Alien Avengers

Wow...what a great movie! The first 15 minutes are a little heavy handed, with the whole "struggling young black man" thing. Trying to stay true to himself without becoming a crack dealer and then, his momma dies. Bummer. But once George Wendt and family show up it gets friggin' righteous! They really look like they had a good time making this movie. When George rips off a skinheads leg and beats him over the head with it, well, that's just golden...Roger Corman is hit or miss (but he does pump out, like, 17 movies a year) but he's pretty much on the nose with this flick. I've not seen the sequel, but I'll be seeking it out. The dialogue is pretty great and the bloodshed is AOK. The wife is by far the best, with her smokes, cat eye sunglasses and camera. If you like the idea of the mean streets of South LA being cleaned up by a pack of retro aliens this is a dream come true. Also worth it is the wife's dressing down of the druggies in the crack house, and the explanation given to an inmate as to why they get visitation rights with each other. "Cause we're special...and you're just a piece of sh*t child molester that should have been castrated with a dull knife before being executed", the line is delivered with the gleeful anticipation of a 9 year old on Christmas morning...truly, da bomb.

Ok,

This movie is WEIRD. It tells the story of a family of aliens that come to earth on vacation. There they meet a guy who has just inherited his grandmother's hotel (which is in the middle of a "you don't want to live here" suburb riddled with crime).

They seem quite nice and fix up the old hotel in one night(!), but then we discover the darker side of these people. They LOVE violence (it's not done where they come from).

So they go out regularly to find trouble and have some nice violence, you could say.

It's not a good movie, but very original. Funny to see norm doing something else than cheers for a change. 7.

One of the better entries in Roger Corman's seemingly endless series of low-budget films. This one has a slumming George Wendt and Shanna Reed playing aliens here on Earth vacationing. Apparently violence and crime are unknown on their world. Their idea of fun is provoking various low-lifes to assault them (not that it takes much provocation for these types) and then killing them. They snap tourist photos of the corpses with a cheap camera that has the cube flash attachment. (Remember those?) The film totally aims for camp, and largely hits a bullseye. And I must comment on Anastasia Sakelaris, who plays the alien daughter. She was just the prettiest thing ever. Too wide in the mouth to be a classic beauty, but to me it makes her more real, less the usual plastic Hollywood creation. Really too bad that she did not have a wider film career. I would have loved to have seen her in more stuff.

We had a blast with the creation of Alien Avenger as the movie was a unique experience to film daily. I was fortunate enough to play Officer Park, who was mostly seen in the station making copies and showing facial expression and slimed to death on the floor as Daphne jumped over me many times as I lay still, that was fun to make and I am hopeful everyone enjoys this classic. Roger Korman added his movie mystique to the filming and we filmed this mostly in the suburb of Los Angeles called Cypress Park at on old building that was and has since been rehabilitated on Ave 26 at I-5. Since moving to Las Vegas making the movie was a unique experience for me as this was an area in which I grew up in as well so it made the making of the movie that much more enjoyable. This was a great break for me from the daily sports world that I live and work in...I can only hope I can do some more movies such as this in the future.-Rich Perez

Low budget sci-fi genre has tended to be a breeding ground for some of the most awful films on the planet. Sometimes though, a movie like this comes and uses clever dialogue and scripting as well as a sense of humor about itself to overcome fairly shoddy special effects and set limitations and create a great piece of entertainment. This movie showcases what you can do with a shoestring budget, a great script with some campy dialogue and some decent actors. If you like campy dark comedy genre films (a la rocky horror, dead alive, evil dead) and B-movie sci-fi, rent this film. This movie is way over the top, and I was laughing hysterically through most of it. Deserves to be a cult classic. The sequel is also good, though not as good as the original (though its first 5 minutes are inspired and Julie Brown is much funnier, IMHO).