Alien Outlaw

I have happy memories of a teenage summer staying near Sparta, NC, on one of the locations that this film uses. Specifically, in the film it was the farm house of the character played by Lash La Rue. I was staying with the family that owns that farm. The "barn" you see in some scenes there was actually the family's garage.

The film crew were there for several days and I joined in the shoot as a sort of unpaid runner, carrying things around. It was quite odd, not to say surreal, at times: a fifteen year old kid from the UK sitting on the porch chatting alternately with a grumpy B-western star, then the long legged heroine (they were FANTASTIC legs), then the "aliens", without their helmets. At lunchtimes we had fried chicken, mashed potato , biscuits and gravy I seem to remember. Tasted very good! At one point I overheard the director say something particularly uncomplimentary about his own film. He struck me as someone who could have made much better films if he had had the resources.

I just got the DVD, having never watched the film and it really is difficult to say anything positive about it as a piece of cinema. As a memento of the best summer of my life though it is priceless.

I'm really surprised this film still exists. I'm guessing someone bought the rights a garage sale and put it on DVD.

The plot is that a trio of aliens land their spaceships somewhere in North Carolina, and for some inexplicable reason, go on a killing and rape rampage after finding a trailer load of guns belonging to carnival gunslinging gal. Amazingly, the aliens are not only able to easily master human weapons, but riding horses as well, because apparently there are equestrian events on Zeta Reticuli B.

Well, the gunslinging gal wears a dress with a hemline that barely covers her buttocks, no doubt to detract from the fact she was flat-chested and had misaligned teeth. (A professional actress- NOT!) After an encounter with the aliens where she barely avoids being sexually assaulted, there is a big showdown at the end where she kills all three aliens, who apparently went hunting on Earth with exploding backpacks.

E.T. this ain't, but you suspect that the reason they got backers is that you could get backers for anything with the word alien in the title. In some ways, the plot is like Predator. Except now Predator takes on a new luster compared to this.

Another note- There is a bit of nudity in this film, making it a drive-in classic. (You never see much nudity in today's films, thanks to the prudes at the MPAA.) I think it shows we've gotten more reserved on that since the 1980's, not less.

You can say a lot about this zero-budgeted amateur trash movie, but certainly not that it suffers from false modesty... The DVD-cover proudly cries out: "The movie that formed the inspiration for Predator!" Right, okay, I can maybe see some vague similarities, but to even try and compare this lame Z-grade nonsense with the sublime Schwarzenegger Sci-Fi/action classic is beyond preposterous. Another thing the DVD proclaims is: "From the creator of The Dark Power". That, on the other hand, should have triggered my brain to put the film safely back where it was. "The Dark Power" is one of the dullest and most imbecilic horror movies of the 80s, and "Alien Outlaw" isn't any better, in fact. The particular creator - Phil Smoot - must have had an epiphany in 1985, because wrote & directed his only two cheesy full-feature movies, and then vanished back into anonymity. In both movies, Smoot foresees crucial roles for his (I assume) personal childhood hero Lash LaRue; - a long retired actor who made a handful of western movies in the 1940s that nobody ever watched. The lead heroine is a travelling gunslinger expert named Jesse Jamison (get it?). She has such beautiful and sexy legs that she refuses to wear pants throughout the entire movie. Her two male employees are too busy sleeping around with local floozies, so Jesse is entirely alone to battle a couple of ugly aliens that land on earth and randomly start killing people. The aliens look like smaller versions of Chewbacca with bad hangovers and sunglasses. You'd also expect that the aliens bring along their hi-tech and far advanced space-armory, like laser guns or something, but nah. They just steal old-fashioned earthly pistols and twirl them around like Sunset Carson and Lash LaRue did in their stupid 40s westerns. This all may sound cheesy and fun enough, but you know very well that, in reality, this is the type of dreadfully tedious amateur flick with overlong and meaningless dialogues, atrocious acting, infantile humor and inept action footage. If you are really, really bored you can perhaps watch "Alien Outlaw" simply to gaze at Kari Anderson's beautiful legs, because it's the only movie she ever appeared in (and, judging by her acting skills, righteously so)

I do not know what happened with this film as the premise sounds like it should of made a fun film; however, that is not the case as instead we get a film where scenes about virtually nothing go on and on and on! This film even features Lash La Rue and he does not even whip anything or have a whip in this film. Didn't the filmmakers know that was his trademark? Instead we get this supposed super shooter girl who can handle guns, but does not seem to keep track of when to reload. We get three aliens who go on the rampage with absolutely no reasoning behind their killing spree and their use of our weapons instead of something of their own.

The story, a ship crashes and after a long scene of a guy convincing a girl he has to go he becomes the first victim, allowing himself to have a gun taken from him and then being shot. A woman who is a supposed big deal is irked at her agent and goes to this place that keeps stressing how they are a great company to promote stuff to get new management. What does this have to do with the aliens? Soon the aliens ram into a girl and then we watch two guys at a river where one of them thinks vacationing means stripping down to your boxers and shooting things and the other one has the handy skill of being deadly accurate with a fishing pole. We find out that the dude who was killed at the beginning was related to Lash's character, but little tears are shed when they find out he has been killed. There is also a scene where a couple argues about a map at a gas station with almost the same ferocity as the characters in Blair Witch and then they speed off without their dog and did I mention there are aliens in this, because you can almost forget about them at times!

This film fails on so many levels to the point it is boring rather than so bad it's good. Too many scenes keep going without any payoff as they feel the need to show us the shooter interviewing for crying out loud. As I said, Lash gets top billing, but does not get to use a whip when there are three aliens because we have to show what an awesome shooter the girl is and they have to have her shoot with no pants on, which I understand as her ass is more attractive than her face.

So, not a good movie and not as fun as the premise should of made this movie be. The aliens are a bore and there is way too many scenes that add little to the film other than extending its run time. I think the same people that did this one also did a film called the Dark Power which also featured Lash, but he got to whip stuff in it and it was a bit more fun than this film which at times is very tedious to watch.

While the crew of Rifftrax do make this incredibly stupid, ineptly made, boring film watchable, without them, it should simply be used for Land fill. Quite a few people are wondering why Jesse Jameson (haha - get it?) proprietress of the WORLDS GREATEST GUN SHOW, Kari Anderson was never seen as an actress again - that's because she's worked in make up, likely so embarrassed by this movie, she never wanted to be seen on the screen again. Her legs are really the star of this mess where, for no discernible reason, a bunch of aliens (two really, I think) with six guns and winchester rifles show up and start killing people. Then it's Jesse to the day. I have to admit, the fat guy whose always stuffing his face and barely escapes one alien - I really wanted to see him get killed. Supposedly made for 100,000 dollars, I'm wondering how much went into beer and weed. This is really one of the worst movies ever made. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.