Inseminoid (1981) is a sleazy hilarious Alien ripoff.

I love Alien so much I can't help watching all the terrible Z-grade knockoffs, and honestly, I enjoy these too because they show you why Alien is so good. You can see how Alien took the same kind of material but elevated it through high-class cinematography, breathtaking sets, the involvement of a real artist designing the monster in the form of H.R. Giger, excellent writing, the best cast you could hope for, etc. A lot of that does come down to the budget since millions of dollars allows you to get better actors, experienced craftsmen, more time for shooting, etc. so I still appreciate these down and dirty clones but the true flaw of these imitations is not being original. But like I said, I still love to watch them, and they usually have some well-done moments at least or they'll make you laugh. Inseminoid is pretty bad but it gets pretty crazy and fun around 32 min in. If you click here, you can watch it for free on Tubi right now (in the US at least). I really love the posters for it below.

Surprisingly, I love Alien: Covenant.

I was very mixed on Prometheus. The guy who maps the ship gets lost in it? The supposedly super smart scientists decide to throw caution to the wind and remove their helmets? Gee, why don't I pet the Alien cobra? He is her father... uhm so? This isn't Empire Strikes Back. In fact, I didn't even want to see Covenant. I figured I'd never see another good Alien movie again. Well, I'm happy to admit I was wrong, but I have to say I'm shocked at all the negativity surrounding this film. Whether I wanted to or not, I read everything people said about it beforehand and yet despite all that, I still liked it. A lot. To me, it's a billion times better than Prometheus, which again is not a high compliment since I hated the stupid characters in that one (and why didn't they leave in the deleted scene of the engineer speaking at the end?) but damn Ridley Scott got me. I did end up liking the characters in this, Fassbender was phenomenal, and the script made sense. Someone said there was a 5-minute flute scene, and like any rational person, I thought, "Damn, that sounds bad." Yet said scene has two Fassbenders in it, doesn't feel long at all, and is actually quite interesting since there's more going on than just learning the flute.

Gonna have to wade into spoiler territory here so stop reading now if you haven't seen it, but I don't understand why some are complaining Ridley screwed up the mythology with this one. Uhm, he did that already with Prometheus by saying the Space Jockey was just a stupid suit. The engineers still created the black goo. David simply refines it. Why is that bad? Sure, the gestation period is very short but David has been tinkering with his specimen a ton and I don't think we can assume the eggs in the first Alien film's Derelict Ship came from this same strain. Plus, from a practical point of view, no one these days would put up with Alien's deliberate, labored pace and AvP already jacked up the gestation time. Anyway, I love David playing creator, his great interactions with Walter, and I ended up liking Daniels and Tennessee a lot too. The Neomorph was fantastic. Same with the classic Xenomorph. I guess they painted over the practical FX with CGI, which I hate, but it looked quite good. I don't know why they needed to have practical built then in the first place unless they wanted to help the CG artists by having a real model to build off but I hope they warned the poor practical FX guys they were going to do that. Regardless, I loved it. Sometimes, the characters might make questionable decisions but they're not supposed to be super scientists in this one and they all seem realistic given how the android is meant to be their protector, they're in high stress situations, etc. People seem to be nitpicking the hell out of it and making little things seem all encompassing when they're not. At all. My dad called it, "Boring." What the heck. I was never bored in the slightest. At the beginning, I was still skeptical (listen for the music though... seems quite a few missed that) but it won me over big time. My buddy and I are both huge Aliens fans and we loved it. Now I hope Scott gets to finish this series of films but the poor box office worries me.

Review: The Hidden (1987)

This one was pretty disappointing. I saw the poster as a kid but never got around to watching it. Someone online mentioned it had some pretty good practical FX so I wanted to give it a shot. The premise also sounded promising and I'm a huge fan of '80s horror movies (who isn't?) so I tracked down the DVD. The opening scene is pretty good, and it has a lot more humor than I expected, but there are barely any alien FX despite there being plenty of opportunities (the creature takes over a dog!). Oh well, "grandpa" carrying a big boom box on his shoulder and beating the record store guy to death was so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh (awww the '80s! the alien loves music haha get it? ugh). Michael Nouri does do a good job acting, but Kyle MacLachlan was a bit too silly at times. I wish the creature design was better too. It just looks like a bloated worm or something. The dog admiring itself in the mirror was hilarious.

Japanese Movie Posters

Whatever happened to good poster art?

Ok, so the Predator 2 one isn't that good, and The Terminator looks like the US poster except with a bunch of other crap thrown on top. I still love 'em especially For a Few Dollars More.

I actually never saw A Better Tomorrow III since John Woo didn't direct it, and I heard it sucked. The first two were too perfect to be disappointed by another, but regardless, that poster is pretty badass.