The Man Who Fell To Earth

Ahh David Bowie. Your constantly evolving yet ever-androgynous identities have provided decades of entertainment, from Ziggy Starust to Nikola Tesla.

So it's a shame that The Man Who Fell To Earth provides little in the way of entertainment. Its confusing, frustrating and aesthetically underwhelming (the desert train on Bowie's home planet seems to have been made out of yellow dirt) but seldom entertaining.

The story (for lack of a better word) revolves around Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien with an unexplained British passport, who sets about building a vast technological empire by owning the patents to a number of inventions based on his advanced alien technology. As always this advanced technology became outdated in less than a decade, and by today's standards would be considered laughably retro. The standard iPhone can perform nearly all of the functions of the inventions from which Newton earns his millions.

Unmarked jumps in time make figuring out what's going on difficult at first, but once Newton meets Mary-Lou (Candy Clark, which is a vastly more preposterous name than Mary-Lou) things become much easier to follow due to the fact that Mary-Lou's hair changes with every jump in chronology. In one 20 minute section of the film, Mary-Lou sports a bob, a beehive and whatever you would get if you stuck Sarah Palin and a starfish in a blender. Which wouldn't be a bad idea in practice. Eventually we learn Newton has come to Earth because his planet has run out of water, which makes his relocation to New Mexico a little mystifying, as the state is more famous for immigrant problems than copious supplies of water. Maybe he was just homesick. As mentioned earlier, we get fleeting glimpses of Newton's home planet and his heavily dehydrated family wandering through the desert dressed like futuristic scuba divers. Why they don't just take the dirt train to the tree lined mountains in the background is a question as pertinent as it is uninteresting.

The third corner in this perplexing triangle of a film is Rip Torn who plays Professor Nathan Bryce who spends his time bedding college students or uncovering potential conspiracies involving Newton’s company, World Enterprises. Hey, ever wanted to see a university student use Rip Torn's penis as a microphone? Me neither, but sure enough his nymphomaniac professor manages to get more action than Bowie, which just seems criminal. For six years a friend and I had looked forward to what we referred to as 'that David Bowie alien sex movie.' Not to say that David Bowie cock enthusiasts will be disappointed, it makes its fair share of appearances, there's just an air of dissatisfaction with the whole experience. Newton develops alcoholism, but instead of making him loud, belligerent and, well, interesting, it just mellows him out even more.

Is the film terrible? No, but nor is it interesting enough to warrant a second viewing. Or to justify a $10 price tag.

The Man Who Fell To Earth, 1976. Dir. Nicolas Roeg.