Hold onto your butts — a new watch-a-thon starts today!

Who likes alien abduction flicks? I’ll soon fix that.

The McPherson Tape — 1989 – Tubi

The youngest of a trio of brothers has acquired a new video camera, and makes his directorial debut at a birthday party for his young niece in a remote Montana farmhouse. As the family jovially bickers and gets ready for cake, the lights suddenly go out, and the three men head out to the woodshed to check out the fuse box. Outside they witness a red light in the sky and, following its trajectory, stumble upon what looks like a landed spacecraft complete with little aliens mooching around. They rush back to the farm, arm themselves, and settle in for an evening of glimpsed faces at windows, strange noises, and family breakdowns.

Coming in at a brief 66 minutes, and made for little more than $6K, this is director Dean Alioto’s first run at a story that he would return to a decade later with a new name and bigger budget (Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, which I’ll be watching later).

Allegedly, this film was considered a classic ‘hoax’ film, although I very much doubt anyone was really taken in by the children in alien costumes and the mostly improvised dialogue of the family members. However, as a found footage flick, it ticks all the boxes; lack of focus when really needed, underlit, all the detailed clarity of a bowl of squid ink ravioli in a coal mine.

It’s all rather shouty and tedious, but I have to admire it for getting made for next to nothing, and inspiring a slew of dodgy knock-offs, most of which I’ll be reviewing.

2/5

Alien Invasion (AKA After the Lethargy) — 2019 – Prime

Intrepid journalist Sara Hamilton has a slight obsession with an incident that happened in Tetis County somewhere in the Rockies. Much like Roswell, a ship allegedly crashed and a bunch of little fellas were found strewn around the wreckage. However, one went missing. Through lengthy bouts of exposition sandwiched between bursts of grimy characters running from pixels, we learn that a remote military barracks was being used for experiments, primarily by the nefarious Dr. Marshall and his wife, in an attempt to create alien hybrids. Hamilton goes to the site to investigate, and assorted ghastliness ensues.

This is a Spanish production and first film for Marc Carreté, who I suspect did not have a lot of Euros to play with. Though grateful for the title change, this is hardly an invasion, more of an X-Files episode where running and screaming take the place of bickering and sleuthing.

Andrea Guasch does a good job as Sara, put through the wringer to ever increasing degrees, although there are a couple of actors who play it a little more over-the-top than required. The film is billed as a horror comedy, but aside from one character who spends most of the film hilariously mumbling like Gabby Johnson from Blazing Saddles, there’s very to laugh at, especially since the central premise is women being kidnapped, raped, and forced to give birth to hybrid abominations. A real rib-tickler.

Not great, but not terrible either.

2/5

Hangar 10 — 2014 – YouTube

Never let it be said that I ignore the follower(s) of these projects, for here is a suggestion from fellow Canuck and purveyor of weird shit, Mark, who thought I should check this one out as it almost meets the criteria. Good enough for me.

Three UK metal detector nerds, Gus, Sally, and Jake, head out to Suffolk to look for treasure, although Jake is only tagging along because he a) fancies Sally, and b) is interested in the Rendlesham Incident, a decades-old UFO event in the same area.

After a good deal of traipsing around in a very orderly forest, punctuated by occasional spurts of bickering, things finally kick off when the trio witness some spooky lights in the clouds, and everything goes to pot deep inside a military installation. Extraterrestrial shenanigans ensue.

This is a found footage film, so it already had an uphill battle when it came to keeping me engaged, and although it is a lot better than many of the other genre films I’ve hate-watched, it still suffers from underexposed/unfocused scenes, and ‘spontaneous’ dialogue. Hangar 10 managed to bring me back under its folds though with some beautifully realized effects shots, and some interesting scenes in the spooky base, which were unfortunately relegated to the last 25 mins or so.

Worth a look if you like this sort of thing, but left me craving a film that might have used a tripod.

6/10

The Recall — 2017 – Prime

No, not a film about something going wrong on a Volkswagen, rather this is a jolly romp that threads its way through several genres before settling on a good old fashioned ‘kick the alien butt’ flick.

A group of five friends head to a luxury cabin in the woods for a spot of rumpy pumpy and other youthful distractions. During the trip there, they are aware of strange atmospheric disturbances (not that they pay any attention), and one of them, Brenden (Breaking Bad‘s R.J. Mitte), upsets a local hunter at a gas station (played by Wesley Snipes, having the time of his life). They finally reach the cabin, then find another ghastly shack in the forest with photos of the hunter in his former life as an astronaut. So far, so Wrong Turn.

Then the story turns into a home invasion as presumably the hunter is attacking them, but it turns out to be malevolent aliens hellbent on abducting and possessing the chums.

Once all the threads are tied together, we can settle down for a bit of bish bash bosh as the surviving teens fight back against their aggressors, and the film concludes with big ideas and some X-Men shenanigans.

As bonkers as this all sounds, I had a fun time with this one, helped by a decent cast and solid effects. Sure, it’s all over the place, but at least its not boring, and that’s all I can ask for these days.

Check it out!

7/10

Scary Movie 4 — 2006 – Tubi

A bit of a swerve for the next film in my wildly ignored project, but work deadlines have been kicking my butt and preventing movie watching, and it does at least have a War of the Worlds section, so I’m sticking with it.

The Scary Movie franchise has not aged well, not that I ever really liked it to begin with, but the dated pop-culture references and tired direction really makes this one a slog. I really don’t understand why this is so bad. David Zucker, one third of ZAZ who brought us one of the top three comedies of all time (Airplane!), and the sublime daftness of Police Squad! is the solo director on this, although the ‘A’ in ZAZ, Jim Abrahams, co-wrote it.

Yes, I get the notion that these films are meant to lampoon whatever was popular in the few years preceding it (in this case, War of the Worlds, The Village, The Grudge, Saw, and Tom Cruise couch jumping), and that’s not the issue. It’s the approach to the set-ups and landings that kill it. In Airplane!, I’m trying to think of a moment when someone breaks the fourth wall, perhaps there was one moment when someone looks to camera (please illuminate me in the comments), but otherwise it is played straight as an arrow.

In Scary Movie 4, characters look to camera all the time, as if to tell us, “Hey, isn’t this funny and weird?”, and then the gag is repeated to the point where even a dead horse would resurrect itself and walk off.

It is possible that I chortled twice — I definitely recall making a noise- – but I can’t remember what at. If these films are your bag, all power to you, I don’t want to poo-poo your enjoyment, but I’d be happy to never watch one of these again.

2/10

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

My Top Thirty Films
The Star Warses
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?

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See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.