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THE ALIEN WITHIN is another of Exec. Producer Roger Corman's quick, low-budget projects. It's an underwater adventure that's basically THE THING meets LEVIATHAN with ALIEN overtones.

This kitchen sink production even has a cyborg that's a lot like STAR TREK's Data, as well as the Doctor from BABYLON 5 as... a doctor! There's also the obligatory "tough chick" and the annoying "hippie dude" who constantly has a smoldering joint in his hand! Roddy McDowall, Don Stroud, and Melanie Shatner must all have wondered why they agreed to this.

It's absolutely preposterous, but also fun and -blessedly- short.

BEST SCENE: Roddy McDowall's character spinning wildly, screaming through a rubber monster in his mouth!...

If you have never heard of John Carpenter then you might enjoy this. This is a near shameless, word for word ripoff of his 1982 remake of The Thing. Those of you who have seen the 1950 version of this movie might consider yourselves purists, but Carpenter remains most true to the original story by John w Cambell Jr, "Who Goes There"(1938).

While John Carpenter has admittedly put out a lot of crap, "The Thing" remains one of my top 10 horror movies and still stands the test of time. Enjoy this remake for it's schlock, but appreciate the truest version of this story. Sleep should come hard to those that watch "The Thing" alone.

I accidentally stumbled on this pile of manure one evening and I caught maybe the last 45 minutes to an hour of it. It was like driving by a car wreck on the highway- you don't want to look, but somehow you are forced to by the horror of it all. Some people say that Ishtar is the worst movie ever made. These people should be forced to endure the mind-bending stupidity of this film. They'd change their tune about 20 seconds into it. I cannot believe films like this actually get funding. There are many great independent film directors/screenwriters out there who can't get a studio to fund a project, yet films like this get made. What is this world coming to?

OK this movie does borrow from The Thing, heavily. In fact it is more like a cross-breed between Alien and The Thing. Despite Its un-orginality and a bit of wooden acting overall it is a good B-Movie and well worth a watch if you are into this sort of thing, mind the pun.

I'll give it a *** out of 5

The Alien Within (1995)

* (out of 4)

Executive producer Roger Corman was behind this "film" taking place in the year 2020 after Earth's resources have been used up. We're told corporations went below the sea to try and find new resources and this is when we meet our mining crew and before long they pick up some sort of parasite from a nearby Russian crew. THE ALIEN WITHIN, also known as UNKNOWN ORIGIN, is a pretty poor rip-off of THE THING and in fact it's so close to the John Carpenter film that I'm really shocked Universal didn't go after them. I mean, we've always had rip-offs of popular films but not many of them rip this closely to the original source. Perhaps the studio just didn't care because they figured no one would remember the film after it originally played because it was simply so poor. There's really not too much going on here and at just 75-minutes it's really amazing to see how boring it is in that time. If you've seen THE THING then you're not going to be shocked by anything that happens here and it's a pretty direct copy of that film, although there's no character development, suspense or anything like that. Each scene just seems rushed, the special effects are laughable but they do add some camp and you can tell that the actors are just sleepwalking for their paychecks. Roddy McDowell plays the main scientist and we even have William Shatner's daughter Melanie playing a supporting role. THE ALIEN WITHIN is sci-fi at its very worst and unlike most of these Corman films, this one here features no exploitation, no nudity and it really doesn't have anything in it to make it worth viewing.