Too much of everything

As Good As It Gets

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie is awful. So we have this alien society that is about to execute a rebel, even though they all speak colloquial American English, they can't understand humans when they land on Earth. The scenes on the space station starring a drunken Jan Michael Vincent are actually pretty interesting, but the movie goes down hill when the alien escapee arrives on Earth, and is followed by a truly ridiculous looking female cyborg. The acting and dialog are terrible, and we don't get any idea of whom we are supposed to be cheering for.

Evil prison inmate Kol (essayed with hammy brio by Ross Hagen) escapes to Earth after breaking out from a remote space station penitentiary. The warden (a seriously cranky Jan-Michael Vincent) sends an unstoppable assassin known as the Alienator (beefy butch bodybuilder Teagan) to take Kol down. Boy, does this cruddy low-budget sci-fi clunker fail to hit the mark: The ham-fisted (mis)direction by Fred Olen Ray, plodding pace, a shabby script by Paul Garson, lots of comically bad acting, ineptly staged action set pieces, tacky (far from) special effects, dopey humor, tin-eared dialogue ("Your lover boy is burnt toast by now"), mild gore, and a crippling lack of both tension and vitality ensure that this honey ain't ever going to be reappraised as some kind of unjustly maligned lost classic. Chuck Cirino's mechanically bouncy score doesn't help matters any. On the plus side, John Phillip Law tries hard as rugged game warden Ward Armstrong, P.J. Soles shows off some tasty cleavage, Hoke Howell and Fox Harris provide a few laughs as a pair of bumbling idiot poachers, and Leo Gordon chews up the scenery with lip-smacking glee as gung-ho two-fisted Vietnam veteran Colonel Coburn. A real schlockfest.

Alienator (1990) * 1/2 (out of 4) With Fred Olen Ray directing and just looking at the title and what movie it's "copying" you should know what to expect. Kol (Ross Hagen) is about to be executed when he escapes his planet so the commander (Jan-Michael Vincent) sends a female alien to Earth to try and track him down. Kol ends up running into a sheriff and five drunks and soon they're caught up in this battle. There's no big secret that ALIENATOR is a pretty bad movie but I have to give credit to director Fred Olen Ray for at least knowing he's making a low-budget, bad movie. The reason I say that is that I often get the itch to watch a movie like this and more often than not you have a director thinking he's working with a $200-million dollar budget. The young director will try tricky shots, various plot twists and by the end of the movie you're asking yourself if the guy knew he was just making a piece of junk and you'll wonder why he thought he could do more with it. Mr. Ray doesn't go for that and instead it's clear that he knows what type of movie he's making and he just tries to make the best of it. This is certainly a bad film but at least there's some mild charm to be had. I thought there were a couple fairly funny moments but the highlight has to be the costume that our female killer wears. I'm not even going to attempt to try and explain it but once you see the thing you'll know what I mean. I also have to tip my hat to the outfit worn by P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN, CARRIE) because it too is quite catchy and you can tell some imagination went into it. The special effects are obviously silly but it appears they're having a fun time with them. Yes, the performances are also bad but again credit has to go to Ray. Instead of trying to get the actors to do Shakespeare, he instead has some over-the-top moments that at least fits the performances. The violence/gore/nudity level is shockingly low, which is one negative thing as a bit more of any probably would have helped things. ALIENATOR is a bad film, yes, but when you compare it to other rips of THE TERMINATOR you'll see that it could have been much, much worse.

Kol, space prisoner on space death row, manages to hijack a space shuttle and escape to the woods of America where he, along with some new found friend try to escape from the 'Alienator" a female cyborg killing machine. Made one year after the best movie of Fred Olen Ray's career, "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers", this one can't help but feel like a bit of a letdown. Just as low-budget as that earlier film, but not nearly as fun as I had with it. None of the actors really stood out at me. The film is alright for the undiscriminating viewer during a rainy Saturday afternoon, but that's pretty much all it's good for.My Grade: D+ Where i saw it: Showtime Thriller