Sardonic Tales: “Invaders of Gla’aki”

A few years ago, I did a thing where I picked a movie that would make a good double-feature with one of the stories in my then-newest collection, Painted Monsters. This year, for the Countdown to Halloween, I thought it might be fun to do the same thing, but with my now-newest collection, Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales.

The obvious answer here is The Last Starfighter, right? But I’m gonna be honest and say that I haven’t seen The Last Starfighter in a very, very, very long time. For something kinda similar but more in my immediate memory, try Joe Dante’s Explorers from the following year.

You know a movie that probably doesn’t seem too obvious but that hangs over the writing of “Invaders of Gla’aki” as much as any other? The Dark Crystal. When I was the age of the protagonists, living in more-or-less the same trailer park they occupy, walking up the road to play Street Fighter II at the gas station, I had a copy not of the movie The Dark Crystal, but a floppy, illustrated book version with art by Bruce McNally.

I’m not necessarily saying that The Dark Crystal makes a good companion piece to the sci-fi tinged “Invaders of Gla’aki,” just kinda telling an anecdote. Here’s a better recommendation for a double-feature with this story: The Gate.

Yeah, yeah, the video game stuff isn’t there, nor is the spaceship stuff, but I think the kid stuff is, and the desperation that comes with trying to deal with things that are way outside anything you’ve been emotionally prepared to handle. Plus, that sequence near the end of The Gate, when whatever-it-is gets into his hand, there’s a little bit of that in “Invaders,” right? Maybe?