Alien Species - Die Nacht der Invasion

This movie has nothing going for it other than some adequate SFX; the alien ships are OK - about the level of first series Babylon 5. Other that that it is a total stinker with nothing to recommend it at all.

Why is it that, in utter crap movies like this...

...the aliens are capable of building faster than light space ship and zapping entire cities to smithereens in moments but are reduced to skulking in caves, shambling along at half a mile an hour and grabbing people's ankles?

... American cars explode so easily? You just have to sneeze on the buggers and they go up like a roman candle.

... nerdy boy college types when presented with an alien artifact he has never seen before, ripped from a dead aliens wrist, can "download its data" onto his laptop in seconds whilst under fire, when most of us have trouble working out which way round a USB plug goes in?

Where did that loaded bazooka come from in the last scene? Hunky hero ran to get it out of the car but it was nerdy boy's car. Do nerdy boy college types always just happen to carry loaded anti-tank weapons around with them? The dialogue is pathetic. The "plot" (hah!) is thuddingly obvious and paper thin, and to call the characters and acting "wooden" would be generous.

It does however contain a hilarious alien kidnapping. If you accidentally buy this movie watch it up to the point the girl gets sucked out of her bedroom window - then turn it off and put it on eBay.

(Some of the comments here are about a different film. "Alien Terminator" (a Troma 'Alien' rip-off) made in the same year was released as "Alien Species" in Britain).

Surprisingly, a number of things came to mind while watching ALIEN SPECIES, Peter Maris' empty skulled direct to video ripoff of the equally idiotic INDEPENDENCE DAY, mostly because the film is so vapidly uninteresting that it served as an opportunity to engage in free-form speculation for ninety minutes while things got blown up while bathed in fluorescent green lights:

1) I am in awe of Charles Napier. He may not be as endearingly grandfatherish in appearance as Peter Cushing or have a spry, mischievous old coot thing going on like John Carradine. But like those two legends Napier has made a career out of making the ridiculous seem perfectly ordinary. Usually he is cast as a cop or military officer who always has that glint in his eye that says he knows more than he is letting on, playing the fool to keep everyone at arm's length. My favorite Charles Napier scene is from Fred Olen Ray's DEEP SPACE where he dons a Scotsman's kilt and takes up the bagpipes after an intimate dinner. His date asks "What, is that supposed to make me want to sing or something?" to which Napier matter of factly replies "No, it's supposed to make you want to take your clothes off." She does.

2) The "hero" in this movie comes across as a dirtbag who has a haircut that makes him look like at least two of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Which two I am not certain since they usually only wear socks and their underpants on-stage, and as such I have never really gotten a good look at them.

3) Actress Jodi Seronick Golden is indeed the best thing about this film: She is spunky and speaks with excellent enunciation, looks great splattered with alien blood while running around in a torn business suit and has a cute little nose. She deserves better than this.

4) I do not miss Will Smith at all (in fact, there are only white folk in this ID4 ripoff, which sort of misses the point why that giant bag of hot air actually kind of worked: We are ALL doomed, not just the white suburban punks & techno nerds) but the film could use an appearance by Brent Spiner without his "Data" makeup on. Without that white pancake base and ping pong ball contacts, he looks creepy.

5) The kook 9/11 Truth theory idiots have nothing on the whacked out techno paranoia conspiracy allegations spouted by homogeneous white suburbanite nerds in this baby. Maybe if they didn't look like members of Garbage or Curve I could take it more seriously ... Actually, no, I couldn't.

6) Computer grapics animation & special effects should only be made by people who's work does not look like it was recorded from a video game. It is one thing to make a movie that inspires or resembles a video game, but to get the process backwards requires such a willingness to look like such a moron that it us unacceptable.

