Pluskylang Great Film overall

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

DigitalRevenantX7 Plot Synopsis: An alien criminal is genetically devolved into human form & banished to Earth. The problem is that the process has made the creature's body extremely fragile to the point that during a fight with some rednecks shortly after arriving on Earth, its head explodes. The alien then wanders through a nearby city, frequently 'borrowing' the heads of various humans to use as a replacement for its own.Film Review: Three years after making the bleakly disturbing HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, director John McNaughton followed up on the success of his debut feature by making this moderately budgeted sci-fi / horror flick. The Borrower stars Rae Dawn Chong as a female cop on the hunt for a rapist (Neil Guintoli) as well as genre troopers Antonio Fargas (SHAKEDOWN; HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS) & Tom Towles (FORTRESS; the remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) making appearances.The film has had the indignity of being shut down after running out of money, the incompleted film being shelved for two years before seeing the light of day. In its current form, the film does not feature any noticeable narrative gaps except for a badly-rushed ending where the alien takes over an ambulance (one of the worst rush-jobs of an ending in recent genre history).Bad endings aside, the film's main problem is that it has a plot that is more along the line of "stuff happens" than resembling a fully fleshed-out story. The premise – that of an alien convict who goes around, squeezing people's heads off – is very limited in scope. The idea never develops into anything more than that. Sensing this, the screenwriters toss in a secondary plot about a pair of cops tracking down a rapist that, while a reasonably good story on its own, doesn't fit in with the rest of the film. If McNaughton, who has shown that he can make a serial killer story effective, persisted with the rapist angle, he would have had a decent film instead of the hodgepodge film shown here. On the acting front, almost everybody gives a decent performance. Chong & Don Gordon are well cast as the pair of cops. Guintoli, who would later (rather ironically) star in the Henry sequel, is suitably creepy as the rapist – the scene of him walking out of the hospital dressed in the uniform of a female cop that he had overpowered while said cop is lying on the hospital bed naked is the closest the film comes to disturbing the audience. As for the actors taking turns to play the alien, Tom Towles sets the bar high & gets surprisingly good mileage in playing an alien creature who is wandering around the city, mimicking the behaviour of passers-by & spending the night & following morning at a homeless shelter, but the other actors fail to match his performance exactly.In the film's favour, the dark humour that McNaughton brings into the mix gives us a rather dark sense of irony. In this regard, the alien represents a hapless harbinger of doom – everywhere it goes, people die, not always by its own hand (check out the scene where the alien is sitting in a café drinking coffee while a bloody robbery is taking place right next to it).The visual effects are wildly patchy – the bug-like alien in the beginning is quite good but the head-ripping effect is not as well made. Not to mention the fact that the continuity is lousy – not much is done to convince the viewer that the alien's body & head are different.

trashgang Five years after John McNaughton made Henry Portrait Of a Serial Killer he made this supposed gory SF horror. It made me think a bit of The Terminator. I mean, somebody coming to earth and start to learn earth. the film opens with an alien punishing another alien by giving him a human face and exile him to earth. Still being an alien he wants to change his identity by ripping of heads and replacing his former head with it. It's all shown with the typical effects of that time, I mean the bladder effects. It's all done by Kevin Yagher, still in the business and known for MI 2 and Friday the 13th final chapter and some Nightmare on Elm Street episodes. So the effects are really good but the movie lacks in storyline, they involved another killer Scully, nothing to do with the alien and nothing to do with the storyline. He's in the movie for no reason and just got shot. I gave it a 5 just for the effects, it's weird that with the actors known in that era and the director and effects that this isn't out on DVD, you can find it still on VHS only in NTSC. Weird, I surely could BORROW a copy.

lost-in-limbo From the guy who brought us the unnervingly realistic and tense 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)' comes another genre effort by director John McNaughton, but you can call 'The Borrower' somewhat a total change of pace. Its ridiculous premise bathes itself in hysteria, cheese and an overpowering metallic soundtrack. A true step-down, but the angle has changed for this low-budget outing in favour of a black comedy with a less than serious tone and horrifically in-your-face FX work. It kind reminded of the similar themed 'The Hidden (1987)', which seemed to be a trend-setter for many that followed ('Dark Angel and 'Split Second' shoot to mind) involving cops on the trail of a serial killer that may be of extra-terrestrial origins.A criminal alien is genetically devolved and vanquished to earth in human form. There he discovers that his head has a habit of exploding, forcing him to find another replacement and eventually another one. Police detectives Diana Pierce and her partner Charlie Krieger find themselves on the case of this very demented serial killer who likes to take the heads of the victim, but soon they realise there might be more to this case.As it is it's a mildly fun b-grade romp with numerous moments of flamboyantly gooey head explosions and tearing off heads (kind of like that in 1979 film 'The Dark') to only borrow them. Strangely when the alien does do that, the body changes too, even though its only should be the head. Whoops. The idea shows a breath imagination, but McNaughton's duplicated handling of it is simply disappointing and never variable enough. Even the social element is weakly penned. Other than those unconventional graphic scenes, nothing much tends to happen from its slight structure. It suffers from a languishing last quarter, muddled writing with a redundant sub-plot (though it does tie in at the end… but why?) involving another killer and one of the cops. Even the lighting is so smoky, or some sequences are paved in darkness making it hard to work out certain details. While the action when it occurs is frenetic, there's nothing beating its systematic feel and where we are left with an incomplete feel due to its cop-out ending after rattling climax.Rae Dawn Chong emit's an uninterestingly sullen temperament as detective Pierce and a grizzled Don Gordon is fine as detective Krieger. The support fairs up much better with a delightfully amusing Tom Towles and Antonio Fargas steals some scenes.'The Borrower' is moderate entertainment due largely to the make-up FX, but ends up being bounded in its bizarre concept and plodding narrative.

cool_cool_1 The Borrower (1991) is a very good horror, it's very bizarre but i really enjoyed it, Tom Towles and Antonio Fargas made this a very fun outing!!! The movie is about this alien who has committed a bad crime on his own planet and his punishment for the crime is that he is brought to earth and forced to live in a human form!! The aliens head soon explodes when arriving on earth and he goes around stealing other peoples heads, hot on the chase of the alien is a police detective woman (Rae Dawn Chong), the only thing she finds at the scene of the killings is the severed head of the previous victim!!! Like i said before, this movie is very bizarre but yet it's really cool and the characters are all great fun, it has some good gore and special effects too, hunt this down if you like movies like "The Hidden" and "Something is out there".I give "The Borrower" a well deserved 9/10.