It is almost bittersweet to finish up this series. We have reached the end- there is no more. What will we do without bad 80s alien movies to talk about? What's that? There are two Guyver films. Well...it's a start. In the meantime, let's finish up this bunch of stinkers with my review of...
The film begins curiously enough with a trip to the past- the 1950s, to be exact. We get bad attempts at faking archival footage via overdone film scratches and use of black and white film. I'm totally convinced, movie! We get a kid talking about a UFO crash video he has, only for him to recant it in front of military personnel. So, in summary, if you have never ever heard of alien crash conspiracies, the movie wants to fill you in.
*
The story jumps ahead to the present day...of 1995. A group of soldiers are hanging out in a bar and drinking. Is there not a war going on or anything, guys? Their bickering is interrupted...eventually. A major shows up and recruits them for a mission to a mysterious island. En route, we get *sigh* more bickering and 'character-building.' Give us a damn alien already!
*
We get a bit more build-up on the group and the island itself before anything interesting happens. Finally, the alien shows up. He...looks pretty good at times, but pretty half-assed at others. In other words, it looks good until it moves. It has a couple interesting quirks to it. First off, it blatantly uses the 'Predator' effect. Secondly, it likes to put people up in giant webs. Um...why? A couple of them get killed, in spite of the warning by the crazy guy who lives on the island.
*
The answer for the alien's rage is made clear via some more 'old' footage. We get a long and detailed scene of a captured alien having little baby aliens taken out of him/her. They look way too much like Cabbage Patch Kids though, to be honest. More killing and bad effects take place. Eventually, military boss guy shows up and more killings take place. This gives us two bad effects shots. First, the guy is 'thrown' across the room and hits a wall. Not only does the stone wall bounce on impact, the wires are visible. Later, when the alien 'pops up' and kills the guy with his tongue, all drama is killed. Why? We can see clearly that the alien is just a bust with two cables sticking into him (one of them blue) to create the 'tongue attack.' Really, movie? Nearly everyone dies, the alien flees and nobody believes the survivor. Oddly, the film plays this up as a happy ending. Hurray?
*
This movie is pretty dumb. On the plus side, it has neither mutant clowns or Jan-Michael Vincent. It is still bad though. The movie takes a bit to really get going, but is sort of fun when it does. The effects range from stupid to amusing. The alien occasionally looks good, although people like me can distinguish real blinking from 'puppet blinking.' Less jaded people may actually be able to deal with the stupidity and forgive this movie for its ambitiousness. Do I think that Xtro 3 is redeemable though? No.
*
How do you turn a popular kid's movie into a show? This is how not to do it. Stay tuned...
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