Hybrid

Hybrid is another sublime slice of Fred Olen Ray madness. I love just about every film that Fred has ever made but Hybrid is especially memorable. Few directors can claim to have as unique a vision as Fred Olen Ray and this film is a perfect example of that twisted outlook. Hybrid plays like a cross between "Alien" and "Emmanuelle", only without the special effects of the former or the arty pretensions of the latter. This film is wonderfully trashy and a must see for fans of this brilliant director.

The action begins with a preposterous looking creature chewing up a couple of scientists. Right from the opening scene it is apparent that Fred has not lost his sense of humour. The creature looks like a bad Halloween costume and the gore effects are as unconvincing as ever. The film switches focus to the crew of a very unrealistic looking spacecraft, who crash land on a desolate planet. The crew seek shelter from bad weather and stumble across a soldier, who directs them to an abandoned laboratory. This is when Hybrid begins to rip off "Alien" in earnest and Fred Olen Ray really hits his stride.

The crew find the laboratory abandoned and quickly discover through a series of hilarious revelations that the scientists were experimenting on humans and succeeded in creating a homicidal cockroach/human hybrid. Instead of leaving as quickly as possible, this crew of dunces decides to spend the night at the facility - only to learn that the hybrid is not only alive but also hungry and horny. The remainder of the film basically involves crew members being killed and having raunchy sex. In other words, Fred Olen Ray serves up a large serving of quality entertainment.

The sex scenes in Hybrid are particularly amusing. A perfect example of Fred's unique approach to plot and character occurs when Dr Leslie, played by horror icon Brinke Stevens, and Nurse Carla, JJ North of "Hellblock 13" fame, decide to freshen up - by showering together. Before too long the women begin to massage each other to "relieve tension" and before you know it they are partaking in some soft-core lesbian action. Nurse Carla really gets around. She also finds time to seduce soldier McQueen, played by Tim Abell, in the midst of all the carnage. This scene would look cheesy in a 1980s porno but somehow nurse Carla's very thorough check-up routine works here. The cutting between Carla and McQueen's sexual acrobatics and the creature's killing spree makes for particularly classy viewing. Just when I thought Fred had reached a dizzying new height, Dr Leslie takes a sleeping pill and is molested by the creature in a scene that puts Sigourney's cross-species flirt in "Alien Resurrection" well and truly into perspective.

The technical aspects of Hybrid are pretty terrible. The action sequences are cheap and poorly staged, while the make-up and gore effects leave a lot to be desired. And that is fine with me. I don't watch Fred Olen Ray movies for technical virtuosity but for his outrageous imagination and unswerving dedication to bad taste. Fred's directing is as haphazard as ever and the actors vary wildly in skill. Tim Abell has gone on to bigger and better things and somehow makes it through Hybrid with his dignity intact. Poor Brinke Stevens is not as lucky. However, she can take solace in the fact that people are still paying her to take her clothes off well past the age of 40. JJ North is hilariously inept as Carla. I'm disappointed that she has dropped off the acting radar after a promising string of wonderful Z-grade movies.

Fred Olen Ray's hypnotic brand of crap is an acquired taste but once you get it, there is no going back. Hybrid has everything a B-movie should have in spades - poor effects, gore, gratuitous nudity and a rapist alien. This is highly recommended.

Earth is in a post-apocalyptic state and five military survivors looking for shelter before an ion storm hits. Come across a drifter who informs them of a scientific base that he's heading to and they decide to follow. When they get there, it's abandoned. While it looks empty, they soon realise why. As they come across a messed up dead corpse and find out this is the home of a genetic alien hybrid.

Yes, what incompetent schlock. I got some good wink-eye through Fred Olen Ray's poor man's version of "Alien" crossed with "Creepozoids" and a dash of "Shadowzone". Damn "Hybrid" will put you to sleep with its drawn-out story, blunt performances and systematic actions. While, it's basic stuff, there's nothing much to really compensate for its lack of refreshing ideas. There's no can of worms popping up here. Although there are a few unusual sequences that creep in and those moments do have your full attention. Like just what hell was going on in the opening minutes? It was re-used stock footage to confusingly explain why Earth looked like apocalyptic wasteland. An out-of-nowhere shower scene involving the voluptuous J.J. North and the always dashing Brinke Stevens, decide to spice up the outing by making sure that they are thoroughly cleaned for the messy onslaught that waits and then you get the horny alien hybrid getting its groove on with one of its victims. Since the rehashed story loses track for most part with its plodding nature, serious outlook and an unconvincingly brittle (and really heartfelt) back-story to build these characters. These tiny spoonfuls are certainly ludicrous, but at least they were diverting enough to catch your eye. As really this could have been more fun, if they decided to boost up the energy levels.

