Among early 1980s ALIEN wannabes, PARASITE was one of the major entries. It was also one of the key films in the decade’s 3-D craze, and one of the best movies directed by Charles Band, all in spite of the fact that on the whole it isn’t very good.
PARASITE (1982) Trailer
PARASITE, executive produced by HALLOWEEN’s Irwin Yablans, contained what in 1982 was considered a major casting coup: the veteran musical starlet “Miss” Vivian Blaine (1921-1995). Nowadays, however, the film is known for featuring a much younger performer, Demi Moore, in one of her first-ever roles. Also featured were Demi’s then-husband Freddy Moore (1950-2022), Jon Jost regular Robert Glaudini, Scott Thomson (POLICE ACADEMY’s Copeland), the now-deceased character actors Al Fann (1925-2018) and Tom Villard (1953-1994), and the great Stan Winston (1946-2008), who handled the creature effects.
Demi Moore
The setting is the far-off year 1992, when America has been rendered a bombed-out wasteland closely resembling the Southern California desert. A fascistic ruling class known as the Merchants have attempted to control the masses via highly infectious parasites bioengineered by Dr. Paulo Dean (Glaudini). He subsequently had a change of heart and went on the run with two of the parasites, one of them an experimental subject he uses to figure out a way to neutralize the other, which has burrowed into his stomach.
Dean ends up in a bombed-out town, where he encounters the attractive Patricia (Moore) and a gang of punks who waylay him and steal the experimental parasite. It ends up infecting the punks, starting with Zeke (Villard) and moving on to Dana (Cherie Currie), growing into a toothy eel-like critter. Dean gets involved with Patricia, but this would-be romance is interrupted by Wolf (James Davidson), a Merchant agent charged with tracking Dean, and the fact that the parasite growing in his stomach is getting ready to burst out.
PARASITE was conceived and filmed very quickly, and it shows. The narrative (in the manner of LASERBLAST, another Band underachiever) is underdeveloped and lacking in incident, resulting in a snail-paced film packed with lengthy scenes of people walking (contrast this with Band’s later sci-fi no-budgeter TRANCERS, which prioritized action and wasted nary a second).
As with many early Charles Band films (LASERBLAST included), PARASITE has a desert setting, in this case a Southern California migrant camp whose desolate air was supposed to confer postapocalyptic devastation. Another Band trademark was the presence of little-known actors, including some future stars, giving unimpressive performances; Robert Glaudini makes for a most unusual leading man (he’s not what you’d call conventionally attractive), while Demi Moore looks great but does very little with a role that, in all fairness, was somewhat lacking in depth and complexity.
Rendering the film an outlier in the Charles Band cannon are the highly concentrated widescreen visuals, complete with carefully arranged foreground scenery and various objects thrust and pointed at the screen to enhance the 3-D experience. The most memorable of the 3-D effects, and the film’s best overall scene, is the stomach bursting that occurs near the end, enhanced by the ingenuity of Stan Winston and his collaborators, whose effects work is far better than the material deserves.
Vital Statistics
PARASITE
Embassy Pictures
Director/Producer: Charles Band
Screenplay: Alan J. Adler, Michael Shoob, Frank Levering
Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg
Editing: Brad Arensman
Cast: Robert Glaudini, Demi Moore, Luca Bercovici, James Davidson, Al Fann, Tom Villard, Scott Thomson, Cherie Currie, “Miss” Vivian Blaine, James Cavan, Joannelle Nadine Romero, Freddy Moore, Natalie May, Cheryl Smith, Joel Miller