The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 68 days to go.
Evil Aliens is something of a Ronseal movie: it does exactly what it says on the tin. A gleefully grisly grindhouse indie sci-fi horror movie, it’s a shlockfest that revels in its sophomoric humour and vulgar splatter-movie aesthetic. Heavily – and obviously – influenced by Peter Jackson’s Braindead and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, it also takes inspiration from Predator, Predator 2, Doctor Who and even The League Of Gentlemen. Although when it comes to sex scenes you could argue it in turn had something of an influence on Star Trek: Discovery.
The film opens with a bang – quite literally – as Cat Williams (Jennifer Evans) moonlight tryst with her boyfriend turns coitus interruptus, said interruptus being provided by alien abduction. Before you can say ‘anal probe’, the aliens have quickly dispatched Cat’s boyfriend and graphically implanted her with an alien embryo before dumping her back on Earth.
“Crass, silly, violent and low-budget, Evil Aliens is a lot of fun if you approach it in the right mindset.”
Her story, in turn, attracts the attention of the struggling cable TV show “Weird Worlde” and its buxom hostess Michelle “Foxy” who travels to the remote Welsh island of Scalleum, accessible only via a narrow causeway at low tide, with her film crew to get the inside scoop. Unfortunately, with the alien invasion a very real threat, our heroes are more likely to end up with their insides scooped out.
Crass, silly, violent and low-budget, Evil Aliens is a lot of fun if you approach it in the right mindset. There’s more than a hint of Troma in some of the set pieces and staging but you have to admire – in the day and age of cheap digital effects – just how often Director Jake West favours practical effects for his gruesome and gory punchlines. There’s a definite tongue-in-cheek (amongst other places) attitude to the action and body horror and no stone is left unturned, or crevice unprobed, although surprisingly West doesn’t take the opportunity to join Paul Verhoeven and William Shatner (and arguably the pop group Busted) in the ‘triple breasted alien’ club.
With a story encompassing a grab-bag of movie tropes – the hostile Welsh-speaking bumpkin farmers, the geeky virginal UFO ‘expert’, the trashy and opportunistic TV crew, the movie may start out like a badly lit Torchwood episode from a John Barrowman fever dream but as it starts to build up momentum, it brings some wickedly dark humour and impressive – if often disturbing – inventiveness into play.
Evil Aliens is one of those classic ‘midnight movies’, the kind you used to be able to find on late night telly, post-pub with kebab or burger in hand. It’s a decent low brow watch sober, but I suspect its apparent qualities would only be enhanced by copious quantities of cider. Lechyd Da!
