Sometimes movies stick in one’s brain. One such movie showed up on TV in 1983. I remember the day well. I had a birthday party, Pac-Man frosting was on my cake and that night a monster movie played on network TV. That’s a decent day.

Made-for-TV horror movies back then had a strange tone to them. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s a combination of earnestness, working within limitations and the feeling that rules are being broken. In a world of sitcoms, sports, game shows, commercials and A-list theater films squeezed and cut for the small screen, made-for-TV horror movies seemed gloriously out-of-place.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, Dark Night Of The Scarecrow, Salem’s Lot, Cruise Into Terror, Satan’s Triangle, Midnight Offerings, The Bermuda Depths and more.

The movie I saw that night was The Intruder Within. It’s an Alien knock-off to be sure, but it always stuck with me. I remembered a scene with a guy getting pricked by spine-covered eggs and going crazy. I also remembered a picture of the monster in the weekly TV guide that came with the paper. It was an overly-sinewy thing that was maybe a distant relative of Pumpkinhead.

I had sought The Intruder Within out on Youtube off and on through the years, but it wasn’t there. I got the notion to search for it again recently and discovered a foreign-language version. I watched it to see if the movie held up. The story in a nutshell — oil rig workers discover some eggs while drilling; eggs hatch into mini-alien creatures; and if you get pricked by an egg or bitten by one of the mini-alien creatures, you go crazy and might even mate with a co-worker to produce an overly-sinewy thing that is maybe a distant relative of Pumpkinhead.

There might be more to it since I did not pick up the meaning of any of the dialogue, but the above is the gist of the tale.

On one hand, that is decent writing, acting and directing. I was able to understand the story from just the location, the characters, editing and camera work.

But is the movie good? Weellllll…there are many subtle layers to good. It was a bit talky, which was doubly noticeable because I couldn’t understand exactly what they were talking about. A lot of it seemed to be dialogue between men and women getting to know each other through opening-up type conversations. As in, “I work on this oil rig because one time I accidentally killed my wife trying to install a solar panel, so now I’m sticking with fossil fuels.” At least, that is what I like to think they said…

The movie is also pretty slow. Even at 90 minutes, I don’t think the distant relative of Pumpkinhead shows up until the last 10. Characters mostly talk (I repeat that they talk to show how much they talk). A scientist seems to know more. In between, some slime oozes and two characters go crazy. We also get numerous establishing shots of the oil rig to remind us we are on an oil rig after the commercial breaks. Some characters have a nice meal. The radio doesn’t seem to work right. The oil drill drills…

I’m not painting a very positive picture, am I? But some stuff works. The actors playing the characters are solid, very everyman and everywoman. The oil rig is an inspired location for a horror story due to its isolation (I’m surprised it hasn’t been used more). The movie succeeds is establishing a bleak mood…or maybe it’s just because everything is filmed pretty dark. The overly-sinewy distant relative of Pumpkinghead suit is okay for a made-for-TV movie. Since it is TV, the monster can’t do anything overtly gross. Its violence is implied. Its birth is mere shadows on the wall, but really, that is all we need. It doesn’t hurt for stories to let one’s imagination do some of the heavy lifting. The movie is also buoyed by some nostalgic factors. The Youtube video even has VCR hiccups, which is like watching the original broadcast, which may or may not have had periodic static as the signal faded in and out. One can imagine turning on the TV with no clue as to what would be on and then getting sucked into a story about people stuck on an oil rig with monsters from the deep. You watched the show with the added suspense that you might lose the picture at any time and not know how everything came out.

So, yeah, The Intruder Within is one of those movies one has to apologize for, but its pedigree allows for that. It’s not a $200 million Hollywood production with bottomless reserves of talent to throw at it. It’s a made-for-TV movie doing the best it can with what it has.

What could it have done better? It seems there were excess characters on the oil rig that really had nothing to do. Some showed up for the meal and were not seen again. Where were they when the monster was doing its limited rampage? Did they sleep through it? Some of the talky scenes could have been removed and more suspense inserted in their place. Like maybe some of the excess characters could have had monster encounters during those times. Maybe more characters could have gone crazy and made the non-crazy characters have to avoid them. A more believeable ending could have helped, too. Who knew that one girl was the world’s greatest flare gun marksman?

Probably the biggest knock against the movie is that the story seems stretched to fill a time slot. But that’s also part of the made-for-TV horror movie experience. One wouldn’t watch it straight through. Advertisements for toilet paper and fabric softener would have broken up the experience. You would have gotten up and gone to the bathroom. You would have gone to get snacks. Sometimes the movie might be going again before you make it back to the couch. In that case, you are not going to miss anything but characters talking as the movies gets itself up to speed again. Only during the last half hour would you probably hang around through the commercials to see the exciting conclusion.

What did the movie teach me about storytelling? If possible, skip the parts the audience would like to skip. A sweet spot exists when it comes to pace. Sometimes it is hard to find. And, at the end of the day, the story has stuck with me for 34 years. To a degree, that transcends notions of good and bad.

So happy trails, The Intruder Within. It was nice to see you again, but you don’t need to send me a birthday card every year or anything…