Well as far as titles go ‘Earth Alien’ ranks as one of the stupidest. Luckily it’s only the title of the British DVD version, the original US release had the slightly better title ‘Endangered Species’. Looking at the credits on the back of the case was probably a mistake; they only served to get my hopes up. To start with we’ve got John Rhys-Davis (the angry midget without hairy feet from Lord of the Rings) and music by Harry Manfredini (Friday the 13th 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9 and 10 but not 8) while not legends both capable individuals.
Anyway piss poor naming aside what we have here is a film that is heavily in debt to films like ‘Alien Nation’ and ‘Dark Angel’. Evil alien (David van Day look-alike) kills loads of people for reasons barely explained so friendly alien (bad dude from ‘The Mummy’) and straight talking cop have to team up to stop him.
To put the audience’s collective mind at rest this film lays its cards on the table very quickly, after 4 minutes if you want me to be precise. Four minutes in and people are naked and getting shot in the head. It’s the perfect hook! Well if you like films with tits and violence, it’s the perfect hook! Sadly it can't keep this up with people generally wearing more clothes and getting shot less as the film goes on.
The script needs a mention here for its childish sense of humour, every so often a line will be so absurd or vulgar that you’ll want to rewind to check you actually heard it right, the best one being the news reporter advising people if they have to go out at night ‘to travel in groups and carry big sticks’.
It all starts to go downhill when the business of actually apprehending the evil alien gets in the way. The key to making a film on the cheap is to keep within your means, something the makers of this forgot early on. If you’ve got no money don’t write vast chase sequences full of explosions and invisible cars. Oh yeah you read that right, invisible cars! Half the budget probably went on the none too convincing green screening so the evil alien could hang out of the window of his invisible car.
It’s only towards the end when our heroes go to blow up the nasty villains conveniently invisible spaceship that you realise no explanation for the previous 80 minutes has even been attempted but its something to with the Earth being an alien game reserve and the bad guy being an intergalactic tailor who does a nice line in human suits.
So while the storyline isn’t up to much the film is just about worth £1 if only to watch John Rhys-Davis accidentally shoot himself in the eye and for the definitive answer on who would win in a fight between Superman and Mighty Mouse (basically the mouse would be crushed to death while trying to fly up Superman's anal passage in an attempt to rip his heart out from the inside, crafty little bugger!)
No comments:
Post a Comment