Alien Avengers

Ok,

This movie is WEIRD. It tells the story of a family of aliens that come to earth on vacation. There they meet a guy who has just inherited his grandmother's hotel (which is in the middle of a "you don't want to live here" suburb riddled with crime).

They seem quite nice and fix up the old hotel in one night(!), but then we discover the darker side of these people. They LOVE violence (it's not done where they come from).

So they go out regularly to find trouble and have some nice violence, you could say.

It's not a good movie, but very original. Funny to see norm doing something else than cheers for a change. 7.

One of the better entries in Roger Corman's seemingly endless series of low-budget films. This one has a slumming George Wendt and Shanna Reed playing aliens here on Earth vacationing. Apparently violence and crime are unknown on their world. Their idea of fun is provoking various low-lifes to assault them (not that it takes much provocation for these types) and then killing them. They snap tourist photos of the corpses with a cheap camera that has the cube flash attachment. (Remember those?) The film totally aims for camp, and largely hits a bullseye. And I must comment on Anastasia Sakelaris, who plays the alien daughter. She was just the prettiest thing ever. Too wide in the mouth to be a classic beauty, but to me it makes her more real, less the usual plastic Hollywood creation. Really too bad that she did not have a wider film career. I would have loved to have seen her in more stuff.

Alien Avengers aka Welcome To Planet Earth is one funny comedy. It's not your average comedy though. It's a pretty dark horror comedy. It's about these aliens that come to earth for a vacation with their daughter. They end up showing up at this guy named Joseph's door asking for a room. That's where all the fun begins! Charlie and Rhonda are hilarious; they say some of the funniest things and do some pretty violent things to criminals. If you enjoy Roger Corman flicks, I think you'll like this one. It is full of comedy, action and has some very funny lines. If you liked this movie, definitely check out the sequel Alien Avengers II, it's pretty funny too.

I give these aliens a 10/10

Low budget sci-fi genre has tended to be a breeding ground for some of the most awful films on the planet. Sometimes though, a movie like this comes and uses clever dialogue and scripting as well as a sense of humor about itself to overcome fairly shoddy special effects and set limitations and create a great piece of entertainment. This movie showcases what you can do with a shoestring budget, a great script with some campy dialogue and some decent actors. If you like campy dark comedy genre films (a la rocky horror, dead alive, evil dead) and B-movie sci-fi, rent this film. This movie is way over the top, and I was laughing hysterically through most of it. Deserves to be a cult classic. The sequel is also good, though not as good as the original (though its first 5 minutes are inspired and Julie Brown is much funnier, IMHO).

For a movie with a close-to-nothing budget, this is surprisingly good. Special effects are somewhere between cheap and nonexistent, the whole movie is carried by the actors and the script.

But both the actors and the script are good. George Wendt (as Charlie) is a John Goodman-lookalike and uses that very well. Shanna Reed (Rhonda) is his happy tourist wife, if possible more gleeful about their backstreet adventures. Anastasia Sakelaris plays their beautiful daughter Daphne, also really well, and Christopher M. Brown is the "straight man" Joseph, the nice black guy who tries to understand what is happening around him. Joseph is a particularly vital part, the straight man who gives us a normal person point of view to the events, and also the character who benefits from the aliens. These four actors are the backbone that carries the film.

The obvious B-movie status and low budget limits the possibilities, and sometimes the lack of effects is disturbing. But most of the time it doesn't matter too much (as long as you are prepared for it). We see some blood, and hear some profane language plus see some semi-nudity, but I was happy to see that neither were over-used but used for a reason. And this is one sign of the good script. It doesn't need to use cheap unmotivated sex and under-the-belt-jokes, it uses these themes sparingly in logical and therefore funny ways.

I find it amusing to compare the movie to Predator 2. The basic plots is the same, aliens come to the slum to hunt some wildlife. But from that point, they are totally different. Imagine a Predator posing by the victim, smiling, being photographed with a cheap tourist camera. And imagine it walking around in the open, looking like an average tourist. Hard to imagine? But there you have the basic premise. Same... but totally different.