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Our
space opera begins with a benevolent race
of pale, human-like aliens trying to
escape the clutches of a belligerent,
pig-like alien race. Why? They've stolen
the "Death Sphere" -- the
pig-aliens new secret weapon, and if a
certain sequence of buttons is pushed, the
weapon activates, disintegrating whatever
it touches. We
then have a slow pan to this Death Sphere,
and the audience says, "Huh? That
looks just like a volley ball." Uh-oh.
E'yup. We're on a collision course with
wackiness!
When
their spacecraft is intercepted by the
porcine E.T.'s, it sustains heavy damage
by blaster fire. As the pilots try to
maintain control, we're introduced to
Nagillig, the ship's sanitation engineer,
klutz, and carcinogenic comedy relief (George
Willis). (And
we cross our fingers, hoping that this guy
is not our hero -- but don't hold your
breath.) Inevitably,
Nagillig accidentally
activates the Death Sphere and kills one
of the pilots (and
if you notice, Nagillig spelled backwards
is Gilligan, so expect other, similar
disasters to follow.)
Too
heavily damaged to escape, the ship has to
make an emergency landing. They find a
planet but can’t penetrate the ozone
layer until they find a hole in it.
Ordering Nagillig to launch the Death
Sphere out of the torpedo tube so the
other aliens can’t get it, el Klutzo
manages to launch it just before the ship
crashes in the hills outside of Hollywood.
The
pursuing ship, helmed by Lord Odem, tracks
them to Earth, and he plans to take care
of the matter personally.
Meanwhile,
on the ground, Dr. Bateman (John
Eineigl) monitors all this
extraterrestrial activity. We observe that
Bateman is a few tacos short of a full
platter as he makes preparations to find
the alien crash site: He claims to have
been observing these aliens for years. At
the crash site, Nagillig is the only
survivor fully intact. The pilot, whose
been severed in half, tells him to find
the Death Sphere before Lord Odem gets his
paws (hooves?) on it.
Finding the Death Sphere Detector a few
feet away in the pocket of the pilot's
dismembered legs, Nagillig sets off on his
task.
Elsewhere,
we’re introduced to our cannon fodder as
they head to the beach for a birthday
party. Bud (Perry Martin), a
baseball player, and a royal prick (not
necessarily in that order),
strikes out while trying to score with
Babs (Stacy Havener).
They pick up Robin (Kourtney
Kaye),
the brainy virgin, and the
pharmaceutically enhanced Glue (Eric
Zumbrunnen)
and head to the beach. (Glue's
real name is Elmer, and his hairdo
resembles Cousin It from the Addams
Family.)
At
the beach we meet Tina (Steph
Eubanks), birthday girl and
uber-bitch. She sends the resident stoner
surfers, Jeff and Al (Mark Fite and
Max Fisk), into town for supplies.
She also tells them to pick up her cousin
who’s flown in from New Jersey. Asking
for a description of this mook, it sounds
a lot like Nagillig (so we all know
where this is heading). They
manage to round up the beer and a band -- The
Insect Surfers -- so the party is soon
in full swing.
While
Lord Odem and Number-Two, his second in
command, secretly watch, they observe them
playing volleyball on the beach and
can’t believe these Earthlings treat the
Death Sphere so roughly. Then, someone's
volley goes long and the ball disappears
into the trees. Bud goes to retrieve it.
Coincidently, near the exact same spot,
Nagillig happens to find the real
Death Sphere. Thinking he’s trying to
steal their ball, Bud beats him up. Jeff
and Al save him from any permanent damage,
figuring he must be Tina’s cousin from
Jersey. So, the volleyball game continues
with real Death Sphere, and while it
bounces around, it’s inadvertently
triggered again and disintegrates a
sunbather; no one except Nagillig seems to
notice.
Later,
Jeff has some premium weed to smoke and
invites Al and Glue to come with him up to
the old Wilby place to smoke it. Glue
manages to also invite Bud, Babs, Robin
and Nagillig along, and they also pick up
Roxy, Charles and Linda (Lisa
Frankiel, Eric Jacobsen and Judi Alley)
along the way. (Why?
For a bigger body count. That’s why!)
Glue also brings the Death Sphere along. (Why?
