The newly-designed solar-powered house of Grant Williams (Jim Davis, THE PARALLAX VIEW) and his wife Ana (Dorothy Malone, THE BIG SLEEP) - designed by son-in-law Richard (Christopher Mitchum, CHISUM) - becomes the focal point of an increase in electrical disturbances in the Southern California desert following the arrival of a supernova from the explosion of three stars hundreds of years ago. Grant and Ana's son Steve (Scott C. Kolden), their daughter Beth (Marcy Lafferty, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS), and her daughter Jenny (Natasha Ryan, TV's DAYS OF OUR LIVES) return from vacation to stay with them but Richard has to run off to the city on business. While wandering the property, Jenny discovers a glowing extraterrestrial pyramid-like structure that bonds with her and seems to do her bidding. While this being seems benevolent, the family are soon terrorized by alien spacecrafts, aliens, and even dinosaurs being hurtled about through time and space in a time vortex that threatens to take do the same to the Williams clan.

While not particularly entertaining as a whole, this early Charles Band production - along with TOURIST TRAP (shot the same year and helmed by this film's co-writer David Schmoeller) - plays like a dry run for most of Band's later Empire Pictures and Full Moon exploitation output with its stop-motion beasts and adorable tiny aliens (courtesy of David Allen and Randall William Cook, who respectively provided the largely unused stop-motion versions of the creatures in THE HOWLING and John Carpenter's THE THING), affectionately half-convincing miniatures by Paul Gentry (AIRPLANE), laser light shows by Peter Kuran (WOLFEN), and striking matte paintings by Jim Danforth (THE NEVERENDING STORY). Indeed, The effects are the real point of the film, and most of them look quite good even post-STAR WARS (and probably better in Panavision on the big screen, but all video and DVD versions have been cropped), but the bulk of the story has actors running around a dark house and property and a universal (i.e. unseen) conscience to set things right. It's nice to see Davis in a lead role (after a long film and TV career in the middle part of the century, he was largely relegated to supporting character bits before landing the plum role of the Ewing family patriarch in the primetime soap DALLAS). Malone doesn't make much of an impression, nor do any of the other supporting actors with the exception of child actress Ryan (who would also be terrorized by the unknown in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and THE ENTITY). Chris Mitchum literally "phones in" half of his performance before speeding back home to make an attempt at saving the day. His disconnect from the rest of the story probably had more to do with scheduling and dramatic purposes, and a horse let loose from the stables by Grant to distract an attacking monster allows the him to ride across the desert for a bit (Davis and Mitchum both appeared in three of John Wayne's later westerns). The orchestral score by Richard Band (performed by London Symphony Orchestra) is just as majestic as most of the effects, but the busy sound design (especially for the budget) could really have used the Dolby Stereo treatment. Later SUBSPECIES writer/director Ted Nicolau served as editor and sound designer, future composer Joel Goldsmith - son of Jerry - served as sound mixer, and the opening prologue sequence was shot by Daniel Pearl (THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE).