Wednesday 23 October 2013

Alien Infiltration (2010)


As I'm a fan of both They Live and Hell Comes to Frogtown, it's pretty safe to say I'm a Roddy Piper mark.  So it was a very pleasant surprise for me when he popped up as a gun-toting preacher about twenty minutes into Alien Infiltration (aka Alien Opponent).  The movie as a whole turned out to be a pleasant surprise, in fact.  I'd bought it for the very simple reason that it was $8, including postage.  Cheap DVDs are my kryptonite.

The premise of the film is as simple as it is goofy: to inherit her husband's considerable estate, a young widow needs his body as proof of death.  Alas, an alien spaceship has crash-landed in the junk yard where the dead man's body can be found, and the extraterrestial is willing to use force to ensure it is left alone.  So the woman offers a cash reward to anyone who can kill the alien, triggering a wide variety of pretty nutty characters to turn up and try for the prize.

Alien Infiltration is fully aware of its B-movie status, and is quite happy just delivering gonzo fun.  Some films that set out to be schlocky end up being very tiresome, but this one avoids that trap pretty well, helped along by the enthusiasm of the cast and the fact that the script throws a few curveballs at you.

If it has a weakness, it's that it's perhaps ten minutes too long, and the "didn't see that coming moments" tend to be in the first two-thirds of the film, but Alien Infiltration is well worth a look if you're in the mood for what might be summed up as "a deliberately absurdist inversion of Predator."

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