Alien Outlaw

This sci-fi/comedy/western could've been a lot more entertaining with some expert editing, the performances by a cast of unknowns leave a lot to be desired also. Plot lines that lead no where, and a plodding story line make the 90 minutes seem like 3 hours. But if you like cheesy grade z action, with a tiny bit of gratuitous T&A thrown in you might want to lose 90 minutes you'll never get back. The entertainment I got from this shoe string budgeted flick was in watching the beautiful, almost scantily clad Kari Anderson (this was her only movie appearance??), and the chance to see two old (fairly well preserved) cowboy stars from the 40's Sunset Carson and Lash LaRue. An extra bonus for cowboy fans is the interview (more of a informal reminiscence for the old days of the B western) between Sunset and Lash.

A group of three aliens comes to Earth to . . . well, I'm not really sure why they're here. They steal some guns - old style revolvers and rifles - and start shooting people. Oh, and they also beat-up a car for some reason. Our heroine, Jesse Jamison (Kari Anderson), seems to be the only person in the small town the aliens have landed who can do anything about them. She's an expert with a gun herself and it's up to her to save the day.

I would say that Alien Outlaw was trying to cash in on the success of Predator, but it actually came out first. I suppose the aliens are on Earth to do a little hunting as in Predator, but they don't seem to have any weapons of their own. So, like I said earlier, I'm not sure why they're here. You'd think that a civilization capable of interstellar travel would have a better plan than these three seem to have.

Beyond the plot's lack of logic, almost everything else is bad. The special effects are poor, the comedy is weak, and the acting is downright atrocious. The film features two old time Western actors, Sunset Carson and Lash La Rue. Neither brings much to the table other than some unintentional humor. In short, Alien Outlaw is pretty much a disaster.

As bad as it is, there are a couple of things to enjoy. There are a few scenes that actually (most likely by accident) work. For example, the scenes where the aliens come out of the water are effective and nicely filmed. But the main reason to see Alien Outlaw is for lead actress Kari Anderson. It's not that she's much of an actress (this is her only acting credit), but those legs! Anderson's legs are the real star of the 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.

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.

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)