Alien Flick – Missile Test

Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments

Movies tell stories. No shit, right? But, besides the story told up on the screen, there is the story of how a movie gets made, and that story, hidden from the audience, can have its own elements of inspiration and perseverance. That’s the case with today’s flick, Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments, filmmaker Erica Benedikty’s magnum opus from 1995.

Shot on videotape with a robust budget of 250 bucks Canadian, Phobe follows an interstellar cop or soldier-type who is hunting an escaped alien killing machine in and around the area of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Benedikty, a part-time employee of Cable 10, a local cable access channel, managed to convince her bosses to let her use the channel’s equipment and facilities to make a movie. She enlisted friends and family as cast and crew, convinced local businesses to let her shoot on their properties, and, over the course of a year, made her movie. Continue reading “Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments”

Alien Outlaw

It’s the overall picture that makes a movie shitty or not. There is never just one thing that earns a flick a spot in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index. Sometimes, though, there are individual things worth pointing out. Take today’s movie, for instance. Alien Outlaw. It’s right there in the title. Alien Outlaw, singular. One alien who is an outlaw. But, this movie has three outlaw aliens. Why not title the movie Alien Outlaws? Surely the opening credits were made after filming had wrapped. The title wasn’t carved into stone. At some point writer/director Phil Smoot had to have noticed the title on the front page of the script versus the amount of aliens in the movie. Yet, there it is. Singular title, three aliens. Continue reading “Alien Outlaw”

Alien Private Eye

Alien Private Eye VHS box The 1980s are a difficult time to explain to people who weren’t there. For the 20th century, every decade had a distinctive look and feel, right up until the late ’90s when everything cultural started to have a whiff of nostalgia. One can look at only a few seconds of a film from the 20th century and be able to tell which decade it came from. Meanwhile, here in this rotten century, nothing seems to have changed since the early 2000s. Fashion, music, movies…there are new names, but a unique, stylistic identity to the times we live in has been lost.

Back to the ’80s. Then was the culmination of decades of change, and the overarching theme seemed to be garishness. Bright colors everywhere (except in the home, which remained stubbornly brown), music with strange sounding instruments, big hair, and, as today’s movie shows, outfits that are beginning to look as bizarre as powdered wigs and pantaloons.

From 1989 comes Alien Private Eye, written, produced, directed, and edited by Vik Rubenfeld. Shot in 1987, but stuck in a can until it obtained a VHS release, Alien Private Eye is another film rescued from the approaching abyss by Vinegar Syndrome, who cleaned it up and released a Blu-ray in 2022. And it’s good they did. Before they ran this flick through the ringer, the only way to watch it were degraded VHS transfers uploaded to the tubes, and those are barely watchable, with fuzzy picture and muddy sound. Continue reading “Alien Private Eye”

Alienator

Prolific filmmaker Fred Olen Ray is a Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star. He’s on the list for his lifetime achievement in the art of b-movies. Sometimes pumping out half a dozen shitty movies in a year, Ray’s career is one worthy of study for the mutant connoisseur. But, had his career consisted of just this one movie, he would still have a place in this amateur reviewer’s heart.

Alienator, from 1990 (screenplay by Paul Garson), sounds just like what it is: an alien who is a terminator. The titular character is about all the relation this flick has to James Cameron’s classic, though. There is no time travel, there is no apocalyptic artificial intelligence, and there is no unborn savior of the future. What there is, is a large, unstoppable space bounty hunter, played by bodybuilder Teagan Clive, in a hair metal-perfect costume. Continue reading “Alienator”

Alien Sniperess

The internet is a ruthless killer. Its convenience has strangled retail, shoved a dagger through the heart of newspapers, put a bullet through the brain of the recording industry…et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The internet has even done a number on the movie business. Hollywood spent a long time consolidating releases into megaplexes, crowding out older theaters and independent distributors in the process. The megaplex killed both the drive-in, and its greatest contributor, regional cinema.