7) Usually I praise a film with the audacity to ignore any kind of "suspension of disbelief", has no remorse about it's ultra-low budget and sticks to it's subject matter without ever look up from the gutter once. The problem here is that this film is pilfering global threat topics and doesn't have the good sense of a movie like ZONTAR, THING FROM VENUS to just have people sitting around and talking about it. By trying to show us instead the movie crosses the line from just being vapid & amateurish to having the gall to think it would be able to hold a candle to the sight of John Agar sitting on a Naugahyde couch looking concerned as the deaths of thousands are described to him.

8) The movie appears to have been intended to be the first part in a two-installment story, with no mention of whether or not part 2 was ever executed. My suspicion is that somebody had their Powermac taken away.

9) The film seems unsure at times if it is a parody or just a low budget ripoff, resulting in the film's most interesting scenes. You aren't sure if you are supposed to be laughing at the idiocy or poking your friends in the ribs to make sure they get the joke too. It is a disorienting viewing experience: Are we supposed to be taking this seriously? I hope not, but if so, what was the point of it?

10) The film has an affection for colored neon lighting that is used as a substitute for atmosphere. To be frank, the most unnerving scenes were ones set inside of a car with the principal characters attempting to have a conversation. It was like listening to a bad "X-Files" episode, which amazingly is referred to in dialog in what may be a rare instance of the film's self awareness showing.

11) At one point during a moment of crisis inside of the abandoned warehouse level from "Half-Life", one of the characters sweeps the area with his shotgun, at one point aiming it directly at the pretty head of Jodi Seronick Golden. Good thing it wasn't really loaded and they weren't really being attacked by space aliens or she would have been toast.

ALIEN SPECIES can be found on a new 50 movie/12 DVD box set called NIGHTMARE WOLRDS. It can be found there, but just why you'd go looking for it is a matter for you to decide.

2/10

I love movies where I can honestly say that I would have done a better job directing. Seriously. I'm not Mr. "Oh, I can do better than that" usually. But I think my dog could have directed this movie better, and I don't have a dog. Doesn't make sense, does it? Neither does the director's strategy for making this movie.

This is one of those movies that must have a budget of about $10,000 and you wonder "where did the money go"? I can only assume that the explosions in the film were an accident, since nothing else in the movie works, especially the plot. I also think that the actors in the movie were not only not trained in the art of acting, but deliberately taught wrong as a joke.

In this movie, you expect a hard-core sex scene to come on at any moment, not because of any sexual tension that has built up, but because the movie looks like it was shot by the same people who brought you anal whores volume seven. They should have paid the actresses an extra $50/day to score some crack and act while high. At least that would have been interesting.

To sum up, only see this movie while drunk with friends. Recommend this movies to none but your worst enemies, and see a good movie directly after this to avoid having the badness of this movie contaminate you.

Man, this is a bad one, except sometimes when it's one of them 'almost' good ones. But mostly bad.

Basically aliens invade the US in really bad CGI spaceships (almost as bad as the CGI in Alien Blood!) and it's up to some scientists to...well they don't do much at all except avoid getting killed.

Also, Charles Napier's here as a cop for a change and two of his buddies are transporting prisoners and then pick up some other folk and then everyone ends up in a cave where all the aliens are. That's the plot.

After that we're in standard nineties Alien rip off territory where out characters try to remain alive while rubber suited monsters (and zombies!) try and kill them. To be honest this actually improves the film as we can stop watching those awful UFO effects and the actors stop bickering and get to fighting some aliens.

This could have almost been on those enjoyable bad films due to the poverty of the production (it looks shot on video!), the bad acting and the daft effects, but there's an air about the film of it all being a bit half-arsed, which is reflected in the non-ending.

You'll know if you'll like this within about ten seconds of it starting.

Usually any B movie with at least a little gore, and some lingering gratuitous nudity is worth a look, but man! This is the worst script, worst acted piece of nonsense ever. Some B movies can be loved because they are so bad, they're actually really good - see 'Hybrid' by Fred Olen Ray for an example of this - but Alien Species goes so far down the pipe that its just not funny any more. The only funny thing about it is the lead guys ridiculous hairdo.

Atrocious waste of good film, that i would have happily used to wipe my buttocks with.

0/10