MY CALL: Really ambitious, yet really bad. Honestly, as bad as it is, I was also sort of impressed by the ambition behind it. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Alien Factor: Perhaps Alien Predators (1985), Mutilations (1986) or The Being (1983)—all of which were much better.
Making his very first ultra-low budget film, writer/director Don Dohler (Nightbeast, Galaxy Invader, The Alien Factor 2) has produced something that is equal parts boring and amusingly hokey. In this clunky 77-minute flick, a spaceship transporting alien creatures from distant galaxies crashes on Earth. After the creatures escape and wreak havoc on the locals, a mysterious pseudo-scientist shows up to help.
As simple as this plot may sound, it’s more elaborate than you’d expect. And with such an obviously meager budget, I’m shocked Dohler created multiple monsters instead of just one. This hokey monster movie features an insectoid-humanoid creature, a stilt-legged orangutan-bigfoot with beetle mandibles, a rogue ball of energy, a couple more monstrous humanoids, and a giant lizard monster which was the pinnacle of bad effects (i.e., faded rotoscoping of the monster attacking a man whose reactions don’t match the monster).
Despite the abject quality of it all, I find myself admiring Dohler’s ambition. The monsters are all dumb, but a lot of work went into them and they’re all full-body pieces.
Not only were there numerous monsters that all find much screen time (however poorly executed), we also have a plot that’s much more complicated than one typically finds among such B-movie fare. A sort of UFO hunter/cryptozoologist shows up to help the sheriff wrangle the monsters; one monster is killed by a projectile syringe after a dozen bullets failed to pierce its hide; we never really get into the energy-based lifeform (I guess it’s just there to show how open-minded the writing was); a dying monster uses telepathy to help the humans; and, in the end, a peaceful alien is killed without cause as if to sprinkle in some allegory.
All things said, this was terrible and most of the time painfully boring as we suffer through the dialogue. However, a lot of work went into this and, in the right company, I think the diversity of bad monsters could offer some rich “bad movie night” entertainment.
