Films That Time Forgot

Wavelength (1982)

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Reviewed by Keith Phipps
August 30th, 2000

After a recording session devolves from aimless acoustic-guitar strumming into a confrontation with an angry studio head, washed-up rocker Robert Carradine thinks his life has bottomed out. Only a new relationship with fluffy-haired Cherie Currie brings him any joy, but even that takes a bizarre turn when she begins to hear strange, vaguely electronic screams in the middle of the night. It's never explained how she can tell them apart from Wavelength's Tangerine Dream score, but her gift soon leads her and Carradine to explore an abandoned military base. Led to a forgotten air vent by Keenan Wynn, who seems to be playing the last grizzled prospector still living in California, Carradine and Currie launch an investigation, only to be held captive by uncaring military types. "You think you're dealing with some goddamn hippie, right? I got connections, buddy," Carradine threatens, but despite his warning, he and Currie are left to die, trapped in a chamber with the secret they sought to discover: three hibernating aliens who look like (and seem to be played by) shaved children. Before long, the couple and their new naked friends escape and lead government baddies on a chase through California, pausing long enough for Currie to inform Carradine that the aliens like his music, use their mouths exclusively for making love, and feel that humans' shyness with nudity is part of what holds them back. Just when all seems lost and the pint-sized free spirits seem certain to be crushed by uncaring warmongers, they reveal a "far-out" escape plan so "spacey," it's positively "out of this world."

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