Any kid who watches The X Files on TV is mature enough to see this picture. There’s little vulgar language, no sex or nudity to speak of, and the violence, though fast and furious, is never presented gratuitously. Heinlein RELEASE DATE: JThe recurrent enigma of the flying saucer is finally solved when an aerial pieplate is caught with its exhaust down by the F.B.I. One last note: Although The Puppet Masters is adult in terms of quality, it seems odd that it has been given an “R” rating. The Puppet Masters is a wonderful antidote to muddle-headed piffle the likes of Stargate. The special effects are fine so are the performances, especially by Sutherland (who was in the 1978 Body Snatchers). There’s interesting by-play between Andrew and Sam, whose relationship is prickly, and in the romance budding between Sam and Mary. The Puppet Masters, at a level far more profound than pod people, is 'about' the real aliens among us, the scattering of free men trying to live reasonably and responsibly among people who are cracked on the subject of the collective, of the mass man and what mass man can do politically to stamp out that disease of the human spirit, individualism. The Puppet Masters is that rare thing, an adult sci-fi movie with believable characters and carefully thought-out background. Science fiction has never been more popular with Hollywood than it is today – but it also has never been sillier. The idea of humans being taken over by aliens instead takes on a more personal, individual subtext, making it, if anything, more frightening. Of course, this is 1994, not 1951, so Heinlein’s original Red Scare underpinning has lost relevance.

It begins to look like the aliens can’t be stopped. The plot sways and dips nicely as more than one of this inner circle fall victim to the invaders. While Sefton undertakes a crash study of a captured creature, Sam ferrets out OSI agents who have been infected, and Andrew huddles with top officials and military brass. Escaping, the government good guys race back to Washington to brief the president and mount a resistance to the invasion. They quickly discover that townspeople have been taken over by an alien species, a kind of sluglike creature that attaches itself to the back of its victim and bores into the brain and spinal column.

The puppet masters robert heinlein