Alienator (1990)

I never imagined that this cheapie effort made by the legendary Fred Olen Ray (usually legendary for the wrong reasons) would ever get a DVD release, but it did indeed get one a couple of years ago. So I decided to give it another look. Actually "cheapie" is a kind adjective to give this movie. It looks like most of the VERY limited budget went to securing that legendary B movie cast for a few days of shooting. (Though as it turns out, the cast doesn't exactly give good performances.) With the limited amount of money left over, Ray ended up making a curious hybrid - a movie that feels both made in the 1950s and the 1980s. The plot is clearly inspired by the 1984 movie "The Terminator", though the production values are right out of a low budget Roger Corman movie from decades back. I admit that the tacky production values actually have a little charm, namely because Ray keeps the tone pretty serious and does not seem to find the low rent atmosphere one to be mocked. The photography and lighting are acceptable as well. And there's an interesting twist in the plot towards the end. But ultimately the movie doesn't work because not only is the plot pretty slow-moving for the most part, the action sequences are lacking passion and grit. If Ray had kept things swiftly moving and exciting with both plot and action, I think I could have overlooked all the cheapness and the other flaws in the movie and had some serious fun. But as it is, for the most part it's only worth a look if you have a perverse pleasure of seeing a legendary cast of actors clearly knowing their better days are behind them.

Evil prison inmate Kol (essayed with hammy brio by Ross Hagen) escapes to Earth after breaking out from a remote space station penitentiary. The warden (a seriously cranky Jan-Michael Vincent) sends an unstoppable assassin known as the Alienator (beefy butch bodybuilder Teagan) to take Kol down. Boy, does this cruddy low-budget sci-fi clunker fail to hit the mark: The ham-fisted (mis)direction by Fred Olen Ray, plodding pace, a shabby script by Paul Garson, lots of comically bad acting, ineptly staged action set pieces, tacky (far from) special effects, dopey humor, tin-eared dialogue ("Your lover boy is burnt toast by now"), mild gore, and a crippling lack of both tension and vitality ensure that this honey ain't ever going to be reappraised as some kind of unjustly maligned lost classic. Chuck Cirino's mechanically bouncy score doesn't help matters any. On the plus side, John Phillip Law tries hard as rugged game warden Ward Armstrong, P.J. Soles shows off some tasty cleavage, Hoke Howell and Fox Harris provide a few laughs as a pair of bumbling idiot poachers, and Leo Gordon chews up the scenery with lip-smacking glee as gung-ho two-fisted Vietnam veteran Colonel Coburn. A real schlockfest.

For the initial 20 minutes or so (I was watching it on a PS2 so I've really no idea how long it took) Alienator sets up an interesting premise. I don't think I've seen a slasher movie with an alien from another planet as the baddie before. However, interest soon turns into stunned disbelief as you realise the 'alien' is a huge body-builder woman in a steel bikini. Yes, Alienator is patently ridiculous.Don't think I hold that against it. In the world of shlock-horror, patently ridiculous can often be a good sign. However, the blatant stupidity of its premise is all the movie really has going for it. Alienator is funny as hell, but it is also a shambolic suckfest of the highest order. Actors heap on failed attempts at seriousness, potentially genius lines of pure cheese dialogue are stumbled over with unnerving incompetence and the direction fails to sum up even one or two decent set-pieces. By the time the movie's finished you can barely see the original concept through the haystack of total tripe the team piled on it.Add to this the fact that the 'Alien' just kills people by vaporising them, as opposed to doing any 'slashing' as such and you have a giant throbbing heap of good ideas being left to rot. You'll laugh at Alienator, but AT it, not with it. If that's your thing then go ahead and check it out.

Recipe for one of the worst movies of all time: a she-male villain who looks like it escaped from the WWF, has terrible aim with a gun that has inconsistent effects (the first guy she shoots catches on fire but when she shoots anyone else they just disappear) and takes time out to pet a deer. Then you got the unlikable characters, 30 year old college students, a lame attempt at a surprise ending and lots, lots more. Avoid at all costs.