User Reviews

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

"Alien Terminator" is another alien running amok in a lab movie. It comes from a long line of shameless "Alien" rip-offs. Notice how the two words in the title try to get you to remember two superior action flicks and hopefully plant seeds of hope in your brain that this movie can be just as good. "Hey, I've seen "Alien" and "Terminator" and I liked those movies. Why, I'm sure to like this one twice as much!" It's yet another cleverly devious way for B-movie filmmakers to rope you into seeing their cheap knock-off.

Cheap is certainly the word to describe "Alien Terminator". Four guys and two babes, (Lisa Boyle and Maria Ford), are in a lab underground. The mad scientist starts experimenting on a mouse and turns him into an Alien Terminator. The rest of the movie has the cast running away from the beast through many dark hallways.

"Alien Terminator" is a movie I have seen at least a dozen times before. It's a classic B-movie setup. You keep the cast in one location; there are lots of scenes of them walking down hallways looking scared, the monster pops his head in every 10-15 minutes to make sure you're still awake, etc. But it's all pretty dull and uneventful. The monster scenes are quick and hard to make out. There's no payoff scene since they couldn't afford to shoot a convincing monster attack or any bloody death scenes. Overall, "Alien Terminator" is not worth watching. However, praise must be given to Lisa Boyle who manages to save the viewing experience from complete destruction by going topless twice. The first time she's having sex with her boyfriend and the second time she's taking a shower. These scenes were great. The rest was average.

This is about some people who, for the past two years, have been living in some sort of laboratory 5 miles underground. They're involved in an experiment to study the effects of isolation on human beings. One of the members, unbeknownst to the others, is conducting experiments into altering DNA to produce the ultimate killing machine. It's kind of hard to believe that 6 people could live together in a very small environment for 2 years without anyone knowing what this guy was up to, but there you have it. This mad scientist is also a crystal meth addict, and he's generally annoying and unlikable. Unfortunately, the rest of the characters aren't much better. There is one nice girl named Rachel, and she's engaged to the only other halfway descent character. There's also an obnoxious girl, a guy with long hair who looks like he should be playing guitar in a country and western act, and some fat guy named Coach.

So, mad scientist creates monster which gets loose, everybody gets picked off one by one, and in a scene straight out of the movie Leviathan, the evil corporation that's running the whole thing decides it would be easier to announce that they all died down there than to let them live and explain their illegal DNA experiments.

The worst part of the movie is the sets and photography. The underground lab is so small and dark that we never get the feeling these people are moving from one location to another in their attempts to escape the monster. The camera is always zooming around at weird angles and basically annoying the crap out of the viewer, which doesn't help either. Also, you just don't care for the majority of these people. The monster attacks are photographed in such a way that you can't tell what's going on, so the excitement level is kept low. And there are just so many stupid things happening that it's impossible to take anything seriously. For instance, everyone must take a five mile elevator ride to get from the lab to the surface, but in the last half of the movie they seem to forget about this and the lab is all of a sudden right next to the hatch on the surface. At one point a girl takes a propane torch and quickly runs the flame around the edges of a ventilation hatch - I'm guessing we were supposed to think she welded it shut? Yeah, right. We're really that stupid. There's also a bunch of nonsense with a countdown until the life support system is turned off, at which point I guess everyone instantly dies? Or maybe the whole facility blows up? This countdown is announced by a computer that sounds like it should be working in the phone sex industry. Using a word processor creates a voice like a slow motion version of the computer from War Games. The dialogue is also dumb, the best example being when the first guy gets killed and instead of immediately abandoning the facility, they decide they owe it to the company to finish out the last two hours down there.

Overall, crummy sets, bothersome camera work, characters that for the most part are either annoying or else you don't care if they live or die, and a bunch of stupidity. I'm normally a huge fan of these low budget Alien ripoff movies, but I'm afraid I have to recommend skipping this one. There just isn't anything to redeem it.

