Biohazard

#194 Biohazard - 1985 (This Films Rates a C ) In a remote research lab, scientists are working on experiments involving the transferring of matter from other dimensions. It's so remote that even the army has a hard time locating it. The film involves an army officer named Mitchell who teams up with a psychic, Lisa, who is a part of the experiments. "Her mental energy will receive and transmit to this location anything her mind can attract". But, because of a lose cable outside of the area is unsecured it brings back a large "metal trunk". The government wants the trunk and are going to cart it out through the desert in a military vehicle. The alien creature escapes into the desert of course. It is short, dressed in a black rubber suit and likes to kill. There is also a snake like creature that doesn't last long but is fun to laugh at. Meanwhile a group bans together to hunt it down. "You go down on him and when I hear your moans, I'll come running". They ultimately split up into groups as predicted. The crazy twist ending seems to fit even if wacky and tacky. It has beautiful desert scenery, which is a highlight of the film, plus the gore effects are a bit bloody. This is as good as a $250,000 budget can bring you. The alien creature ripping down and stomping on the ET movie poster was priceless. To its discredit however, the script and acting are dumb, jumpy and disjointed. It is truly terrible. One character has his throat ripped out but "they stopped the bleeding, and he is going to be ok" also they are about to kill this alien creature and instead get into a fist fight right in front of it, and then instead of killing this thing, he walks away? There is brief sex and psychic boobage but not enough to elevate the film. There is just so much that doesn't work here. It's just a romp into something mediocre.

If you're watching this movie, you're either a Fred Olen Ray fan, you found it on the $4.99 shelf at Suncoast and thought "what do I have to lose?", or you spun around the video store with your eyes closed and rented the first movie your finger touched.

This movie is hysterically bad. It's got everything a terrible movie needs: a screenplay featuring jaw-dropping dialogue and baffling detours in the plot, wacky science involving psychics and other dimensions, continuity that seems to travel through wormholes in time and space, actors that are not only wooden, but seems to border on befuddled, gratuitous nudity (not all of it is what you necessarily would ask for), and of course, a 5' monster played by what I assume is Fred Olen Ray's kid.

Underneath it all, however, there is something resembling heart -- as if Mickey & Judy decided to get together all the kids in the neighborhood and make a monster movie (hey! my dad can direct it! yeah! We can use red paint from my johnny's dad's hardware store, and I know this ex-stripper who can act in it!).

Watch for the blooper reel over the credits -- you get to find out why the final cut of the movie was so crappy.

Incidentally, Biohazard II...the Alien Force is also worth a look, but doesn't have the same enjoyably crappy veneer this one does.

I couldn't believe some of the horrible dialog coming out of people's mouths, and the end reel of bloopers attached to body of the film was a real hoot. And we get titty shots of Angelique Pettyjohn (sort of) and Loren Crabtree to boot.

A teleportation device activated by psychic Angelique Pettyjohn brings an alien container to an underground lab out in the desert. According to director Fred Olen Ray, they were leftover sets from the Klaus Kinski film, ANDROID which gives the film an increased value beyond how cheap it looks.

Inside the container is a midget alien (played by Ray's son) who starts clawing people to death. It was pretty funny watching this little 'creature' in a black reptile suit with what looks like large beetle shells attached to it, running around in the dark. We even get to see the little thing stamp and tear at a poster of ET, which I thought was hilarious.

And then there's what looks like a snake that also comes out of the container that gets hammered to death by William Fair, after the mini creature chews into Frank McDonald's neck in the kitchen. A low budget take on ALIEN, I suppose...

The whole thing ends abruptly, looking like they ran out of film at the end before the blooper reel comes in with the end credits. Talk about a lack of funding...

Fred Olen Ray also mentions in the director's commentary that they also weren't sure if Aldo Ray would make through the shooting and remember his lines. He barely did.

Low budget cheese sneeze. It's fun to watch, I'll grant ya that.

4 out of 10

Some Typical Scientists are up to ridiculous things in "Biohazard". Working in isolation in rural America, they're experimenting in transferring matter from other dimensions. One object that they successfully transfer is a container; said container just so happens to have a creature inside it. Naturally, the creature gets loose, and slaughters various unlucky dummies. Supposedly the creature only does this out of fear, but who knows? The hero on the case is the intrepid Mitchell Carter (William Fair), who hooks up with Lisa Martyn (sexy Angelique Pettyjohn), a psychic working on the project.

This offering from the prolific B movie veteran Fred Olen Ray was two years in the making, as hard as that may be to believe. It looks like it could have been cobbled together in a matter of days. It's *that* cheap and *that* inept. Still, like so many other movies of this variety, it entertains in its own stumbling way. A lot of the elements required for such a lark are present and accounted for: laughable acting across the board (star attraction Aldo Ray, who's actually barely in the thing, is visibly drunk), a serving of bare breasts, an utterly horrid rubber creature suit (worn by the directors' son Christopher, who was just five years old at the time), wonderfully tacky gore as the monster mutilates its victims, a delicious synth score, a respectable amount of cheese, etc. That's Carroll Borland from Tod Brownings' 1935 film "Mark of the Vampire" as local woman Rula Murphy.

The ending is sudden, VERY silly, and unsatisfying, and it does lead one to believe that the production just ran out of time and money. After that, we get a very protracted end credits sequence that's padded out with plentiful outtake footage - which isn't all that funny.

If you adore bad movies, you might like this one, but fair warning: there's often more talk than action, and sometimes it's kind of dull. It does have one hilariously stupid moment involving an "E.T." poster.

Ray and assistant director Donald G. Jackson play the medics.

Five out of 10.

My review was written in August 1985 after watching the movie on Continental video cassette.

Made in 1981 and just released on video cassette, "Biohazard" is a silly horror film that slavishly imitates (as have many other low-budgeters) the monster effects in the 1979 hit "Alien". Ironically, pic made for 21st Century release retained its moniker though 20 Century Fox reportedly tried to buy the name to affix to its recent "Warning Sign" film. Postscript is that 20th Fox is itself back in production with the Sigourney Weaver-starred sequel "Aliens".

Thin story has Dr. Williams (Arthur Payton) experimenting in his remote desert research lab on matter transfer, not the process used in the Fox classic "The Fly" but rather bringing objects here from another, unknown dimension. One such foot-long object has been materialized and is being shown to military observers led by Gen. Randolph (Aldo Ray). The object is stolen by a journalist who wishes to write about it, and it opens, releasing a series of monsters that go on the rampage.

Mitchell Carter (William Fair) of the Army tries to track down the monsters, using a geiger counter (they are radioactive). He is aided by Lisa (Angelique Pettyjohn), an ESP-sensitive who has been instrumental in Dr. Williams' experiments. Climax has a leading character revealed to be one of the monsters.

Spectacle of seeing the "Alien" monster imitated in each of its guises is a sad excuse for a film, loaded with gore and in-jokes (at one point a monster angrily tears up a poster displaying "E. T."). This short feature ends ludicrously with the director audibly yelling "Cut!" from off-screen, followed by nearly 10 minutes of outtakes as padding. Funniest bit is when mature bombshell Angelique Pettyjohn's platinum blonde wig slips off during a sex scene, duly recorded in the outtake section.