The rest of it didn't cut it at all. Your ears on the other hand, don't cope any slack at all from this lame script with its heavy use of wit and snappy wisecracks. I found most of it pitiful and state the bloody obvious with awful delivery. Suspense is non-exist in this pressure filled situation, the flat violence is weakly staged with its timidly unoriginal blood splatter, and most of the characters are an aggravatingly leaden bunch who do too many dumb things when there's an alien about. Wait to you see the horridly shonky alien design. The costume is like something someone would wear at a theme park, so not to scare the little kids. Somewhere cross between H. R. Giger's "Alien" design and a miniature Godzilla. Even the camera shots (lot of POV shots) steal heavily from "Alien", where it likes to focus on the creature's nasty looking mouth and gooey slime it leaves about. It looks too goofy and showing it in its full glory for the majority of the time doesn't help. Everything feels and looks plastic, not just the sets, everything.

This independent straight-to-video farce might go out with a bang, but for most part you might be battling yourself to last the distance.

John Blyth Barrymore is to the Barrymore's what Eric was to the Douglas clan! A talentless hack who just appears in movies because of his family name. This movie is a shocker! A cheap, inept alien rip-off which has the obligatory nude scenes to appeal to the men! Poor special effects mean that you barely even see the monster and the most shocking acting known to man makes the people on Dawsons creek seem like great actors! One can only hope that all copies of this movie will be destroyed one day like what happened with the atari 1600 game "ET" and then this movie can disappear, and the actors can pretend it never happened!

A group of survivors travelling across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Earth in the far future seek shelter in an abandoned military installation. Led by McQueen, a heroic drifter, the survivors discover that the installation was the setting for an experiment where a human was infused with alien, snake & cockroach DNA, causing uncontrollable mutation. The creature then emerges from the shadows to attack the survivors.

Ever since he served as DOP on the low-budget zombie flick SHOCK WAVES, Fred Olen Ray has carved out his own unique niche. All he does is make low-budget sci-fi, action & horror films.

While Olen Ray's films cannot compete with their bigger-budgeted rivals, his films do feature an odd-ball sense of humour. "Hybrid" is as typical as Olen Ray's work gets. The film is an extremely cheap rip-off of ALIEN, so cheap that it steals scenes from other Olen Ray films (such as DROID GUNNER & STAR HUNTER), using them for the film's start to depict some kind of apocalypse (which admittedly doesn't work very well) as well as use props from bigger-budgeted films, such as the Landmaster vehicle from the likes of DAMNATION ALLEY & APEX.

While it is a cheap rip-off, "Hybrid" does prove to be quite entertaining. The characters are surprisingly well drawn & acted. The actors know they are starring in a low-budget film & act accordingly. The visual effects are very cheap, with the monster being a rather poor man-in-suit creation that is so bad I ended up laughing – but that's the film's purpose. The creature even has a scene where it has its way with one of the female survivors, causing even more unintentional (or is it intentional?) laughter. Not to mention the fact that Olen Ray throws in a completely superfluous soft-core porn shower scene where the two women rub each other with soap.

Always turning a blind eye to the prospect of a new idea, director Fred Olen Ray gives us a remake of CREEPOZOIDS, itself a garden-variety ALIEN knock-off. Here six post nuke survivors seek shelter from an upcoming "ion storm" in a (uh oh) seemingly abandoned scientific lab. Despite finding a half-melted corpse, mysterious slime puddles and body parts lying around the group decide to spend the night and a mutant monster, supposedly a hybrid cockroach/snake (though it looks no different than the monsters usually found in these things) picks them off one by one.

Now that we've established the fact there's no plot, the question remains...Is there anything good here? Well...like many Ray productions, naked chicks are a given. Buxom blonde J.J. North and Brinke Stevens split up from the guys, go exploring, find a shower with warm water and hop in for a lets-toy-with-lesbianism shower romp, nevermind the fact they've already discovered a dead body. Stevens, a veteran Scream Queen for 15 years now, still looks great in her 40's and does a decent job in her role. Tim Abell, in the token Rambo role, also comes off pretty well and exudes leading man potential. Everyone else is awful, the violence is mostly offscreen and the monster design is terrible.

Potential points of interest include a topless pin-up of Michelle Bauer, a publicity poster of Rush Limbaugh (?), extreme misuse of the busy Corman factory stock space FX and probably a record amount of time padding of characters walking down darkly lit corridors.