Really Awful Movies

In Alienator, a felon who looks like Fred Flintstone who’s wearing what looks like a silver life preserver, is held captive on a prison planet awaiting death row.

About to dispatch him is a spaceship commander played by the messed up Jan Michael Vincent, who when he’s not navigating warp drives, etc. hits on his sexy underling (seen below) while a portly Mr. Scott lookalike makes sure he’s playing by the book.

The felon Kol, manages to wrest himself free and make his way to an escape pod, which he crash lands into earth. That is where he’s sideswiped by campers drunk driving an RV. The vehicle’s occupants get him to the local camp warden’s cabin and while he’s convalescing, the campers pepper him with questions about ET, etc., while their otherworldly patient says someone’s out to get him.

alienator — Great Scot! It could be Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Right he is.

They soon find out that the escaped con Kol’s tracking bracelet is sending out signals to a terminator that’s been sent to find and kill him.

One of the campers, who looks like the lovechild of Emilio Estefez and Andy Samberg, peppers the film with unfunny movie references and speculates that they’ll be part of some War of the Worlds scenario, which almost comes to pass.

And this is where Alienator kicks into hilarious high gear as the terminator, an “Alienator” (accurately titled as it turns out, as alienate also means to transfer ownership of property) is portrayed by a giant female bodybuilder sporting an unflattering bikini bottom.

She’s impervious to shotgun blasts and wears breast plates that look like the bottom half of a blender or a stovetop espresso maker.

It looks as if b legend director Fred Olen Ray ran out of funds and was desperate to use his leftover space footage. Alternately inept and unintentionally uproarious. And as a bonus: lots of terrible lasers.

Check out our discussion of this very minor classic on the Really Awful Movies Podcast.

***1/2 (out of 5)

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure and Street Trash is definitely treasure.

One of the sleazier films we’ve ever stumbled across (a tall order) 1987’s Street Trash is pretty much as advertised.

A liquor store owner Eddie, comes upon a crate of dusty decades-old hooch called Tenefly Viper and sells it to scrapyard-dwelling New York City hobos (My how things change. The movie was shot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and The Daily News recently called one its thoroughfares a “hipster highway.”)

Anyway, the filth and squalor here predates even them.

The hooch causes faces to melt and bodies to blow up (enterprising Synapse Films even included a sticker in the Blu-ray of the 30-proof liquor). Shots on us everyone.

The dirty goon overlord of the scrapyard is Bronson, an ironic nod to Charles (who famously cleaned up the streets if not literally, then vigilante-style in Death Wish). He is a Vietnam vet who has his way with the gaunt local ladies of evening while trying to keep his violent and very elaborate flashbacks under control.

The dirty denizens are kept in check by the feared hot-head detective Bill (terrifically portrayed by Bill Chepil) and our antiheroes are a vagrant brother act Fred and Kevin, one of whom whores around with abandon and is just as grubby and debauched as Bronson (there’s also a hilarious subplot involving a two-bit mobster).

To comprehend just how sleazy the film is, a bunch of bums play keep away with another’s member after it’s lopped off by the local junkyard gang leader. A homeless fellow melts on a fire escape, and drips gross goo on a yuppie passerby and another shoves greasy chicken parts down his pants in an ill-fated attempt to rob a grocery store.

This is some great grilled cheese, a movie written, according to the screenwriter “to democratically offend every group on the planet.” (it doesn’t, Poultrygeist does, but it comes pretty dang close).

Anyway, much to recommend. Terrific, unrelenting, filthy.

***1/2 (out of 5)

CHECK OUT OUR DISCUSSION OF STREET TRASH ON THE REALLY AWFUL MOVIES PODCAST.