Alien Fury: Countdown to Invasion

This is the most pathetic "thriller" ever. The plot goes one way, then changes 180 degrees. It flips back dozen ties. The rate of plot twists actually increases to the point of utter silliness.

Now sci-fi can get away with no good plot, *if* the effects are worthy. Nothing like is here. It's a pretty cheap film. Chyna is a horrible actress. They tried to use her fame from wrestling, but it doesn't work. There's a reason her film career has flopped.

Another big failing of this movie is one has no concern for any of the characters. The acting is so fake and forced, I couldn't care less. Again, a great sci-fi can get away with this, if there are effects. None were here. I couldn't care less if there were aliens, or if aliens took over the world, or what happened.

This has all the hallmarks of a 'made for TV' production, complete with cheap actors, locations and other low production values. It would seem to be a first feature for a high percentage of the cast and this alone will always knock a film back. However, we found it to be more than just 'watchable'. The plot is full of double crosses, misdirections etc that kept it interesting without the need to cry out in frustration at the plot holes. In fact, if the plot had been given the hollywood big budget treatment, a script-massage and a recasting, it would have probably been a good performer in the cinema. Shame.

A fatuous plot, wooden acting, stereotyped characters, dialogue noteworthy only for its predictability, littered with set-piece cliches, this film combines all these defects into a unique representation of cinematic dysfunction which is symptomatic of the dearth of film making talent in contemporary cinema. This one makes the typical 1930's Three Stooges offerings look like epics ! My advice to prospective viewers is 'Don't waste your time (and money) on this insult to the intelligence.

Well, few surprises in this movie. Alien invasion, or is it? A smart scientist figures it out, sinister gummint organization, nuclear weapon launched, abort sent, etc, etc.

The characters - almost every one of them was over acted. The hero, with his Clint Eastwood breathy voice. His wife, the beautiful doctor with always-perfect hair and makeup who works in a public hospital: puh-lease. The slavering general. Cardboard cutouts, every one of them. Grace Phillips in her braless strappy top (and to her credit she looks OK in it) gives some idea of where one of the target demographics of this movie was. The female mud-wrestler type cast as a security guard could be another clue. And almost all the other women, who for some strange reason had short skirts and very high heel shoes, might be yet another.

Special effects were reasonable, although the multiple alien spacecraft sitting in the crater, each one an obvious copy/paste of each other... at first, I thought it was a computer wallpaper. And the stories with the nitrogen inhalers - please, give us nerdy audience types at least a tiny sliver of background knowledge.

I think that the worst sin this movie committed was that it couldn't make up its mind as to what combination of seriousness and comedy it was going to be. But again to be fair, if you set your expectations low enough you might well be entertained.

Another junky, waste-of-time, sci-fi TV movie that should never have been put into production to begin with. ALIEN FURY: COUNTDOWN TO INVASION has a great title which makes it sound like an exciting movie, but in reality it's anything but. Like a lot of low budget extraterrestrial flicks, the major villains in this film are humans themselves, with an alien fleet putting in only a few brief appearances during the running time.

The plot is relatively complex for a film of this type and seems to have been written in answer to the usual X-FILES government conspiracy stuff. A group of officials are busy fooling the public into thinking an alien race is ready to attack the Earth, but then it's the boy who cried wolf time when an alien race really DOES show up and an attack is imminent. The usual wooden heroes have to save the day, and the cast incorporates the typically stiff Dale Midkiff (PET SEMATARY) alongside such familiar character actors as Stephen Tobolowsky. There are some very poor CGI effects here to match the poverty of the storyline.