There
was a very obvious ET rip off called Mac and Me. The movie was bold enough to promise a
sequel. However, the movie performed so
poorly that the sequel was quietly taken behind the barn and shot. Alien Species tried to pull the same
thing. We were told there’s going to be
a sequel to this movie. Since it was
released 24 years ago, I can only assume that the sequel is in a shallow,
unmarked grave somewhere.
Now,
you might be thinking that this is harsh.
If this is the case, then you obviously haven’t seen this movie. It’s movies like this that give
direct-to-video movies a bad name. This
is what people talk about when they talk about worse-than-b movies.
So,
where do I begin? Let’s start at the
beginning. Max Poindexter and Holly
Capers are sitting in a room looking at a feed that they jacked from NASA. They’re watching the feed from the Galileo II
probe. Not the Voyager II probe. The Galileo II probe. There was a Galileo probe that went to
Jupiter, but there was only one. From
this, I can infer that NASA couldn’t block use of its name, but didn’t want the
name of any active project being used.
Anyway,
while watching the feed, they notice this shadowy black blur slowly move across
the screen. They say it’s going really
fast and that, with the delay and all, whatever it is has probably already
arrived. Just then, a mother ship enters
Earth orbit and releases lots of little fighter ships to destroy Earth. They try to contact the professor who’s
running their little project to no avail.
Meanwhile,
a prison bus is leaving to transport two convicts to another facility. One of the deputies is kind of a jerk towards
the prisoners and one of the prisoners is kind of a jerk back. Why? Because people on both sides of law
enforcement tend to be jerks.
They
don’t get far before coming upon some stranded motorists. Lo and behold, it’s the professor, his
assistant and his granddaughter. Against
their better judgment, the deputies give the three people a ride. Never mind the two prisoners in the
back. What’s the worst that could
happen?
Funny
you should ask. The bus is overturned by
an alien fighter ship, leaving the seven people to seek refuge in a cave. They can’t light a fire because of some
dynamite laying around. They can’t leave
because aliens have found them. So what
do they do? They go deeper into the
cave.
I
thought that maybe one of the deputies knew the cave system and had an
alternate way out. No such luck. They get trapped and then find a secret alien
base. Both of the deputies bite the
dust, as does the jerk prisoner. The
nicer prisoner escapes with the two women only to run into Poindexter. (Yes, that’s really his name.)
Poindexter
had left earlier in the movie to find the professor. Holly went home to rescue her cat. (Kudos to the movie for showing Holly and her
cat driving off to safety.) It’s just
dumb luck that Poindexter happened to find the granddaughter and the assistant.
So,
Poindexter does some sciency stuff and Mr. Prisoner does some macho shoot-em-up
stuff. Eventually, Poindexter is able to
get the frequency of some alien thingamabobber by placing it on his laptop and
randomly punching the keys on his laptop.
Really. (In fact, it actually
says Alien Thingamabobber 3000 on the side.)
So,
Mr. Prisoner saves the day by blowing up one of the fighter ships, causing all
the other fighter ships to go back to the mother ship. Everyone is ready to cheer until Mr. Prisoner
points out that they’re likely regrouping.
Cut to the text informing us that there will be an Alien Species
II: The Crappening coming to a VHS tape
near you. Except we all know that’s not
happening.
I
mean, that was a really bold statement.
The video looks like it was actually shot on VHS at the lowest quality
setting. I assume that cows were being
abducted, but they also could have been deresing. I’m not sure.
The
acting is mostly flat. There were a few
zingers, but none of them had any zing.
It’s a shame because they could have been good. With a little effort, the movie could have
been exciting.
We
get to see a lot of cars and buildings blown up, but the attack seems to be
random. A ship will destroy two cars and
move on. Or the aliens will abduct a guy
and his girlfriend, kill the girlfriend’s father and destroy the house. It makes no sense.
It’s
not even clear why the aliens are invading.
I suppose we would have found out in Part II. But is it for resources? Did we do something to offend them? Do they not like the quality of our
direct-to-video movies? (That last one I
could understand, but it hardly seems worth the effort.)
They
also don’t seem to focus on major targets.
You’d think they’d hit government buildings or take out the power
supply. Ok. So they did take out communications. The aliens didn’t do that effectively,
though. Poindexter was able to place a
phone call after this happened. So, we
don’t even have a decent alien enemy.
There
are a few actors who have been in other movies, like Charles Napier and Hoke
Howell. However, many of the actors have
one credit on IMDb. I feel sorry because
I imagine one of them might have been pinning their hopes on this to launch a
career. (It did seem to happen in one
case; not all of the acting was horrible.)
However, this is a really crappy movie.
It’s also possible that some of the actors did it as a favor to get the
movie made.
I
actually got to thinking, though. Is
there a list of people who want to be actors so badly that they’ll be in
anything? There seems to be no shortage
of people to act in stuff. The same goes
for the CGI. The graphics would seem to
be done by someone with minimal training.
I
wonder if there’s a section of Craigslist for that. (Actually, that might not be far off. Craigslist Joe found its cameraman that
way.) It’s mostly that the production
values are so low. Some of the actors
don’t seem to be trying, but some are.
It’s
also a shame that many of the shots are in the dark. It makes it difficult to see the people. What few shots we get of the aliens are in
the shadows or in a dark room. I don’t
know if this is to heighten the effect or if the costumes were made on a
budget.
It’s
hard to say that any one component made the movie horrible. It’s more that it’s a low-quality pile
on. There are so many contributing
factors that it does look like some guy got some friends together to make a
movie. It would be better to say that
I’m surprised that some career actors had anything to do with this. This is definitely a study in what not to do
with a movie.
No comments :
Post a Comment