aka Night of the Alien

• Directed by Ronald W. Moore
• Written by John Best, Kathy Hagen, Ronald W. Moore and Edwin Neal
• Starring
  • Edwin Neal
  • Marilyn Burns
  • Gabriel Folse
  • Wade Reese

Well, it’s got a great cover…

We open in a lab with the ominous Splatter (Edwin Neale, the hitchhiker from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), a huge metal-covered bruiser who obviously thinks he’s in a Mad Max movie, being confronted by Eddie Pain, leader of this “movement” (yes, we find out later). Seems that Splatter is getting to violent. Seems that Splatter is forgetting who’s boss. It also seems that Splatter doesn’t care much.

And now for something completely different… We cut to a frat house party. Since this is 1985, the party is taking place in Synth Hell. (In fact, I’m going to assume the footage shot a year or two earlier, since by 1985 the mullet was in full flower on the heads of America, but there are no examples of it here.) After far too much time lingering over the various people attending, we finally meet someone important to the story: five guys from a rival frat, and their chaperone or house father or whatever you call ‘em, Clint. Seems these five did naughty things to the rival frat president’s Corvette, and they’re here to apologize.

Now, up to this point, we haven’t been able to tell who we’re supposed to root for. But then these guys are taken in to see the frat president, and it all becomes clear: The president is a supercilious type wearing a smoking robe and an ascot. We’re obviously not supposed to root for him. Therefore, by default, the others are the protagonists.

Instead of apologizing like they’re supposed to, they tar and feather the president. Ha ha. Then Steve, the big bruiser of the five, drives off without them, leaving them to race away from the pursuing rival frats. Ha ha. But when Steve finally arrives back at the frat house, he brings with him a gorgeous hooker as an apology to his fellow frats, and invites them up to the room two at a time, but then when two come in, the lights go off — and when they come back on, it’s a naked fat chick in bed with them. Ha ha.

(I would like to point out that we’re now fully twenty minutes into the movie, and the plot has yet to make an appearance.)

Perhaps this is a good time to tell who the five frat boys are. I couldn’t be bothered to remember most of their names, but there’s the designated hero (the one who shows a shred of conscience and foresight during their juvenile shenanigans), the afore-mentioned big bruiser Steve, an all-American rich kid, a skinny kid who thinks he’s Jim Carrey, and a miscellaneous (vaguely Jewish?) kid. All clear? Good.

So Clint finally catches up with his boys, and decides to assign them penance instead of reporting them to the national frat office. Their task? Dress up like the street gang “freaks,” go into the bad part of town, and kidnap one of his choice, releasing him when they arrive home. Yup, I’m glad that these frat houses have a responsible adult overseeing the frivolity.

Oh yeah, in the meantime we also see a news broadcast which helpfully gives some exposition. It seems that two years ago there was an accident at a radiation research lab in the city, the site of which has now become a focal point for the “Mutants,” a supposedly peaceful anti-nuke subculture that dresses like extras from Blade Runner and lives in the derelict section of town that even the police won’t touch.

Well, the cops may not venture out, but our frats do, cruising the streets until Clint points out the freak he wants. As luck would have it, it’s none other than Eddie Pain himself — and as further (bad) luck would have it, Splatter is just around the corner. When the boys grab Eddie, Splatter starts throwing them aside, and kills Clint with a retractable spike thingie on the back of his arm. And when Eddie calls him on killing, what the hell, Splatter kills him too. He’s been looking for an excuse — and now, with the five frats, he’s got a scapegoat.

The rest of the movie, as you may guess, is a gigantic chase scene, with the frats splitting up into two groups and fighting their way through mutants. Along the way, as cliche dictates, the Nice Guy and another frat rescue a Mutant girl who’s about to be raped by police officers, and in return she helps them avoid capture. It all ends up in a big showdown in the abandoned radiation lab, which incidentally is where Splatter used to work, and the reason he wears a big metal helmet that covers most of his face and generally has a pissy attitude about life.

One would think that the frats get whittled down during the night-long chase, but Splatter’s goons have been given instructions to take them alive (so that Splatter himself can kill them), so even that avenue of excitement is closed to us.

Despite the fact that this has been called “the worst movie with the best cover art” (true story: A friend of mine in high school had a poster of this cover up in his bedroom — never saw the movie, never intended to), it’s really not an extremely lousy movie. I’ll probably see semething worse within the month (maybe within the week, since The Cars That Ate Paris is next on my docket). It’s just completely lackluster. Aside from commendable use of slo-mo, there’s nothing about the technical aspects of filmmaking that is noteworthy, and anything engaging about the premise or action was later used, to better effect, in 1995’s Jungleground starring Rowdy Roddy Piper.

And in case you’re wondering, there’s nothing at all futuristic about Future-Kill. It could be worse, I supposed — the UK title is Night of the Alien.

But hey — it is a damned cool cover.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10 (plus one machine-gunned cat — ewwww!)
• breasts: 6
• explosions: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0