Year released: 2005
THE CHARGE: They're aliens and they admit they're evil. It's right there in the title.
THE EVIDENCE: It's been said that the really great movies are the ones that teach us something about ourselves. By that definition, Evil Aliens is a really great movie. But I can't say it's a good one.
The movie opens with a shot of bare man ass, as the ass's owner goes to town on a girl in the middle of a field. The couple are captured by a spaceship and, a minute later, we're treated to a graphic scene of the aforementioned ass being probed with a very large power drill. Yes, kids, it's that kind of movie.
Then the story settles down a bit and focuses on the woman, who is back on Earth living on a farm in Wales with her three backwoods brothers. The story of her abduction and apparent implantation of an alien fetus in her womb gets the attention of a reporter from a TV news magazine called Weird Worlde (sic). The reporter, a jaded lass who usually lets her cleavage do most of the talking for her, brings a film crew to interview the woman and a couple of actors to do an on-location re-enactment for the show.
A few cattle mutilations later, the crew finds that the aliens, who look a bit like skinny Predators with PVC piping in place of dreadlocks, are still lurking about and that some nearby stone pillars reminiscent of Stonehenge are actually a charging station for their spacecraft. The woefully underarmed crew battle the aliens and, after a couple of early victories, are optimistic about their chances of surviving the encounter. That is, until the mothership arrives.
Can't stop to chat. Busy making crop circles.
This description makes the film sound like a typical shlockfest and it is, for the most part. So what could this film have possibly taught me about myself?
I taught me that at some point in my life, I may have had a drinking problem.
I first saw Evil Aliens years ago and at that time, I thought it was brilliant. The movie offered an amalgamation of over-the-top gore and slapstick humor in the bloody vein of classics like Braindead and Evil Dead 2. It even offers a brief tip of the hat to Peter Jackson's Braindead when a character grabs a lawnmower to fight off a horde of aliens, only to drop it and resort to using a weed whacker instead.
But a rewatch for the purpose of this review revealed that Evil Aliens wasn't the masterful splatstick that I remembered. In truth, it's less like Peter Jackson's Braindead and more like Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. The incredible gore effects I remembered showed, on sober viewing, are on a level about on par with the Sharknado films with CGI blood splatter that could have been rendered with MS Paint. And the humor... let's just put it this way: the film actually contains a gag where an alien slips on a banana peel and ends with a Jerry Springer joke. Ouch.
I know, I couldn't believe what I was seeing either.
The movie almost redeems itself with actors who unapologetically throw themselves into their roles and a score that's far better than the film deserves. And the spaceships themselves look pretty darn snazzy. But those faintly gleaming gems of competence are undercut by erratic cinematography - sometimes clear and brilliant, other times murky and grainy - and a story that's virtually non-existent. Aliens invade, people fight them, roll credits.
At one point in my life, I thought this movie was sure to become a cult classic. I can only assume I was very drunk at the time and would like to take this moment to publicly apologize to my liver. Liver, I am so, so sorry. If you felt anything like my brain did upon my rewatch of Evil Aliens, then my treatment of you was unconscionable.
THE VERDICT: Evil Aliens is GUILTY of being the hottie you pick up at the bar at closing time, only to be horrified by in the cold light of dawn.
