Hyper Sapien: People from Another Star

When I was a kid, my late uncle had received one of those “free HBO/Cinemax” weeks not long after getting his first satellite system in the early-to-mid 90s. Hyper Sapien: People from Another Star was a film he had recorded, recommended to me, and upon watching it as a teenager personally enjoyed it (I think he got the satellite around early ’92, and recorded it probably about the same time). But I hadn’t really watched it since maybe ’93. I don’t know, maybe about six months ago it returned to my mind. Not sure what spurned it; maybe it was a user comment on the imdb that created a desire to see it again. 

Regardless, it wasn’t like Hyper Sapien is the kind of flick that is of demand for dvd. There’s nothing loud about it that screams out “Release me on DVD!!!!!” Leave it to the fine folks at Mill Creek (Echo Bridge is giving them a run for their money, though.) to provide this movie for me in one of those 50-movies sets titled “Sci-fi Invasion”. When Jesse Ventura is placed on the front as a reason to purchase it I think this might constitute as an act of desperation, but a few titles besides Hyper Sapien did gain interest from me (Alien Prey, Horror High, R.O.T.O.R., and, especially the Bill Paxton/Mark Hamill flick, Slipstream) and the damn set was cheap so I went ahead and picked it up (another set with film noir flicks was even more up my alley, but that’s for a different blog entry). Hyper Sapien, to tell you the truth, and Slipstream were the major reasons behind the set.

But getting back to the movie of this post, Hyper Sapien concerns two alien females (a teenage girl, Robyn (Sydney Penney) and young girl, Tavy (Rosie Marcel)) deciding to remain on Earth as their alien family leave to return to the moon and, ultimately, to their home world, believing our humans are not ready for their presence and technological/behavioral/anatomical advances. These girls have abilities beyond our primitive capabilities, such as the ability to read our thoughts, see through our eyes and sift from our brains the understanding on how to do things (such as drive a motorcycle or ride a horse), and see places that their kind frequented previously (Robyn’s uncle, Aric (Dennis Holahan), and a couple of his comrades, return to Earth to find the girls and do so by visualizing where they had been). An Earth male, Dirt (Ricky Paull Golden; The Blob; my grandmother used to watch a soap opera he momentarily appeared on called Another World, so I also knew him from that show, too), rides into the girls’ lives on his motorcycle not knowing how much his own life would be changed.

Hyper Sapien finds ways to incorporate the subject of the environment in the script, in dialogue, and the political campaign Dirt’s father supports (the lady candidate) has an established importance in keeping land developers from moving into the idyllic Wyoming landscape to disrupt the beauty of the area. Calgary, Alberta Canada is the real setting substituting Wyoming and, my goodness, is it an eyeful of sheer scenic magnificence. Keeping the sci-fi plot in the rural confines of sub-Wyoming does wonders, I believe, for the film as a whole. It gives the aliens an easier route at hiding their identities for a while despite the fact that because of the lack of populace—people know each other and have for many years—and the backdrop is so worthwhile that it gives you eye candy itself.

Add a wonderful final role for Hollywood veteran, Keenan Wynn (it’s a nice, sizable, extremely likable part for him, where his character is easy-going, agreeable, and laid-back; responding to the knowledge that aliens are right in his cabin, Wynn’s grandfather of Dirt isn’t hysterical or shocked beyond disbelief, but is, in actuality, not surprised they’re here, even seemingly having expected them to show up), who has some great moments with the alien girls’ three-armed, three-eyed pet “Tri-Lat”, named Kirbi. Kirbi eats coal, drinks gasoline, and shoots very powerful rays from its three eyes in one singular laser beam that can explode holes in brick walls, sever through a truck hauler in the middle of the road, and smolder the front end of police cars, stopping them in their tracks.

There’s a little humorous and touching scene where Wynn tries futilely to get Kirbi to feed the chickens their feed not the goats while he looks out at the blue sky from his wide, open-spaced ranch and ponders how mankind, the weather, the whole world, has changed, later mentioning how people are no longer personable, more inclined to blow something up, speaking of how the environment is not so simple as mankind often looks at it. Even Robyn mentions to the candidate the way the earth should be respected and treated. It is all there—a message not particularly subtle—about a sort of outcry to us, using Grandpa and Robyn’s alien race of Taros as templates, for looking at the environment differently.

I’ve pretty much laid out the plot right here. We see how the alien girls interact with their surroundings and people. How Aric will be accidentally shot by a nervous cop convinced he’s a threat to the candidate’s life (a fundraiser in her honor is put on at a large BBQ shindig hosted by Dirt’s father (played by John Carpenter vet, Peter Jason (Prince of Darkness)) while trying to locate Robyn and Tavy, a police chase to capture Aric who is being carried (still injured, but his anatomical/biological make-up too unusual and “alien” for the city’s medical staff to handle) in Dirt’s truck along with the alien girls as Kirbi uses its laser to help them keep a step ahead of them, and a decision by Robyn whether to stay on Earth or return to her planet.

The animatronics on Kirbi’s eyes are really neat and there are plenty of comical bits such as its playing pool with Grandpa’s buddies, tossing cans for Grandpa to shoot, and kissing a freaked-out Dirt who doesn’t know what to think of it (its introduction is used as POV with the visual work stretching what it sees). I was surprised to see, in this re-evaluation, how much time Wynn did have in the movie. He really does seem to be enjoying himself, his character rather loose and expressive. Grandpa has an endearing scene with Robyn where he speaks of Dirt and how he has something special (the “mark”) about him, as she does (and sees that he does) realize this although his emotions and feelings are “all over the place” and bewildering. This is as much a romance blooming—puppy love—as it is a sci-fi fish-out-of-water film. A bond grows, love perhaps at first sight, between Robyn and Dirt, and that adds a potency to their final scene when she returns to him. Wynn is there, that gruff exterior, a twinkle in his eye, an assured smile on his face that Dirt’s belief in love would persevere even as it seemed he’d lose Robyn forever.