Escape from Area 51

What in the ever loving hell?! Donna D'Errico and Chris Browning must have been really hard up for money! Even for b-movie, cheesy sci-fi flicks, this was AWFUL!

The "special effects" were no where near special. The "aliens" are funny, but completely computer generated. The transport beams in the original Star Trek are more impressive - even when seen today - than the effects utilized here. The use of computers actually makes the effects much less believable than the old school tech used sixty years ago.

The settings must have filmed on a literal shoestring budget. You have TWO agents sitting in a cramped basement in Area 51 running security. And by cramped, I mean that they are literally shoulder to shoulder and there are filing cabinets within arms reach on either side. These huge intergalactic space ships have "bridges" and bays that are smaller than the average bathroom. The bridge of one ship is lined with, no joke, moving blankets hanging on the walls! There is one scene where what must be stock footage from a huge "Burning Man" type festival is used, but there are, at the most, five people in any given scene.

The acting is atrocious. The blonde Area 51 agent... if she went to acting school, she had better get a refund! Donna's acting was fine, but she is a professional. Chris' acting was ok, but I think he was trying to be over the top on purpose.

Other than one scene where this random chick claims to have been impregnated by aliens and she pans down to see her slightly covered breasts, there is no nudity. Nudity is the ONE THING that these cheesy sci-fi movies have always had that made them at least worth a few minutes of watching. There is even one scene where a guy has something that looks like a nude statue on his desk and there is a large black rectangle over it that says "censored." :eye_roll:

To go along with the no nudity, there are a few lines of "men bad, women better" dialog. The "guys" are all feckless cowards, while the women are strong, don't need no man heroines. They literally say that "women are always the ones who step up to save the world." Donna's home planet is a female led, hippy commune (her word for it). Ernest only distrusts the "hot alien chick" because "males always stick together." Now, in fairness, he does get a line in about Molly only trusting Sheera because "she's a woman." But that is used just to try and make him look more like a chauvinist.

If you have an hour or so to kill and a joint rolled with nothing better to do... I guess you could do worse. Not MUCH worse, but... Otherwise... I would not recommend wasting any brain cells on this.

Seriously, the film is garbage, both for the technical elements and the plot that's thinner then a mimes favorite wall.

Camera work is rough as heck, looking like it was shot on multiple different camcorders, sound is 'on camera' at best, and distorted often (yet, the dialog is still clearer to the ear then a Nolan film,...) and the lighting is tragically bad.

It looks like it was shot 'in the park down the road', rather then out on location,. The studio sets look to have been ripped out of the dumpster of other z grade films.

And the insert segments, show how bad CG Animation can be.

But all through it, you can tell the cast are having a laugh while making it, knowing full well it's a brimmed crapbowl of badness.

Watch it with pizza, popcorn, weed and a beer, disregard the crappiness and you'll have a laugh at it too.

I made it to 3mins 31 seconds. I'll pay anyone $100 a piece if you can make it further. What an absolute smoking pile of junk!! This is not "film making".

In case you are wondering, which you most likely are, no there is no eroticism or (to the exception of one scene with a pregnant woman talking into a webcam), nudity. Everything is Z grade from acting to visual effects to the type of humour you'll get from it. Its only one hour and sixteen minutes long but it'll feel a hell of a lot longer. If you like Z grade independent films with bad acting, bad visual effects, bad lighting and bad everything, this is the movie you've been waiting for. I'm sure glad I didn't pay to see it.

I'd have given this 2 stars as if very drunk or 14 years old, you might enjoy it in a "so bad it's good" way but I knocked a star off for being so sexist. No, not the scanty costumes, the way every male character in this show is either evil, stupid, or both. And every female character is super-competent and good. Oh, and lines about "on every planet, it is the women who step forward to sacrifice themselves". Must be news to all the dead allied soldiers littering the battlefields of WWII.

Anyway, gross misandry aside, I would love, love, love to know how this film got made. I mean, the guy playing the main baddy is actually someone I recognize from mainstream films. He's a decent actor. So what's going on here? Did he do it as a favour to a niece or something? Sexual favours? I reckon the budget for this thing is around $2000 (feeding twenty people for the two days they must have spent filming this adds up). I particularly like how every time the main villain stops to communicate with his ship on his wanderings, it's the SAME tree stump he is sitting on.

No really, anyone who knows how this got made please reply - did someone promise their daughter they could be in a movie? Was it someone's highschool project? Or just the director's way of meeting some attractive women and getting them to walk around in tight outfits?

Still, it will probably make a profit if even one person buys the DVD.