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I thought I'd kick the new year off with another movie marathon. I thought it was time to check out a few old school mystery flicks. Som...

Friday, March 3, 2023

Alien Escape (1997)

There is something comfortable and almost innocent about the straight to home video science fiction flicks of the mid to late nineties. I mean if anything that focuses on getting as many lovely ladies topless while connecting those scenes with a paper thin alien invasion story can be innocent. More on that later.

Things open with a naked lady in a shower. I did sort of warn you… Something is outside spying on her. She gets out of the shower and eventually is attacked by a black glove with I’m guessing someone attached to it. Then we see three ladies in a convertible. After trying to convince us that one of them is a lawyer they stop because you know girls have to pee in the woods. Hey man I’m sure that happens! Eventually they arrive at a resort aka. the house they rented to shoot the movie and find that the person they were expecting, Janet is missing. Yeah, she was the naked lady from earlier. But they do find another naked lady named Laticia who talks to them.

Later two of the girls get naked and get into a bathtub to soap each other up. Hey, I did tell you what to expect a couple of times already! The third, Cindy, goes for a walk. In the dark woods all alone. Then a lady hiker shows up… after getting naked in the stream to take a bath… and asks for a glass of water. The lawyer lady’s boss shows up and acts like a creep. He and the lady hiker get killed by the same black glove. Then Cindy finds a spaceship, shows the other girls. A car explodes they meet Matt, who is an alien, and the girls with Cindy get killed. Then Cindy gets naked with Matt, and they fight the bad alien that was killing everyone. The end.

This isn’t a good movie, but I was entertained. When I was younger all the ladies would have been the reason I liked Alien Escape, but an older and much more jaded (thanks internet) me had to find other reasons to like this flick. Luckily, this is the sort of movie that embraces the silliness and piles on a lot of laughs. While the plot is thin and the dialogue rough there are a lot of pop culture references and intentionally (I think) lines that had me giggling.

The best example of this is legendary no budget filmmakers Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski showing up in acting roles as a couple of locals working road construction. They go all redneck when the “city folk” are around but then shift back to wine sipping intellectuals who discuss art as soon as they are out of earshot. Silly? Yes, but I think that the filmmakers were playing with the prototypical stereotypes present in the more serious attempts to tell stories like this. There is also a much less funny bit with some government agents tracking the aliens, but I will give them an “A” for effort.

For a movie with little to no budget they do a decent job with the alien. Sure, it is a guy wearing a suite topped off with a cheesy rubber mask, but it works fine. We also get some movie magic where characters climb into the “hatch” of the ship in the woods to clearly be climbing down a ladder in some industrial location located elsewhere. But that kind of movie “magic” is what low budget filmmakers must use to make things happen. And it wasn’t too bad. The kills are tame and well that is about all I have to say.

Alien Escape isn’t a good movie. I’ll freely admit that. It may also seem weird that I describe a flick that uses nudity and titillation as a selling point innocent. But when I watch a flick like this one, I get very nostalgic for the days of renting crap at my local video store. Despite watching a digital copy I swear I could hear my VCR chugging along. If you have the same sort of memories or are looking for something silly, then check this one out. I think you might get a kick out of it.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

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