Terreur dans l'espace

Space traveling convicts recruited by Billy Dee Williams become the victims of their own fantasies when a virtual reality femme fatale seduces each of the men and turns them against each other. This low budget 1993 sci-fi effort struggles with its own ideas. The virtual reality scenes are too far removed from the rest of the movie and come across as just a bit silly. The Red Dwarf style special effects are amusing for the wrong reasons and Billy Dee Williams is far too underused amongst a wooden cast. The biggest flaw though during the movie is the complete lack of feeling its set in space, it takes a lot of imagination to consider warehouses, corridors, and computer screens as a spacecraft. Its a shame because there where some interesting ideas that could have been explored better.

The producers of Alien Intruder threw a bit of everything into the plot - science fiction, the old west (in B/W), bikers, gangsters, the seaside, virtual reality - and soft porn - but nothing jelled into anything remotely interesting. I bought the DVD for 5 bucks when I saw that Billy Dee Williams, Maxwell Caulfield and Tracy Scoggins were in it and because of the blurb GET READY FOR THE SCARIEST "ALIEN" MOVIE YOU'VE EVER SEEN on the DVD back cover. I should have known better! The "special effects" were anything but - the space ships looked clunky and seemed to have enormous interiors - and the steam valves look like those you'd find in any present-day boiler room! There's some nudity and coarse language but none of it helped this dreary production.

OK, just quickly, this was actually very satisfying... Not so much in an action-sense, but because its a well-written warped scifi, with cool cinephilic indulges during the virtual reality sequences...

Get past the pedestrian laser-gun shootout at the beginning and you are then left with a fantastic cast of mostly B-movie actors, with interesting chemistry, in an interesting atmosphere. Tracy Scoggins steals the show with her devilish and mysterious turn.

Its a cheap film, but entirely worth watching. Great late-night movie. One of the better PM Entertainment sci-fi outings.

I swear. This movie has got to be a rejected fan script for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seriously. It's about a ship of fools captained by Lando Calrissian himself, Billy Dee Williams with four prison inmates (brought along to make up the crew) and an android who meander into a "forbidden zone" to "rescue a lost ship." Actually, Billy Dee Calrissian just wants to meet back up with a sexy alien babe and is dragging these clods along as an expendable crew.

Okay, here's where it's all Star Trekky: After five days of work (as in, on the weekends), the four crewmates (the former convicts) all get to relax in wacky Virtual Reality worlds where they get to bang the chick of their choice the whole time. Yeah, like on the Enterprise, but where the intention is to "get some." Instead of a "holodeck," though, these idiots just lay in beds and basically "dream" into their VR worlds. One guy is a 50's biker bad*ss, one guy is in the "ye olde west," one guy is in a 1940's-like Noir deal (in black and white no less) and the last guy spends his "VR weekends" on a beach in a luxury house ignoring his cyber-babe so he can jog or lift weights. One of the inmates on this trip is an explosives expert who was only apparently brought along to be the tough-guy explosives expert. Eventually, the sexy alien chick shows up in everyone's cyber-realities and kills off all their beloved fake babes. Then she gets all lusty and turns all the guys against each other. The android? We get to see him stand silently, walk silently, and die quietly. Other than that, you've got the smart and attractive inmate, the smart nerd inmate, the long-haired inmate, and of course, the big tough explosives loser.

Now, this alien babe doesn't make much sense. She's either real or digital or a magician or something as she just jumps from one place to the next convincing the men to shoot at each other. I think she's just poorly written. Easy as that. The acting is average at best for an underground film of this nature from the early 90's, and the special effects are truly laughable. However, the "fantasy VR worlds" are done in almost top-notch form. What the f*ck? I mean, the freakin' spaceships look dreadful! There's no class, no style, no personality! Their movement in space is more sterile and emotionless than the Enterprise sleeking across the screen in front of another phosphorus red planet in the 1960's Star Trek! All in all, it's actually pretty stupid, but watchable. Kinda like Maximum Overdrive, or The Wraith. Stupid, but entertaining. Some decent nudity.

5/10

Although the idea of aliens using computer viruses to attack terrestrial computers is almost old hat, here the aliens use the viruses as a siren to lure men to their deaths through their computer stimulated libidos. This is a very interesting twist that held a lot of promise when I first heard about it.

The movie fails on one account. The seductress should be the sexiest chick in the movie! Apparently because of miss Scoggins star power, she wore nothing sexier (that could be easily seen) than a one piece bathing suit, while other fantasy women bared all (Tracie did a very dark love scene, where you could barely make out her darkened breasts).

The first question that comes to mind is: "Even though Tracie is a fox, how could she lure the guys from the other gorgeous women that were baring way more skin"? I know she was the virus in control of the men's minds, but I need visual justification for her control over men.