Well, you can't go home again. Director R.W. Goodwin (The X-Files, appropriately) and a partner were sitting around waxing nostalgic one day many years ago about the great cheesy sci-fi/horror flicks of their youth, and decided to make a new picture in their mold showing what made the originals so great. Note: a new picture, not a modern one. The point was not to comment on the tropes of the era from a 21st century perspective, but to recreate them. Unfortunately they forgot that A) what was exciting to a ten-year-old in the age of Sputnik might not resonate with modern audiences viewing them without a lens of nostalgia, and B) it takes exceptional craft to make a movie about bad movies without making one yourself.
Eric McCormack from Will & Grace is one of a handful of recognizable faces. He plays Dr. Ted Lewis, pipe-chomping jovial square who is head scientist down at the local observatory. He is barbecuing in the back yard of his tract home, good-naturedly lecturing his wife Lana (Jody Thompson, The 4400) about the meteor shower going on, when a much larger light streaks through the sky above and appears to impact in the mountains near town. Stalwart man of science that he is, he goes to check it out and finds a cheerfully cheesy flying saucer stuck half in and half out of the cliff face. Inside are not one but two of the promised aliens, one ridiculous and the other moreso, and it is this latter one that we are doomed to see throughout the movie as it trespasses just all over the townsfolks' homes and businesses, in flagrant disregard of clearly posted signs.
As for the townsfolk, the gang's all here, from the drunken old coot living in a shack in the woods with only his dog for company (kudos to Jerry Wasserman for getting off the best about-to-be-devoured scream in the film), to the misunderstood teens trying to warn the populace (with Aaron Brooks as the greaser and Sarah Smyth and Andrew Dunbar as the straights who never stop holding hands), to the disbelieving cops (including Robert Patrick, the T-1000 from Terminator 2 and Dan Lauria, Kevin's dad on The Wonder Years) to a bobby sox-ed babysitter and her bratty ward. The actors play these stock characters straight, without winking at the audience though some of the acting in the smaller parts is amateurish at times.
Of course, the alien is supposed to be ridiculous and the characters unbelievable because That Was How It Was. On paper, it seems like a movie like this could be fun, but the actual execution fails almost completely. The problem may be that when movies like this were actually being made the cardboard creatures and hackneyed plots were the best that could be managed given the constraints of time and budget, and actually were calculated to appeal to audience tastes as well as possible. And although the filmmakers are at pains to insist that this is an homage, not a parody, things like pretending not to know how to shoot a driving scene except by using crappy rear-projection can't help but be condescending, and should be acknowledged, as in Rex Kramer's hilarious drive to the airport in Airplane! By refusing to comment on the mess on the screen, the filmmakers leave the audience to groan by themselves. Could a new sci-fi series be made with styrofoam food in the mess hall and overexposed film for special effects? Would you watch it? This movie is aimed squarely at the sort of filmic hipsters who would laugh at all the right parts solely to show that they get the reference. Director Goodwin is saying, "Look! Weren't these movies terrible? Isn't it great?" To which the response can only be, yes, many of them were, and no, it isn't.
Highlights: The remains of people exposed to the bad alien's digestive processes, and everybody in the cast giving their best about-to-be-eaten scream a good old 50's try before it happens to them. The costumes and scenery are also good, and hint at the better movie that could have resulted if it had been allowed to be a comedy. As someone mentions in the interviews, they weren't trying for the look of the 50's so much as 50's movies, which is an aesthetic all its own.
Extras: A great argument for DVD, because here is where Alien Trespass finds its way. There is an elaborate frame story about how this movie was not made but found recently, a la the Blair Witch Project. The actors pretend they are actually descendants of the actors in the main feature, and then play their characters as they would have been off the set, talking about the movie in a series of promotional interviews with hilariously understated, chain smoking Edwin R. Burroughs. All of this is far more creative and playful than the movie itself. An expansion of this material alone would have made a much better film, more knowing and sly, with brief references to the main feature which appears funnier and more interesting in snippets and asides. ComicsOnline strongly recommends viewing these first, as they will do as much as possible to put you in the intended frame of mind for the movie itself. Also included are legit interviews with director Goodwin and star McCormack, and real and fake trailers.
Presentation: Dolby digital sound and standard definition video, quite adequate to the cheesy effects and purposely intensified "Gold-O-Vision" color. Normal TV 16:9 aspect ratio. Subtitles available in English and Spanish.
ComicsOnline gives Alien Trespass 2 out of 5 puddles of Ghota-produced ooze.
Rated PG (for "brief historical smoking"- God bless the MPAA) 84 min.
