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The Borrower

Play trailer Poster for The Borrower R 1991 1h 32m Sci-Fi Play Trailer Watchlist
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An alien is banished from his planet and sentenced to live on Earth in human form. There's one problem with his disguise, though -- every so often, his human head explodes, revealing his true identity. This leaves the alien with no choice but to intermittently pop off the heads of arbitrary people and use them until it's time for a replacement. Meanwhile, officers Diana (Rae Dawn Chong) and Charles (Don Gordon) begin to trace the trail of headless bodies back to their extraterrestrial source.
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The Borrower

Critics Reviews

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com 06/17/2005
2/5
Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews 01/26/2005
C+
Not without being somewhat entertaining in a childish way. Go to Full Review
Spence D. IGN Movies 02/10/2004
3/5
Daniel M. Kimmel Worcester Telegram & Gazette 02/08/2004
3/5
Jeffrey Westhoff Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL) 05/14/2003
2/5
Alex Sandell Juicy Cerebellum 03/27/2003
2/5
Borrowed from too many other horror movies to be any good. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Ross V Aug 2 A cheap copy of 1987’s superior, The Hidden, The Borrower’s only notable scene is its very first one which neatly and arrestingly sets the stage for a movie which, beyond some effective practical makeup effects, fails to develop into anything but a meandering interweave of an alien head hunter in L.A. and a mildly threatening whack job sex offender on a kinky vendetta against the protagonist police detective. See more Todd B 12/15/2024 This movie is a weird with a roach like alien space policing a white man prisoner alien. And then changing heads every so often even a dog. It even got freaky, when the guy eat a spoonful of cream corn with a mouse in it. Whereas, he even sucked up all of the pint of vodka or whatever up. See more 01/09/2022 Really silly body swap movie. This premise has been done to death, so you're not likely to be seeing something new, but it's fun and has some performances and situations that are a riot. See more 04/26/2016 Before The Bone Collector was this forgettable and similarly themed thriller. See more 06/27/2015 Classic silliness. An alien is made to look human and exiled to Earth as a punishment...where he gets to keep killing, ripping off heads and wearing women's sunglasses. Despite this movie being incredibly silly, there is some interesting social commentary on our desensitization of violence and automatic devaluation of the poor. Quite good actually and very entertaining. See more 03/21/2015 It was like two different movies fighting with each other to be on the screen. One movie: An alien comes to earth and needs to steal people's heads by ripping them off and placing them on his body. The other movie: A street-wise cop is trying to stop an escaped criminal. You'd think they mesh together, but they really don't. Maybe at the end they sort of do, but it was entirely unnecessary. Besides, the ending is very anticlimactic and solves absolutely nothing (it almost seemed as if they were trying to leave the door open for a sequel). I like the comedy/sci-fi/horror thing they were going for, but the whole Rae Dawn Chong storyline of the movie gets unnecessarily dark at one point (a woman cop gets beat down, tied up, and raped). What was the point? It brought down the mood of the movie and sapped out some of the fun. Still, there's lots of blood and gore, some memorable and funny scenes (the dog being one of them), and it was an okay watch. This movie kind of deserves a DVD treatment, but I guess this will just be one of those forgotten VHS movies that many will remember from the video store days only to be forgotten over time. If you find a bootleg it's worth checking out. See more Read all reviews
The Borrower

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Movie Info

Synopsis An alien is banished from his planet and sentenced to live on Earth in human form. There's one problem with his disguise, though -- every so often, his human head explodes, revealing his true identity. This leaves the alien with no choice but to intermittently pop off the heads of arbitrary people and use them until it's time for a replacement. Meanwhile, officers Diana (Rae Dawn Chong) and Charles (Don Gordon) begin to trace the trail of headless bodies back to their extraterrestrial source.
Director
John McNaughton
Producer
R.P. Sekon, Steven A. Jones
Production Co
Atlantic Entertainment Group, Vision Pictures, Cannon Pictures Inc.
Rating
R
Genre
Sci-Fi
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 1, 2009
Runtime
1h 32m
Sound Mix
Surround
Aspect Ratio
Flat (1.85:1)
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