - Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Boy George, the Who Will Buy? set piece from Oliver!, etc - kept me going. Can't bring myself to RECOMMEND Morons ... because, with possible exceptions of Franklin, and, maybe, for the mechanics of the thing, pulphack , can't think of anybody who might enjoy it.