PM Entertainment had some spare fedoras and trenchcoats, and a HR Giger jumpsuit, and decided to make a sci-fi action movie called The Silencers (1996), which feels like a 90 minute X Files episode where every 20 minutes Mulder and Scully leap in slow motion from a massive explosion, the type that turns the background into a wall of flames. Beginning with a 1950s era Close Encounters scenario where a family in a farmhouse are visited by a cattle-stealing UFO, and then warned off by “The Silencers” aka the Men In Black, guys in hats and trenchcoats who also have dark eyes. Twist – the men warning people to forget about aliens are actually aliens!
Flash forward to the 1990s and rugged Secret Service agent Jack Scalia becomes aware of their existence when a US senator he is protecting becomes targeted for assassination by the Silencers. Even for a moderately budgeted movie destined for direct-to-video and looking like a TV episode, PM Entertainment productions always surprise with the amount of location shooting, and flipping of cars on the streets and wild stunt-work and multiple explosions; I’m sure it’s also a product of a by-gone era where moderate productions had scope for achieving impactful verisimilitude rather than immediately using CGI. There’s a very compelling, jaw-dropping and quite hectic action sequence in the middle of the movie where a tanker transporting top secret cargo is chased down the wrong way part of the freeway, with Scalia jumping from car to truck and back again, which already feels quite masterful before a helicopter (with a dude hanging from the landing gear firing a machine gun) is thrown into the mix. It’s also halfway through the movie before its true form reveals itself – with Scalia doing an odd-couple buddy-cop routine with a good guy alien (Dennis Christopher) called Comdor and wearing the HR Giger get-up. Comdor has been sent to protect Earth from the alien race working with the US government and acting as “the Silencers”. It’s Alien Nation, it’s The Hidden, it’s Dark Angel/I Come In Peace. It is the vibe!
They have to stop a Stargate portal from delivering an inter-dimensional invading army, and the only way to do that is with lots of gunplay that reflects the growing HK cinema influence on American action cinema. Scalia and Christopher are good fun in their roles, and it’s a wacky, entertaining flick. You’ve got Clarence Williams III as a General, a scene in a UFO Convention, and some Windows 95 computer graphics for the portal effects. Definitely the type of flick you used to get in a ten dollar 50 pack of unknown movies, but now you can watch free on a YouTube rip. Directed by Richard Pepin (who helmed the other PM Entertainment joints I’ve seen, Cyber Tracker and T-Force). Recommended.
VHS Tracking 