I remember seeing this for the first time and thinking those ugly little ant guys with their threatening faces were the stuff of nightmares. A spaceship is about to land with permission of the U.S. government. The alien culture has said that they are sending a group of prisoners and misfits to Earth. They are to be confined to a place in the desert. If Earth does not comply, God knows what they will do to us. A military installment has been put in a ghost town to oversee the arrival. Everything is fine until Bruce Dern, a bank robber, and his hyped up girlfriend break through a checkpoint, guarded by one guy. He is killed by their car and they make their way into the confined area. Their car overheats and they are stuck without water. Dern is nuts and has domination over the women. He becomes curious when he sees a tiny spaceship has landed on a rock edifice. When he goes to investigate, he is startled and falls into a crevice. Some of the aliens exit the ship. They are large ants with expressive faces, very threatening. An historian who has been writing about the whole process volunteers to check things out as the head of the operation tries to convince the aliens that the invaders are not part of the plan; that they have barged in on the scene. The little ants chase the woman and she is rescued by the historian and brought back to the control center. The story has to do with how we would confront such an unknown which threatens our way of life. The woman (who will probably be charged with being an accessory to robbery and murder) represents the cynical fears of the citizen toward the government. She seems to have nothing to lose and presents a sad subplot. It's obvious that she has never really taken a stand in her life and now that life may be over.