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The Alienator [1989] 'Vaporisation's too good for ya.' A tardy, tawdry imitation of The Terminator which hasn't the resources for much in the way of suspense, action or horror but works overtime to give its characters a hard-bitten meanness that robs the picture of much rooting interest. In a twelve-minute pre-credits sequence redolent of extensive script-padding, rebel leader Ross Hagen, on the point of being executed by sneering commandant Jan-Michael Vincent, escapes from a prison planet that looks like the usual abandoned power plant. Hagen crashlands on Earth, but Vincent sends the ridiculously-named Alienator [Australian female body-builder Teagan Clive] after him. Hagen falls in with some teens in a rural area and they hole up with game warden John Phillip Law and veteran Leo V. Gordon as the creature, which can survive stepping on an anti-personnel mine but is disabled when a mesh net is dropped over her. The alienator is a lumbering woman with a silly fright wig and a silver
half-mask, capable of a moment of tenderness with a deer but happy to
turn doctor Robert Quarry into a human torch. A marginal diversion from
the James Cameron template is that while the space empire Hagen is fleeing
from seems to be brutal and oppressive, the rebel turns out to be an
unscrupulous baddie trading on Earthling sympathies while planning a
double-cross ['I've appropriated Rick's body. He's a small grease-spot
in the forest']. This twist means that the alienator has to revive at
the last moment to do away with him, employing a low-tech axe, while
back in prison anti-capital punishment dignitary Robert Clarke is exposed
['you genetic mutant bastard'] as Hagen's father and collaborator and
bloodily impaled on a light sabre. Prolific schlockmeister Fred Olen
Ray at least takes the trouble to cast familiar faces in bit-parts [P.J.
Soles, Richard Wiley, Fox Harris, Joseph Pilato], and there's a wistful
speech about Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars books. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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