Alien Seed (1989)

"They Wanted Her Body... To Save The World!"AIP is a company that produced a treasure trove of low budget direct-to-video films that specialized in action movies, as the company name implies. Being a low-budget production company, you would think they would have been familiar with their forebear "American International Pictures" the original AIP. Why they used that name is a bit puzzling. Even though they made other types of genre movies, it was with action that they hit their stride. Although they ceased production in 1994, they left behind a legacy of VHS gems such as: "White Fury", "Kick Or Die" , and "Shredder Orpheus" (Maybe they weren't all gems) Reviews for those three will be forthcoming.If you are watching "Alien Seed", there are three possibilities: 1. You are obsessed with aliens and have seen every other movie or TV show dealing with aliens ever made.2. You are obsessed with AIP movies and have seen every single one ever made.3. You are an Erik Estrada fanatic. There is no other reason you should have any interest in this direct to video cinematic sludge.Trying to ride the coattails of other popular alien flicks such as "Alien", "Aliens", "Demon Seed", "The Terminator" and "E.T", while borrowing liberally from each one, the final product has the production value of the E.T. video game for Atari, which was subsequently buried in the Nevada desert, as all copies of this should be.The plot: Apparently some broad was impregnated by the Alien Seed. In the movie this is referred to as an "IBI". It was claimed this was a term used by Alien experts. That is highly doubtful. To pad out the running time there is a lot of chasing, shooting, and Erik Estradding around. It is not clear what is going on and to further pad out the running time on top of a pretty extensive pad job, there are several alien related dream sequences.The acting is typical AIP acting, you know what you are in for. To the untrained eye, the acting may seem "bad", but it is amateurish fun and you can't help but smile. Unfortunately, the film stock is shoddy, dingy and grimy looking, making it a tough sit for your vision."Alien Seed" was directed by Bob James and it is his only directing credit to date. The writer Douglas K. Grimm was in the immortal AIP classic "Elves" with Dan Haggerty as "Dead Santa". Additionally he directed the Traci Lords vehicle "Laser Moon".This desperately needed more Erik Estrada. It seems strange to say, but it is true. Estrada's portrayal of Dr. Stone, the villain of the piece, livens up the otherwise dreary proceedings.If you have seen every episode of "CHiPs", "Night Of The Wilding," and "Twisted Justice", and need your fix of Estrada, watch this today!Comeuppance Review by: Ty & Brett For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

The story would have been sort of interesting, but how it's played out in the movie is terrible.The characters were badly written & played. The acting was so bad that even I noticed it, and I don't usually.There were flash-back/flash-forward/dream scenes that did not make any sense, and did not contribute to the movie. I think that they were a crude & poor attempt to make the movie artistic.There were inconsistencies in the various scenes (like a handgun magically turning into a fully automatic machine gun between takes).There were story-line improbabilities and inconsistencies. Who leaves a vehicle running with a machine gun in the passenger seat?The nudity was completely unnecessary for the story, but otherwise enjoyed :-)

This is really a different film. It seems like this film is an unknown to most movie goers. It stars Erik Estrada and the other people are really unknown actors and actresses but they are very good ones. In fact, I thought Steven Blade was great as Mark Timmons. It says he has only appeared in this and nothing else? Why? This man has tons of acting ability! Estrada put on a good performance as well. There was a couple strip scenes in this movie and I felt that this stuff was completely unnecessary. It seems like they always gotta put something like that garbage in movies. The rest of the film was really good, however. The shoot outs and action scenes were really cool and most of the dialog scenes between the characters were good especially the scenes with Estrada and Blade. The music was quite different but good and the effects were also good. Other than the one complaint this movie it pretty good. If you like Estrada and alien movies then check out Alien Seed!Movie Nuttball's NOTE:If you like alien movies and/or the subject of aliens I also recommend the following films: The Thing from another World, The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Horror Express, The UFO Incident, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, John Carpenter's The Thing, Krull, Time Walker, My Science Project, Howard the Duck, John Carpenter's Starman, John Carpenter's They Live, Mac and Me, Explorers, Invaders from Mars, Total Recall, The Abyss, Communion, Suburban Commando, Fire in the Sky, The Arrival, Mars Attacks! Men in Black I & 2, Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, Xtro 3: Watch the Skies, Battlefield Earth: A Saga for the year 3000, Impostor, Stargate, The Puppet Masters, John Carpenter's Village of the Damned, Independence Day, Life Form, The X-Files: Fight the Future, Mission to Mars, Signs, Silent Warnings, Alien Hunter, Spaceballs, Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Predator & Predator 2, The entire Star Wars saga (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi (Original and Special Editions!), The Phantom Menace, & Attack of the Clones), the entire Star Trek movie saga (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country, Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, & Nemesis) and Stephen King's IT!

