Alien Terminator

One of the dumbest and yet most entertaining films I've ever seen. The conversations are like porn dialogue, and the plot is ridiculously stupid. Interesting, though, that most of the sci-fi movies that have come out recently have similar plots - goes to show what budgets can do. A great film to watch with a bunch of people - no one will care if they miss anything due to the roaring laughter caused by this intense thriller. Some great lines, too - the stuff lasting inside jokes are made of.

It's hard to believe that Ridley Scott's ALIEN was made nearly twenty years ago, and we're still feeling its impact with inferior rip-offs, about half of which come from executive producer Roger Corman and cronies.

Here six scientists (including an annoying, coke-snorting nonconformist) are trapped in a military silo "five miles" underground where their experiments with DNA have turned a harmless mouse into a giant, lurking killing machine. All the clichés are accounted for, including a cheap-o dinner table stomach burster scene, characters who wander endlessly through dark corridors, ridiculous dialogue and the token topless scene (provided by Cassandra Leigh/Lisa Boyle).

On the plus side, the sets and FX are passable, it's short and moves fairly quickly and Maria Ford, as a tomboy in a half shirt, makes a fine Grade-Z sub for Sigourney Weaver.

Another average one!

This is low budget Sci-Fi, no doubt about it. You see it right from the very beginning. And as you strap yourself in for a low budget movie, I will say that "Alien Terminator" does deliver. And by that I mean that the movie delivers everything that a low budget Sci-Fi movie is supposed to.

And truth be told, the reason why us movie lovers buy this is obviously because of Maria Ford. Yep, that's right, that is also why I purchased this movie. I enjoyed her performance in "The Unnamable Returns" and have only watched 2 or 3 other movies of hers since then, so I have started to buy her movies from Amazon.

The story in "Alien Terminator" is initially either a blatant copy of "Alien" or a tribute to that very same movie. Which is the case, I am not sure. The story is about a group of people trapped underground as part of a two year long scientific study about people psychology while in isolation. A vile non-human creature comes into being and starts using the humans as hosts, leeching off of them to grow bigger and more deadly.

Even the way that the creature was living inside the human host and burst out of the body once having drained a human body entirely, was also similar to "Alien". Actually, there was a lot of similarities between the two movies all throughout the entire movie.

The creature itself was hilarious. It looked so fake and odd, and it was really hard to take it seriously.

As for the acting, well, I will just say that this is a low budget Sci-Fi movie, and you get what you pay for here. Hint, hint...

"Alien Terminator" is the type of movie that you watch once, then put it away, most likely to never watch it ever again.

Did they trick you? Be honest, where you one of the people at your local video rental that picked it off the shelf because of the name and then got home and realized that it wasn't Alien, it wasn't The Terminator and you should have read the title more closely?

Or, where you the person that went to your local video rental, saw Maria Ford's name, assumed... breasts... and grabbed it for that?

Or, where you the person that went to your local video store, clearly saw the title "Alien Terminator" and thought to yourself... "yeah, I want to see what would happen if they turned Alien into a B movie... with Maria Ford's breasts?"

Because, honestly... YES! We want to see a low budget Alien rip-off. YES! We are going to watch it late at night and slightly inebriated. YES! We are going to watch it with friends over just to offer our own commentary on how awful it is. YES! Maria Ford and in the 90s we knew what that meant. YES! we want to see the big reveal of the most ridiculous low budget alien ever created!

YES! It is a horribly bad B-Movie, but that is why we picked it up... if we intentionally rented it knowing what it was going to turn out to be.

And it hits all of the tropes, it hits all the reasons why people like me rent movies like this.

So, mission accomplished.

Alien Terminator (1996, Dir. Dave Payne)

A small group of scientists are working in self-imposed isolation below the Earth's surface. They are all working to create DNA which could change the world, but one of the scientists have been given an secret assignment, and when the assignment goes wrong, all hell breaks lose. The new creation is now aboard the ship and will destroy anyone who gets in its way, as it moves towards the surface.

They always say to never judge a book by the cover, and this can often be said towards a film, but when you look at the cover of 'Alien Terminator' (Alien Species in the UK), it is definitely a cover you should follow. What it found in this movie, is a complete rip-off of Alien and Species (oh, i wonder where they thought up the UK title). They even borrow one of Alien's most famous scenes, with the only different being the alien coming out his back. The effects are OK, but there isn't really any effects found in this film. They are all very minimum. The acting is appalling though, with some amazingly bad writing. How many adults films are there when most 'bad' language includes words like crap and scum. I recommend you avoid this and go and watch any of the Alien films, even AVP: Alien vs. Predator is an improvement over this.

"You piece of scum." - Dean Taylor (Rodger Halston)