The history on this pretty obscure flick is the main reason anyone should see it. It was originally directed by Tobe Hooper, then he was fired after a couple of days. That duty was passed off to Kingdom of Spider helmer Bud Cardos, so you know the studio had big aspirations for the film. Then once the film was completed (a tense tale of an autistic adult whose home burned down who then began to wander the streets aimlessly in fear and killing people out of that fear, but from the cops perspective so it was a standard serial killer thriller) the film Alien came out and made a fuck ton of money so the producers decided to have Cardos reshoot a ton of the film to make the killer an alien creature who shoots lazer beams out of its eyes. You can't make this up folks.

The film is a disaster. The lead actor (some dude from Knot's Landing but I kept thinking it was Robert Carradine every five seconds) is terrible, the cops are the worst, the special effects on their alien...well, actually that's really awesome. Really awesome because its so bad. Terrific stuff. I will watch this again but just fast forward to those scenes. Holy crap.

You can really feel the production fuckery through every frame and it's a shame. There's a decent, standard killer thriller in here...well that probably would have been too standard so this crazy piece of film is probably more memorable. I can't help but wonder what Hooper's product would have been if he didn't have a raging coke habit.

Seriously, just wait until you get to the finale. It's fucking hilariously awesome. Holy shit. And that weird stock footage that looks like the Death Star explosion superimposed over a person when they're lazer beamed to death is just icing on the cake. Wow.