It’s important to the plot. That’s
why! Sorry, didn't mean to go Ebert on all
of you.) They
head toward the old house where urban
legends abound about the old man who used
to live there. On the way they run into
Bateman, whose been out trying to find the
aliens. He warns everyone that it’s
dangerous to be in the area, but they all
laugh him off, except Jeff, who wants to
know what he’s been smoking. As they
press on, Bateman feels it’s his civic
duty to protect them, so he tags along,
too.
They
reach the house, not realizing that Odem
and Number-Two followed them. Odem leaves
it to Two to retrieve the Death Sphere and
returns to the ship. Inside, as Jeff, Al
and Glue light up, Bateman lectures them
on the detrimental effects of marihuana
use. Nagillig watches, intrigued, Babs and
Bud go off to be alone, while the others
go exploring.
Bud
strikes out again with Babs, and she
storms off -- right into Number Two.
Harpooning her, he then reels her in to be
skewered on his Death Glove. Finding Bud
all alone, Roxy soon gets the full on
schmooze until Number-Two catches them
en-flagrante felatio and dispatches
them both. (How?
Well, see illustration.) When
Roxy's dismembered head *snicker*
bounces down the stairs, it lands at
Glue’s feet. All the
stoners freak out and run outside, but
Bateman rallies them to go back in to find
and warn the others. Once back inside,
however, Number-Two uses some kind of
Cosmic Doodad -- we'll call it the Death
Cattle-Prod -- to electrify the doors
and windows, trapping them. Upstairs,
they find a dismembered arm, and then
round up Charles and Linda -- who lost
that arm. Using Glue’s alcohol to
sterilize Linda’s wound, in the
movie’s most disturbing scene, Bateman
tries to cauterize the wound but
accidentally sets Linda on fire, and
thanks to the alcohol, she goes off like
Roman Candle. (I
think this was supposed to be funny but it
wasn’t funny at all.)
They
stumble over everyone else's bodies but
can’t find Robin anywhere. When Charles
tries to escape, he is electrocuted and
disintegrates. With Number-Two still
lurking, they hide in a closet until
Nagillig discovers a secret passage that
leads down into the basement.
And
I guess this is as good a time as any to
say that Glue still has the volleyball.
Wait a second? Elmer? Glue?...Now I get
it.
But
Number-Two is waiting for them, and
Bateman loses his right hand. The
Earthlings manage to fight their way into
a side room where Robin is waiting and
lock the alien out. Jeff finds a
surfboard.
(Why? Hold that thought a second.)
While trying to hold the door shut,
Bateman gets a harpoon through the gut.
Number-Two shot it through the door,
skewering him. Jeff and Al manage to pry
him loose but, amazingly, despite all of
his trauma, Bateman seems A-OK. He aslo
deduces that the
aliens must be after something. Jeff
thinks it’s the drugs, but Bateman
believes it’s the volleyball. He points
out that it has no markings or no
inflation hole. Too late, the door finally
gives and Number-Two rampages inside.
Promptly, Bateman loses his left arm and
Jeff is impaled on the surfboard. (That's
why he found the surfboard. Death by
surfboard. Killer. Totally righteous way
to go, Bro!)
Robin
to the rescue! She fights off Number-Two
as he's obviously burned wherever she
touches him. Bateman,
still OK despite the loss of two of his
four appendages (and
if you’re thinking five, get you’re
head out of the gutter!),
deduces that it’s her sunscreen. Armed
with that knowledge, they hunt down and
dispose of Number-Two with an SPF-50 bath.
(Death by suntan lotion! Totally
bogus, dude. Bummer.)
Believing
that there has to be more than one alien,
they decide to head back to the beach.
With the Death Sphere in tow, they all
pile into Bateman's van. He crawls into
the driver’s seat and only then realizes
that he can no longer drive, due to his
injuries. They
make it back to the party just as Lord
Odem starts disintegrating people with his
ray gun, demanding that the Death Sphere
be returned to him. Unfortunately, Robin
used all her sunscreen on Number-Two, so
they fall back on Plan B. Playing hot
potato with the Death Sphere, they
keep it away from Odem. With each hit, the
sphere activates, and guess who intercepts
it right before it goes off?
