THE BORROWER PLOT-Instead of being executed, an alien criminal is "de-evolved" into human form and dumped on earth as his sentence. His disguise proves to be very unstable, and he must use fresh human heads in place of his own in order to stay alive. VIOLENCE-A good bit, seeing as how decapitation is a main story point. Although we never actually see anyone's head being pulled off by the alien, we do see the bloody results. There's also a very good exploding head in the beginning, and a few gross "transformation" shots, in which the alien's human skin disguise rips apart and his true form begins to emerge. SEX/NUDITY-Only about 10 seconds worth total. The two scenes with nudity and/or sex are extremely brief and almost not even worth noting. WHY I LIKED IT-John McNaughton is one of my favorite directors, and this film sticks out like a sore thumb amongst his other stuff. He made it in between his first movie, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, and MAD DOG AND GLORY, both critically-acclaimed films. He's since borderlined on exploitation with the excellent pictures NORMAL LIFE and WILD THINGS, but never touched on horror again. That's a shame, because he's so good at it. Plus, this movie has Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas and Tom Towles in it. You just don't see enough of those guys. DOWNSIDE-Way too much time is spent on the cops, who are the heroes of the movie. Their characters are just as big in the story as the alien. I would've enjoyed seeing more of the alien's instead, because all his scenes are hilarious. MEMORABLE SCENES-The alien (at this point wearing Tom Towles' head)befriends a homeless man. They go to the local mission and get some food. Some jerk in a cowboy hat puts a dead mouse in the alien's soup, and he begins to eat it like nothing's wrong. After much protest from others at the table, he spits it out all over Mr. cowboy hat (who then yells,"GOD DAMN!"). NOTES-Madchen Amick (sp?), the girl from SLEEPWALKERS, appears briefly in this movie in one of its more pointless scenes. She's videotaping an amateur metal band in her house when the alien (at this point wearing the neighbor's dog's head) attacks.
