ALIEN FROM L.A. (1988)

ALIEN FROM L.A. (1988)

Tagline: Venture To The Core!

(Adventure, Comedy, Hollow Earth) [PG]

Big confidence from an alien - who walks like a troll, dresses like a worm, and has the voice that gives everyone a headache.

In this one a woman named Wanda is looking for her missing archaeologist father ends up tracking his last whereabouts to Africa and some ancient ruins. It doesn’t take long before she falls into a pit that just happens to lead to freakin Atlantis. There she is seen as a danger and hunted as the mysterious ALIEN FROM L.A. Can she save her father before she is captured by the crazy assortment of miscreants at the earth’s core?

First off, if this movie was made today it would definitely be a SYFY flick on the SYFY channel made in conjunction with THE ASYLUM. In fact, director Albert Pyun is well known in the sci-fi world with well over 30 flicks he’s directed. He has worked on everything from this movie to DOLLMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990) to the NEMESIS series. I am not saying that Albert isn’t good at what he does, but this movie is just bad. I wish it was bad in the “wow, that is a high mountain of cheese I can’t wait to see again”, but it’s not. It’s in the “moldy cheese, I want to toss out and forget” way. 

Kathy Ireland plays the lead Wanda in this and she isn’t a stranger to acting. In fact, she has 42 different projects under her belt (including NECESSARY ROUGHNESS and LOADED WEAPON 1, but this was her first major role and sadly she just wasn’t good enough to carry the movie. Part of my annoyance with her in this movie was her squeaky voice. I am pretty sure it’s not her normal voice. We also get William R. Moses who plays Gus in this. I actually thought Gus was okay as a character. The legendary Thom Mathews (best known for FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES) plays Charmin, but he’s not in the movie as much as I would have liked. It literally takes over an hour for him to even show up. 

No one in this movie could have fixed this script which just drags on and on depending completely on visuals that don’t quite impress. I love practical effects and the 50s and 80s in particular, but if you can’t pull off your concepts is falls into the cheese category. Cheese is amazing, and I love campy stuff, but all that can be offset by a bad script and horrible lighting. This movie is a master class in bad lighting. I think any time you are shooting something that is supposed to be underground you have to get those sets and light angles near perfect to not have your movie just look like it’s being shot in a giant dark and drab warehouse. 

In the 80s you had just a ton of b-movies that kind of flew under the radar and this was one of those. It’s about as weird and as sloppy as ICE PIRATES. Both movies are loaded with fun characters that can’t fix the terrible film they are in. 

Overall I can’t give this higher than a 2 out of 7, but again, if you are just in the mood for a cheesy 80’s bad movie that is actually bad, this is a solid choice. I mean a bad choice. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF GOLAN-GLOBUS PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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