After
the alien is vanquished in a flash of
green light, Robin expresses her love to
Bateman by revealing she saved all of his
severed appendages. And while The
Insect Surfers crank up a tune,
Nagillig joins the others as they dance up
a storm. All seems happy until a football
bounces into view and it begins to glow
ominously...
The
End
Make
no mistake about it, Alien
Beach Party Massacre
is a terrible film. In
fact, one could say it kind of sucks.
However, every time I was ready to write
this film off as utter crap, it, somehow,
managed to keep cracking me up. Basically,
the film reminds me of a Kids
In the Hall
sketch if it was directed by our friends
at Troma studios. So basically take
that premise, then remove 90% of the
talent and you'll have a pretty good idea
how good this film is.
The
plot (oh,
lord the plot,) gives the film a
steep hill to climb. The plot, as it is
for most of these films, is the lamest
excuse possible to gather a group of
people together to get slaughtered. Here,
it’s so threadbare that you can barely
see it. Yet it's so absurd and original
that you have to give the filmmakers a
little credit. Yes, the movie starts
slow and shows little promise, but as it
went along I started to warm up to it. And
few scenes actually even made me laugh out
loud. But between those fits of laugher,
though, were extended groaning sessions
and I’d start to hate the film again.
Then Jeff, Al or Glue would say something
absurdly inappropriate, or Bateman would
get another appendage lopped off (with
no detrimental side-effects), and
I’d find myself laughing again -- especially
when Robin would pick up the dismembered
appendage and offer to carry it around as
a sign of affection.
But
the biggest flaw this film makes is
sometimes it tries to be too clever. When
it bucks a few horror clichés, it then
makes the mistake of spelling it out for
the audience:
A
case in point is the character of Al. He
isn’t important to the plot and is only
around so Jeff has someone to say
"Dude!" to. You’d expect that
Al would be the first one to go, and as he
survives deeper and deeper into the
massacre, Jeff points this out saying
Al’s basically a Red-Shirted Ensign
doomed to beam down with Kirk and Spock,
then asks, "Dude? Why aren’t you
dead yet?" Ten seconds later it is Jeff
who is impaled and Al who makes it to the
end. (See!
Aren’t we clever!)
The
acting, here, is about 50/50. The stoner
surfers are good but everyone else is
terrible. Bateman has the 1950’s sci-fi
hero/scientist posturing down, but his
shtick gets old as he says the same thing
over and over and over. Actor’s
fault, or the scripts? (Who knows
but I have a pretty good idea.)
The
F/X are also about 50/50. The spaceship
sequences are adequate, but they fail
miserably when they try to combine the CGI
effects with a live action shot. The gore
effects are good, but the advanced
alien’s tools of mass destruction
include an electrified doorknob, a
gauntlet adorned with lethal pizza cutters,
and a spear gun. Holy-snikeys, Ro-Man
had better equipment than this! Still,
other props are ingenious; namely the
torpedo launcher whose origins as a
pinball machine are easily identified, and
the use of sunscreen to kill off the
aliens is inspired.
Despite
all the complaints, (uh-oh,
here it comes,) you can
light the torches, bring on the pitchforks,
and run me out of town, but I, without any
shame or remorse, proclaim that I kinda
liked Alien
Beach Party Massacre.
I’ve seen worse premises executed better
than a film whose plot motivator is a
lethal weapon mistaken for a volleyball (but
not that many.) The film does an
admirable job of juggling three genres, Sci-Fi,
Slasher and Beach Party --
with the Beach Party updated for
the pothead and slacker generation. It
starts slow, picks it up, then meanders
around, comes to a screeching halt in the
"Haunted House", but then picks
up again for the slam bang conclusion.
Those
of you who have seen it may scoff.
There's not that many of you, either, as the film
isn’t even listed on the IMDB.
And I've since gotten an e-mail from the
director wondering how I even saw it since the
film was never released! (Don't ask me, I
just rented the dang thing.) But I
know its crap. You know its crap. And I
even think the filmmakers knew it was crap.
So the
beginning stinks, the middle stinks, and
the ending isn’t so hot either. But the
parts between the beginning and the middle
and between the middle and the end were
absurd enough to win me over.
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