Strange Invaders is a 1983 American science fiction film directed and co-written by Michael Laughlin, and stars Paul Le Mat, Nancy Allen and Diana Scarwid.

Twenty-five years later, Columbia University lecturer Charles Bigelow learns that his ex-wife, Margaret, has disappeared while attending her mother's funeral in Centerville, and travels there to find her.

Bigelow and Elizabeth escape from the departing alien ship and Betty's and the townsfolk's blue orbs are transformed back to their original human forms.

As part of the financing deal, Orion and EMI demanded several script changes, which Condon and Laughlin found difficult, because they had to try to explain their ideas verbally.

For example, in the original script, the American government was a much bigger threat, with a big sequence taking place at an Air Force base.

The original script was written with Michael Murphy in mind — he had been in Strange Behavior — but EMI refused to allow him to be cast much to the director's confusion "because there didn't seem to be a good reason for his rejection.

[3] Orion and EMI suggested Mel Gibson and Powers Boothe instead but Laughlin's choice was Paul Le Mat, because he had not played that kind of role before and had a "Joel McCrea quality" that he was seeking.

Laughlin relented and allowed Cummins to reshoot a lengthy scene near the end of the film where the aliens shed their human guises as they prepare to embark on a 1950s style spacecraft.

[6] Newsweek magazine's David Ansen wrote, "Hovering unclassifiably between nostalgia and satire, this amiably hip genre movie confirms Laughlin as a deliberately minor but unique stylist.

It's up to the viewer to determine just how faux his naif style is, but either way you choose to take it, Strange Invaders offers a good deal of laid-back fun".

[7] Jay Scott in his review for The Globe and Mail wrote, "Strange Invaders is a pastiche, a film-school jumble of aphorisms and winks at the audience that are neither as knowing nor as amusing as they are meant to be".