I was disappointed with this film mainly because I was expecting a different movie. To credit the film, this was an "X-File"' like plot before there was an "X-Files" show. However, the movie was as cheesy as it could be without taking place in Wisconsin.This movie just took itself way too seriously. There was a lot of violence and action but little nudity and no sex, despite the theme of impregnation. The nudity is brief, only in the few strip club scenes, which implies more nudity and sex to follow when the scene first pops up, no pun intended, but alas, it's a tease. This is where Lisa Jordan, played by Heidi Paine, works. She's not a stripper, so we never see her naked. Instead, she is a waitress who needs a paying job while she's working on her thesis. That's right, writing a thesis for graduate work in academia is what she's doing; it makes perfect sense, right? Heidi is hot though. After all, strip clubs don't hire ugly women as waitresses . . . or so I'm told. She spends the whole movie answering the question, "Who really needs a bra anyway?" I know I don't!There was another character that "aroused" interest. She was this assistant to a New Age reverend who happened to be wearing a leather mini-skirt, but the writers drop the character! Where did she go? You don't drop hot characters when your movie sucks, at least not before they get naked.The director went with a surreal vision that doesn't work; the beginning is all over the map, making little sense. The story also has many parallels with the original "Terminator," like our heroes hiding out, how the movie ends, etc. Apologies for the "spoiler" there, but believe me, you can't spoil this crappy movie. Perhaps this direction would have worked if the production values weren't so low, but I doubt it.The special effects looked like animation from a personal computer, a 1989 personal computer. The background 1980s synthesizer music was overdone, and the dialog was horrible. There is a part where some guy named "Officer Davis" comes forward with testimony that is way too specific. It makes little sense because everyone else who has come forward has been killed, so why did he testify? The answer is "exposition" of course. With that said, maybe some mystical force was at work, and the character became self-aware that he was in this flop, so he suicide-by-cops himself into a dirt nap to escape the script? Now that would be an interesting story, relative to this film's story anyway.The editing was also atrocious. There is a particular car chase that goes from an exterior shot of the cars in a field, to an interior shot of one of the drivers. When you look over her shoulder, you can see that she's in the city. The shot goes back to the exterior view, and they're back in the field! There was also a scene where a writer was typing on a typewriter. Would you like to guess whether or not the typing sounds matched his keystrokes? If you said that they didn't match, you win a gold star.Of course the actors were overly melodramatic, but I must give Erik Estrada some credit. He gave it his all. Ponch pulls no punches, earning his paycheck.The stunts were also laughable. For example, there was a hit-and-run involving a pedestrian: the car stops, the pedestrian hops on the hood, and the car speeds away. Also, empty cardboard boxes stop a moving car involved in a chase, spinning the car out. I laughed my ass off again when they showed a motorcycle wreck in slow motion. In my view, that motorcycle could not have been going faster than 5 mph. They must have skipped insuring this film or something.However, I will give the filmmakers credit for their use of squibs in the gun shot scenes. There were two really cool gunshot wounds, one in some lady's forehead and one in some guy's back that blasted through his stomach. The forehead shot elicited a genuine Keanu "Whoa!" from me.In summary, this film is cheesy. I like cheesy films, but this one went the wrong way. It went the serious, violent way. The film should have gone the comedic, sexy, or even pervy way. The film is supposed to be about alien impregnation, so have fun with that! Instead, the aliens are barely in the picture, and they impregnate the ladies by zapping something through their bellybutton. I don't know about you, but if I'm traveling thousands of light-years to impregnate hot Earth women, I'm going to do it the fun way.This film wasn't going to win Academy Awards; the only genre that would have worked for this film was the B-rated soft-core erotica genre. I could only imagine what the genius Alain Siritzky could have done with this project.