• Directed by Ted Nicolaou
• Written by Jackson Barr
• Starring
  • Paul Hipp
  • Robert Factor
  • Martha Quinn
  • Aaron Lustig
  • Michael Huddleston
• Produced by Keith S. Payson
• Executive produced by Charles Band

There’s a reason that, although low-budget quickie horror and sci-fi movies have a fan base, there is no such clamor for second-rate comedy. Shoddy horror and sci-fi can still have some glamor to them; even in their lowest (or close to their lowest) form, there’s still an ironic MST3K enjoyment which can be derived, if you wring hard enough. Comedy that doesn’t work, however, just plain doesn’t work, and while something which intended to be serious can be rendered funny by its ineptitude, flawed comedy has no such safety net. It just plain falls flat. Forced laughter is no better than no laughter.

Welcome to Bad Channels.

Our setting is the middle-of-nowhere radio station KDUL (hah! comedy!), located in the flyspeck town of Pahoota. Station owner Vernon Locknut (Aaron Lustig), the kind of guy who owns nothing but bowties, has recently discovered that there’s not a single station in the nation broadcasting at 666 mHz, given the, well, you know, connotations of the number. (Could it also be that the FM dial doesn’t go down that far? Hmm.) Thus, he changes his format from one of “all polka, all the time,” and hooks up a super-duper broadcast tower, and throws the switch on Super Station 66, with on-air celebrity “Dangerous” Dan O’Dare (Paul Hipp), an “edgy” DJ who’s just come off a six-month suspension for accidentally having sex with the traffic girl on the air. (And in discussing this for our benefit, the characters manage to use every stinking punchline possible for this occurrence, leaving absolutely nothing for me. Bastards.)

On hand is perky reporter Lisa Cummings (Martha Quinn of MTV fame — she is famous, right?), covering Dan’s publicity stunt of an on-air polka marathon until a caller can guess the correct combination to the padlocked chains wrapping his body. (Hah! Comedy!) Lisa kinda strikes me as being a couterintuitive reporter; for one thing, she dresses more like the secretary at a grade school. But I guess when you work for th fledgeling Cable World News, you can’t afford good clothes or a real haircut.

Anyway. Into this already comedically-charged situation (hah!) falls — an alien! Not just any old alien, though; this is an alien with a huge head that looks like the world’s biggest burnt marshmallow (or, as later opined in the film, “a turd with a porthole window”), and his robot sidekick with a brain in a clear cranial dome. They attach themselves to the power lines, frighten a worker, zap some people, and eventually get down to business, which is — the takeover of the radio station! With his Phenomenal Alien Powers, the alien causes weird fungus and roots and stuff to grow all over the studio, trapping Dan and his producer, Corky (Michael Huddleston) inside the studio! Dan, who had earlier been scoffing at UFO sighting reports, tries to use the airwaves to convince people that the alien invasion has arrived, but (ooh! ooh! get this!) no one believes him! They all think it’s part of his crazy, kooky publicity stunt!

Laughing yet?

The alien then sets his nefarious plans into motion: Using the radio waves to home in on listeners (huh?), it uses a little scope machine to spy on pretty girls (huh?), then with a twist of his levers, he… causes the girls to hallucinate the band playing on the radio.

Huh? No, really. First he homes in on a pretty waitress (Full Moon spokesperson Charlie Spradling, whom we just saw in Puppet Master 2); she imagines that this rockin’ band is performing in the cafe for about, oh, three minutes (just long enough to seem like a full-fledged music video), then she disappears in a badly-animated flash, only to reappear in the radio studio, shrunk to twelve inches high and stuck in an alien beaker! Apparently, our crinkly-headed friend has had no contact with those other aliens, the Greys, who apparently just stop in and abduct people. No muss, no fuss, no nationwide broadcast play-by-play.

And that, my friends, is the gist of the movie right there. Reporter Girl keeps trying to get an interview with the electrical technician who supposedly saw the alien and is being covered with fungus; Dan keeps broadcasting as the alien and his sidekick leave him nonchalantly alone; everyone listening keeps remarking on what a completely insane (in a good way) guy Dan is; and the alien snatches girls. In fact, the whole band-hallucination thing happens three times. The first was a fairly generic Bon Jovi-sounding band (a male lead with an all-female backup), the second is a harder-edged proto-grunge band, and the third…

…All right, into every movie a little saving grace must fall. The music isn’t nearly as bad as you expect for something of this caliber; the soundtrack, and a couple of extra songs, were written by the Blue Öyster Cult, and the three other bands are working outfits, so they were at least professional. But the third act, a clown-faced throng of misfits called Sykotik Sinfoney, were incredibly funny. At last, some comedy! Their song, “Manic Depresso” (aka the “I’m so happy!!!” song) was hands-down the best thing about the entire movie, and almost worth seeking out the soundtrack (released on Charles Band’s Moonstone Records, naturally). Almost.

Unfortunately, that means that there’s a grand total of three minutes of truly enjoyable footage here. The rest of it is simply the beating-to-death of the schticks already introduced. As my friend Chris is wont to opine, “If it’s funny once, it’s funny ten thousand times.” On the other hand, if it wasn’t that funny to begin with, each repetition and retread merely helps the movie wear out its welcome at a geometrically-progressive rate.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 9
• dream sequences: none, technically
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• de facto music videos: 3
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Aaron Lustig (Vernon Locknut) played “Doctor” (no, that’s not what I mean) in the Voyager episode “Ex Post Facto”
  • Ian Patrick Williams (Dr. Payne) played “Doc Fitzgerald” in the Voyager episode “Spirit Folk”