METAL SHIFTERS is another low budget Canadian sci-fi oddity, this one happy enough to copy the likes of THE TERMINATOR and ROBOCOP. Some alien space bacteria comes to earth on a crashed satellite - courtesy of those pesky Russians and in a scene similar to THE BLOB - and has the ability to 'control' metal, shortly animating a random giant robot that just so happens to be hanging around in a scrapyard. What follows is a rampage of destruction.The problem with this film is that it's all very family friendly and therefore not at all menacing. I was pleasantly surprised by the calibre of the CGI effects work, which is not to be sniffed at, but otherwise the film is largely dull. Too much of it consists of people running around and the robot getting blown up before joining back together again, and I could do without the family dynamics of the plot. Plus there's the usual curse of badly-written characters acted by below-par TV stars, which makes this a less-than-entertaining experience.

A vast majority of the time, I intensely dislike SyFy's output, but there have also been some surprisingly tolerable if not great projects. Fortunately for Iron Invader, it falls into the latter category. The acting while not great is decent, likewise with the special effects with the Golem creature actually quite good, and the film with a somewhat intriguing concept starts off quite well. Sadly, the film loses it at the halfway mark, with the camera work becoming increasingly dizzying, the limited production values becoming more obvious and the pace becoming sluggish. While intriguing and starting off fine, the story is too thin to sustain the running time, the characters are rather shallow and the script is laughable in places. In conclusion, not good, not awful, just alright. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Iron Invader is set in the small town of Redeemer in Idaho & starts as two brother's Jake (Kavan Smith) & Ethan Hampton (Colby Johannson) witness a ball of fire fall from the sky & land on farm-ground nearby, they set out to investigate what it was & find a crashed Russian satellite. Jake & Ethan decide to collect the smashed up pieces & sell to the local scrap metal yard run by Earl (Donnelly Rhodes) who gives them $800 for it. Unknown to everyone is that the metal is covered in an alien bacteria that is able to control it, Earl has been putting the finishing touches to a huge twenty foot statue made from bits of scrap metal which the alien bacteria is drawn to & once it infects the statue it brings it to life. Making it's way through town & killing anyone it comes across to feed on the high levels of metal content in our blood a handful of survivors must defeat the alien bacteria before it spreads even further...Also known under the title Metal Shifters this American & Canadian co-production was co-written & directed by Paul Ziller who seems to specialize in these low budget sci-fi fantasy horror productions (Swarmed (2005), Solar Strike (2006), Beyond Loch Ness (2008), Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (2008), Polar Storm (2009), Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010) & Ice Quake (2010) to name but a few) & to be fair to Iron Invaders it wasn't as bad as I expected, I'm not saying it's great, far from it, but I didn't completely hate it. The main reason I had a bit more liking for Iron Invadrs than the average Sy-Fy Channel film was that it didn't feature any giant animals, snakes, insects, spiders or fish. There were no Government scientists trying to create then ultimate military weapon & no genetic experiments gone wrong. In fact the idea of an alien bacteria that lives off metal & has the power to bring inanimate metal to life is quite cool, the huge robot statue that Earl has made is a little convenient I suppose but once it comes to life & starts stomping around town finding people to feed off the metal extracts in their blood it's quite fun in a bad sort of way. Iron Invaders is no masterpiece, I am pretty certain it was never meant to be & that iron Invaders was made with the sole intention of being a fun 90 odd minutes which, in fairness, it is. I've certainly seen worse that's for sure. The character's are broad clichés, the all American hero, the romantic love interest, a cowardly one, a family member or two to put in jeopardy, bit part character's who are killed off & swiftly forgotten about with any real emotion (including brothers & sisters) & the usual incompetent police but the thing moves along at a decent pace & is never that boring. At about the hour mark the huge statue is blown up & then the little pieces come after the survivors who are hiding in the local bar & Iron Invaders goes from a big monster film to an isolated base under threat type siege horror film so there's even a bit of variety here although none of it is exactly brilliant. It's passable & watchable sci-fi entertainment that is better than a lot of stuff out there but that in itself isn't saying that much, is it?Again, surprisingly, the CGI computer effects aren't actually that bad here. Alright so they aren't great or anything but they are adequate, I suppose a giant metal robot is meant to look stiff & awkward anyway that helps a bit & the crashing satellite at the start looks OK too. Imagine the T-800 from The Terminator films only twenty feet high & you get an idea of what they huge robot statue thing looks like. Quite well made for this type of thing Iron Invaders is a fairly competent production even if that alcohol they pour on the burning metal parts would have added fuel to the fire (alcohol is highly flammable you know...) & made it fiercer rather than put it out.Filmed in British Columbia in Canada this probably had a pretty low budget, the entire town consists of one street & about seven people. I've heard of small rural towns but that's just ridiculous. The acting is OK< no-one really seems to put much effort in but no-one stands out as being particularly annoying or awful I suppose.Iron Invaders, or Metal Shifters as I saw it as, is a passable Sy-Fy Channel film that is maybe slightly more original & slightly more polished than the average Sy-Fy Channel output. Sure it's no masterpiece but if you have sufficiently low expectations Iron Invaders will probably live up to them, just about. Nowhere near the worst film I have seen on the Sy-Fy Channel.

The plot revolves around a bacteria from space which eats metal and has the power to animate said metal objects. The bacteria came from a satellite that crashed to earth and was sold for scrap by the central character, Jake, and his brother, Ethan. I know the summary written by IMDb editors says it was a meteorite, but it is identified early on that it's a satellite as Jake points out to his brother that parts of the wreckage have Russian writing on them (I guess the eds missed that).Anyway, the bacteria spreads to an 18 foot tall scrap metal 'Golem' figure which was built by the scrap yard owner as a display for some local event. The scrap metal giant then comes to life and proceeds to wander about the town (very slowly, mind you. Scrap metal can't walk very fast), killing everyone it comes into contact with.As said, it wasn't as bad as I expected. The sets were authentic looking and the acting passable. The main problem I had was with the camera work. In the scene where Jake meets his old love interest in a parking lot, it appears as if the cameraman has developed a sudden case of advanced Parkinson's disease. The camera shakes around so much, I was almost left feeling dizzy.I won't reveal the ending but let's just say that the movie's final message seemed to be that almost any problem can be overcome by applying copious amounts of alcohol. I give it 3/10.