Not of This Earth (1988)

This 1988 movie came out when Traci Lords was 20, which means it was likely filmed when she was 19, just a short time removed from her under- age introduction to the porn industry. She was quite lovely to look at, and the script makes sure we see a couple of scenes where she shows off her well-endowed bresticles. But she couldn't act back then. It comes across as a very amateurish performance. The entire movie is so bad and so campy that it is actually good ... good, fun, brainless entertainment. Traci Lords is Nadine Story, a nurse who gets talked into being the private nurse, for transfusions, for a man who claims he is dying. That man is actor Arthur Roberts as the mysterious Mr. Johnson, who we find is from an advanced race 'not of this Earth', but from a distant planet where massive radiation is destroying people by destroying their blood.Mr Johnson has been sent to evaluate Earth and see if using the blood of Earthlings will work, and if it does they will all come and take over. So he has to gather specimens, and he has some very novel ways of doing that. The other two key characters are Lenny Juliano as petty crook Jeremy who has been hired by Mr Johnson as a personal valet. Both he and the nurse are getting $2000 a week, which was quite a nice salary in 1988. The other is Ace Mask as Dr. Rochelle who first treats Mr Johnson but via mind control is unable to say anything about the anomalies he is finding.Just a fun diversion, and for those who are curious, to see a very young Traci Lords in a non-porn role. Man I wish she could act!SPOILERS: After all the set up the end comes quickly and undramatically. Mr Johnson has a particular vulnerability, loud noises like sirens are excruciatingly painful. As he is being chased by a motorcycle cops and the siren goes on, he loses control of the car, runs off a bridge, crashes and burns to death. In the last scene as the nurse and her friend look at the "Not of This Earth" headstone in the cemetery, and they walk away, another man almost like Mr Johnson walks up to the headstone, carrying a similar aluminum briefcase, and the movie captions is "The End", followed quickly by "The End??".

An alien race, dying from radiation in their blood, send an emissary to Earth to find out if transfusions of human plasma might be a cure for their affliction; if the plan is a success, the aliens intend to launch a full scale invasion and harvest the human race for their life giving juices.As I have stated before, Jim Wynorksi might not be much of a director, but he sure knows his stuff when it comes to bimbos, and wisely opts to fill his films with busty babes. In Not Of This Earth, a trashy remake of Roger Corman's 1957 sci-fi classic, good old Jim surpasses himself by giving my favourite adult movie star Traci Lords her first non-porn role as a nurse employed by the alien to perform regular blood transfusions; with her scorching, curvaceous bod, magnificent pout, and surprisingly decent acting skills, blonde sexpot Lords turns an otherwise very humdrum sci-fi flick into an eminently watchable affair.Of course, this being a Wynorski feature, which really is only a step up from porn anyway, Traci still gets to regularly show us her goods: she gets nekkid for a bathroom scene, saunters round a pool in a teeny blue bikini, wears several other very revealing outfits, and indulges in a spot of (non explicit) rumpy pumpy. Also adding to the T&A tally are Rebecca Perle as a big breasted alien, Becky LeBeau as a big breasted strippogram, and Roxanne Kernohan, Ava Cadell and Cynthia Thompson as big breasted hookers. Big breasted B-movie scream queens Monique Gabrielle and Kelli Maroney also make brief appearances, but both keep their tops on.In addition to all the boobs, there is some hokey sci-fi action featuring cheapo special effects, a little bit of poorly executed murder and mystery, and some unintentionally funny extraterrestrial dialogue, but honestly, who really gives a damn about any of that rubbish with all that quality skin on show?4 out of 10 for the film, plus 3 more points for a naked Traci.

Perky nurse Nadine Story (an endearingly spunky portrayal by delectable former underage porno starlet Traci Lords) discovers that Mr. Johnson (nicely played with appropriately deadpan sinisterness by Arthur Roberts), the mysterious man she works for, is really a lethal vampiric alien with deadly glowing blue eyes who's researching mankind for possible conquest by his dying race from the atomic war-ravaged planet Davanna. Director/co-writer Jim Wynorski and frequent collaborator R.J. Robertson bring an amusingly tongue-in-cheek campy sensibility to the enjoyably silly premise and treat the whole thing with a refreshing dearth of pretense: the plot zips along at a constant brisk pace, there's a pleasingly copious amount of yummy gratuitous female nudity, the cheap special effects are suitably tacky, and we even get choice snazzy clips from such drive-in trash gems as "Hollywood Boulevard," "Humanoids from the Deep," "Forbidden World," and "Galaxy of Terror." The cast have a ball with their colorful roles: Lords is both sexy and appealing as the feisty heroine (Ms. Lords looks very smashing in a blue bikini and positively delicious in her birthday suit), Lenny Juliano brings real flair to his part as smarmy sleazeball chauffeur Jeremy, Roger Lodge is likable as Nadine's ramrod cop boyfriend Harry, and Ace Mask contributes a lively performance as cheery blood specialist Dr. Rochelle, plus there are nifty bits by Monique Gabrielle as nutty bag lady Agnes, Michael Delano as an obnoxiously pushy hipster vacuum cleaner salesman, Kelli Maroney as a nurse, the gorgeous Rebecca Perle as an alien woman who embarks on a murderous spree after being accidentally injected with blood infected with rabies, Becky LeBeau as a ditsy Strip-O-Gram girl, and Ava Cadell, Cynthia Ann Thompson, and Roxanne Kernohan as a trio of brash hookers. Zoran Hochstatter's reasonably slick cinematography boasts a few neat wipes and dissolves. Chuck Cirino's infectiously bouncy score also hits the blithely cornball spot. This admittedly lowbrow junk has a certain gleefully dippy charm to it that's impossible to either resist or dislike. A good deal of winningly inane and lighthearted fun.

Well, just about everything.This movie is about a space vampire who comes to earth to harvest blood and see if the planet is ripe for conquest. IN order to survive, he requires daily transfusions from Nurse Naughty played by Traci Lords, who previously gave the porn industry a black eye by announcing she was underage when she made most of her films, and making a lot of unsuspecting people child pornographers.We have several gratuitous topless scenes, some stock spaceship footage from Roger's previous film, "Battle beyond the stars" (I KNEW I had seen those shots in a bunch of other movies!) More stock footage in the opening credits from Roger's other films.You know, with a smart script, this might have been an interesting concept. However, Roger Corman wouldn't know a smart script if it came along and bit him on the backside.