But, lo and behold, it is the internet, normally such a destructive force for prior forms of business, that has saved regional cinema. It’s possible now to shoot a movie digitally and get it onto a streaming platform, bypassing big Hollywood gatekeeping. Low budget b-filmmakers from the furthest reaches of the country are back, just like when they were polluting drive-in and grindhouse screens back in the 20th century. Which brings us to Alien Sniperess. Continue reading “Alien Sniperess”

The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Leave it to England, land of the most enthusiastic domestic gardeners in the world, to produce a monster flick about giant, carnivorous plants.

The Day of the Triffids comes to us from 1963. Adapted by screenwriter Bernard Gordon from the novel by John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids tells the story of an alien invasion of Earth. But, these aren’t the normal, big-eyed, grey-skinned creatures with laser guns with which audiences are so familiar. These are, as noted above, huge, ambulatory plants that poison their victims and then consume them. They are creatures that require no sentience to carry out their invasion. Like the kudzu, they have strength in numbers. Continue reading “The Day of the Triffids (1963)”

Alien Hunter

When is a ripoff of The Thing not a ripoff? When it changes just enough for plausible deniability. Alien Hunter did not change enough. In fact, it even reused footage from John Carpenter’s version of The Thing.

Released direct-to-video in 2003, Alien Hunter was directed by Ron Krauss from a screenplay by executive producer J.S. Cardone, a prolific b-filmmaker in his own right.

Alien Hunter stars James Spader as cryptologist Julian Rome, who is sent to a remote Antarctic research base after a mysterious signal is detected. After finding the location of the signal’s source, out in the middle of the frozen wastes, an object is found buried in the ice, just like in The Thing. Also just like in The Thing, the researchers chip out the surrounding ice into a block, and haul the whole thing back to base. There, debate ensues about what to do with this object, as it’s clear to everyone but one dissenting researcher, Dr. Straub (veteran performer John Lynch), that this object is alien in origin. Continue reading “Alien Hunter”

War of the Satellites

Missile Test will always appreciate Roger Corman, no matter how much crap we give him for being one of the most miserly filmmakers to ever grace the business. If one absolutely, positively, had to get a movie made quickly and as cheaply as possible, Corman was the guy to call. Case in point is War of the Satellites, conceived, shot, and released in only a couple of months, in order to capitalize on the launch of Sputnik, which was dominating the news at the time, and which fed a lot of Cold War paranoia and consternation amongst the American people.

Corman directed and produced, from a story by co-producers and visual effects techs Irving Block and Jack Rabin, with TV writer Lawrence L. Goldman penning the screenplay. Continue reading “War of the Satellites”

Inseminoid, aka Horrorplanet

A common theme one will find on the internet about Inseminoid is that it rips off Alien. Sure, it does. Lots of movies have. And Alien ripped off It! The Terror from Beyond Space. That shouldn’t stop one from considering the film on its own merits. It succeeds and fails all on its own, with no credit or responsibility laid at the feet of Ridley Scott or Dan O’Bannon. The similarities to Alien are many, but with a budget of £1 million versus Alien’s $11 million, there were going to be some cuts made.

Inseminoid was directed by Norman J. Warren, from a script by Nick and Gloria Maley. On a far away planet, scientists studying ruins of an alien civilization are attacked by a monster. One of them, Sandy (Judy Geeson), is inseminated by the alien, and will soon give birth to twin monstrosities. In this, Inseminoid tracks closest to Alien. The much lower budget meant that much of the atmosphere that defined Alien was not possible in this flick. The budget also affected the alien costume, which is very subpar. Warren and company made the right decision to not feature the monster that much. As a result, most of the terrorizing in this flick is done by Sandy and not the monster. Continue reading “Inseminoid, aka Horrorplanet”

Feeders

The Polonia Brothers continue to impress, and not always in a good way. Their 1996 movie, Feeders, which they directed with Jon McBride, is a case in point. Shot over the course of a few days in 1994, the production came eight years and five movies after Hallucinations, yet one would be hard-pressed to point out where they have grown as filmmakers.

In plot, they have regressed. In their ability to direct acting talent, they have regressed. Worst of all, in special effects, they have regressed. Continue reading “Feeders”