Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor

Come for the gore, stay for the gore. This movie is a study in how to do practical effects really well on a shoestring budget. Everything else, like acting and story, is secondary and it shows, but the gore is phenomenal.

I had never heard of director Glenn Takakjian and it's normal, this is his only flick he directed. He's still in the business as actor or in the animation department. I had never heard of Metamorphosis The Alien Factor but coming across a article in an old Dark Side Magazine I was surprised by the pictures. It looked like they used great effects. And by watching it, they did. It starts great with the breaking out of some alien virus attacking people working in the lab. One of them transforms into a weird creature but the transformation or metamorphosis was really well done. It even reminded me of The Thing when some tentacles appeared out of the victims body. It wasn't gory but the red stuff do flows a lot. But as I said it was campy too. The words sometimes said were really laughable sometimes. And when you saw a flesh eating plant moving or one of the creatures it was a bit of a laugh, but the dog was again really well done and face it, no CGI was used, just the good old latex and even some stop motion.

Everybody was talking about Tara Leigh being in this flick but for me the face of Dianna Flaherty rang a bell. She was in some Troma productions (Class Of Nuke'em High and Toxic Avenger). The acting was okay and by some mediocre.

The look of the flick itself looked like a eighties production and being made in the nineties it couldn't deliver the effects used then due being a low budget. But I enjoyed it a lot, man, the changing into the creature and the face changing towards the end, I loved it. The alien factor really did it for me, what a metamorphosis.

Rented this one from the video library out of sheer curiosity. Like a cross between Cronenberg's "The Fly" and Ridley Scott's "Alien", the slimy special effects are better than average. The script and acting, on the other hand, are not, giving this a bit of a tele-movie feel.

If you're a sci-fi/horror buff with an hour and a half or so to kill, give this film a go. Otherwise, catch the above-mentioned originals, who did it much better with a lot more intensity.

This movie was lots of fun to watch. If you enjoyed the anything-goes direction or creative-even-though-they-look-fake special effects of older monster movies, than you'll love this update, which almost seems to be a homage to schlock films. The plot is extremely simple, a top-secret organization finds alien DNA and begins to test it out on various animals. A scientist injects himself with the DNA and through a series of really gross, slimy, nasty transformations turns into a giant monster and runs amok in the lab where he works. First of all, the movie isn't for the faint of heart. It's really gory for the year it came out. REALLY. There was one part where the lead character gets his hand pretty much ripped to shreds by this frog-looking mutant, and he gets his assistant to pour sulphuric acid over it while the camera zooms in to show his mutilated hand being burned off. Or when his lab assistant gets her eyes gouged out. There's many, many other juicy bits, including a guy getting his head bitten off and another guy getting half his face ripped off, both shown close-up in all their glory. There's also many closeups of the scientist's festering, oozing skin as he transforms. There are many other outrageous looking mutants, like a dog that looks like it was spliced with a shark, and a giant monster crab. The movie is so full of special effects, makeup, gore, and weird looking, stop-motion animated creatures that you'd swear it was from the eighties. The monster that is killing people in the lab looks like a cross between a rhino and one of those Sandworms from Beetlejuice. This movie is great for a Sunday afternoon when you don't feel like thinking. It's more of a showcase for the great special effects than anything else.

Tautly directed and cheaply made, little sci-fi / horror monster throwback flick which is nothing but schlock, though all the same quite fun. It's a sideshow of horrid make-up effects, stop-motion and a touch of gore thrown here and there. The story is basic starting off rather grey, if a touch slow and talky in parts, as situations is explained through fragmented flashbacks. What are going on are the usual secretive experiments on genetic engineering that sees a doctor accidentally being contaminated by alien cells and virtually transforming in to something otherworldly that goes on the rampage in a forlorn scientific facility. While a headstrong girl along with her boyfriend and younger sister enter the building looking for their missing father, who worked as the facility's security guard. While the doctor in charge hires two killers to rid any evidence. Although it's no walk in the park, as they'll find out they are really unprepared. The first half is mainly told in flashbacks explaining the occurrences before and after the contamination. Here it tries to be thoughtful and selective with its choices (where the most suspenseful moments occur), but the second half keeps it straight-forward and dumb it down with the usual monster on the loose formula around empty rooms and corridors. Throwing in some outrageous special effects (tentacle action anyone?), grisly jolts and mutant creations where it finishes on a crazy note. In some aspects in reminded of another sequel "Syngenor" and it was interesting to see that it was initially set-up to be the sequel to the 1983 film "The Deadly Spawn". The acting is on the lousy side, but there are few exceptions with Marcus Powell chewing up his scenes with glassy intensity and Tony Gignate as one of the hired killers with a dry sense of humour.

"Please dear, not in front of the mutants."