This movie was another of my delves into the bargain bin, and I have a couple of issues with it.

Firstly, the title, Alien Species.

This sort of infers that the titular creature is of extra-terrestrial origin, but according to the story what is in fact created is a genetically modified virus which infects and takes over its host, transforming it into some kind of mutant. Hardly, ET…

Secondly, I am staggered that nobody got sued as this movie is a painfully close rip off of the classic sci-fi film, Alien. OK, little bits have been changed – the scientists are in an underground lab (not a spaceship), but much of the plot has just been lifted and transplanted. Its all there – the pushy female (Ripley type) character, the chest bursting scene (although the creature looks more like a turd on a string than a virus-born mutant, and actually comes out of the guys back), the hunt around badly lit corridors, the attempt to shut the creature in a specific sector using airlock-type doors, the telltale sign of alien exudate being left everywhere, the heartless corporation sacrificing its employees for the sake of a potential money spinning bioweapon, the scientific guy with a hidden agenda… even the hunt for a troublesome cat.

After escaping the breakfast table carnage the suspended face evolves off camera into a man in an unconvincing rubber monster suit. The film makers must have realised how bad he looks, and so shots of the monster are brief and partial – sadly, not brief or partial enough.

Fortunately for nudity fans out there one of the female scientists seems to enjoy going topless whenever the plot allows, and the site of her large, perfectly formed (and probably silicone-enhanced) breasts adds a bit of "interest" to the proceedings. This isn't so much a sexist opinion, more a comment on a movie that is so dire that brief female semi nudity is needed to keep half of the audience awake.

The ending is weak enough to qualify for some kind of disability grant – I know that the life support systems were shutting down, which would ultimately lead to the expiry of the remaining cast, but why did the base explode? I don't recall anything about self - destruction being a built-in feature...

In all, it was OK for the £1 I paid for it...

The title and video cover would suggest a rip-roaring film about a powerful, sleek fighting machine that is a combo alien/terminator robot who is menacing the generic blonde version of Jabba-esquire Princess Leia in "Return of the Jedi." Um. Not really. Not even close.

However, there are gems hidden inside. Diabolically bad dialogue ("Looks like his baby had a temper tantrum...on his face!" A "hero" who's a complete chicken-sh*t with horrible Fabio Junior hair and a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to wooing the opposite sex.

Did I mention the other "hero" who has a mullet and wears overalls for the duration of the film, with but one strap buckled while the other dangles limply? All for the sake of haute couture.

It doesn't reach the depths or sheer entertainment value of "When Eagles Strike," "R.O.T.O.R." or "Hollywood Cop," but it certainly aspires to those same levels of meaningless action and pointless dialogue.

A team of scientists working on DNA experiments five miles beneath the earth's surface in an underground lab are terrorized by a lethal mutation. Director Dave Payne, who also co-wrote derivative, yet serviceable script with Duke Lorr, relates the enjoyable story at a zippy pace, makes good use of the claustrophobic subterranean setting, and delivers a satisfying smattering of bloody gore. Moreover, it's a lot of fun to see 90's erotic thriller starlet Maria Ford portray a two-fisted tough chick type (and she totally rocks a tight tank top, too!). Better still, delectably buxom brunette Lisa Boyle bares her delicious body in both a sizzling gratuitous sex scene and an equally steamy gratuitous shower scene. The rest of the competent cast come through with acceptable performances: Roger Halston as the sarcastic Dean Taylor, Emile Levisetti as the amiable Pete, Kevin Alber as flaky long-haired meth-snorting geek Newton, Bob McFarland as the easygoing Coach, and Dick H. Buchiett as nefarious cigar-smoking bigwig The Boss. Mike Mickens' sound cinematography provides an appropriately shadowy look. The rattling ominous score by Nigel Holton and Christopher Lennertz hits the spirited spot. Granted, we're not talking all-time classic here, but it's nonetheless a perfectly entertaining piece of simple and undemanding trash.