Species IV: The Awakening

Species IV: The Awakening (2007): This is kind of a Jekyll and Hyde type of flick in that at times it is quite exciting and at others, the lack of any logic makes it seem kind of ridiculous. It also has a beautiful girl who frequently turns into a man eating monster in keeping with the Jekyll and Hyde genre. This is the fourth in the series which has as its main premise that scientists have genetically manipulated a beautiful blond with alien DNA which on occasion causes her to terminally mate with a handy male. In this case our lovely blonde is a college professor working with her uncle. She gets a bit of a funny feeling one night, goes bonkers, converts into a hideous deadly alien while mating and winds up nude in the woods. Brought to a local hospital, she manages to off about 2 floors worth of staff before her uncle injects her with some hormones and zings her back into humanity. Golly, her old uncle was really a genetic scientist who DNA’d her into her present condition and for about 25 years she’s been normal. Now they head off to Mexico to find his former associate and perhaps also to escape multiple murder charges. His ex-partner apparently is still playing with alien DNA and may be able to help keep our blond, blond rather than all scaly and horny. He left his partner for moral reasons but kept the blond….hmmm.

On the way to Mexico, our professor tells the girl the truth and shows her she can read a book by its cover…really. She touches a book and absorbs the content. Apparently she hadn’t noticed in the last 25 years that no one else she knows can do that. This concept is just a bit hard to buy into!

While wandering around old Mexico, our professor gets a tip from a fellow American about his ex-buddy and takes the suggested cab that is supposed to take him to his supposed friend. But the cab driver turns out to be an alienized male with super strength and tries to kill him. Luckily, he manages to escape and kill the cabbie and is a little angry at the American tipster. He gets another tip from the tipster and almost gets tipped over by an alienized female dressed like a nun who can leap tall buildings at a single bound plus kill with her lance like tongue as well as firing tongue bits into your head for extra lethality. He escapes but when our professor finally finds his ex-friend scientist, he is doing the nasty with this nun-gal-thing and no one seems to mind about her assassination attempt the night before or the lethal cab driver. Ridiculous!!

Well, they do some mumbo jumbo on the blonde to cure her but seem to convert her into a really nasty person who goes off, turns alien and wipes out a bunch of folks and is intending to repopulate the earth with her kids. The ex-nun thing then tries to get lethal with the professor again for no apparent reason. The professor appears to kill the nun-thing and our ex-blond, now all scales, horns and ooze, kills his ex-partner. The nun-thing suddenly recovers and goes after the professor again but ex-blond apparently has a few human DNA bits left and the two women (and I use that term in its loosest connotation) have a big finale cat fight or should it be horny scaly thing fight? They then both die. This whole thing made no sense at all but had plenty of violence, sex, and naked women so I can’t condemn it too much. The movie was unrated but would probably mutate into an R for: multiple naked blonds, naked aliens, horny aliens, lethal tongues, deadly tongue darts, multiple injections, multiple lost plotlines, horrible lack of logic, and especially for that building leaping, tongue firing, horny alien nun.

Evil Aliens (2005): This one was written and directed in the UK by Jake West who was responsible for one of my fave UK low budget vampire flicks, “Razor Blade Smile”. Jake has maintained his reputation for providing high VACS (Violence, Aliens, Carnage, & Sex) levels in his movies with this one. It is kind of like “ET” meets “Alien” and “Signs” plus a heavy dose of “Gilligan’s Island” for flavor. There is also an excellent homage to Sergio Leone’s famous Mexican stand-off scene from “The Good the Bad and the Ugly” but this time it’s between a bunch of aliens and some raucous, possibly inbred Welsh farmers.

It seems a UK TV show about aliens isn’t doing well in the ratings, consistently falling behind the cooking channel so the star is told to take her crew and get a story or else. They read an article about a Welsh farm girl who claims to have been abducted and impregnated by aliens and off they go to the remote island which she and her three brothers call home. The boys consider English an inferior language and don’t speak anything but Welsh which makes for some interesting subtitles. Soon the entire group is in a series of mostly hilarious battles with the aliens who have landed at a nearby ancient stone circle which they also used to re-power their ship. The aliens appear to try and impregnate almost every earth girl they can get their hands (or tentacles) on and a female alien eventually seduces the nerdly guy in the group for his first role in the hay. After lengthy battles and a late farm harvester assisted human victory, the survivors of both sides (1 each) get back home. The movie ends with the surviving alien telling her story about the dangerous Earth people to a local TV program and being laughed off the stage. This is not one to take seriously at all, just sit back, put on a guilty grin and watch the bodily liquids spray. The movie is unrated but would probably bleed an R for: cow dung bathing, massive blood flinging, double amputees, quadruple amputees, cranial amputees, shot gunning, arrow piercing, blade ripping, impregnation by Cesarean section and definitely for the worst alien anal probing ever seen this side of Uranus.

Moliere

Moliere (2007): Many mainstream critics felt this movie about Moliere, France’s great playwright and satirist of the 1600’s wasn’t biographically correct enough or as witty as Moliere’s original works. Since the movie was about a period in his life where little is known and attempted to tell a story of what might have happened to push him onto the road toward greatness, that criticism rings just a bit hollow. And complaining that the work isn’t as good as Moliere’s original plays seems a carp that could cover almost all modern movies. In any event, the Tapehead must again eat his words about French movies as this one is an excellent costume drama with excellent humor and satire. It tells his story from the point where his acting company was deeply in debt and he involuntarily visited the local jail (a true event) but was bailed out by a rich merchant needing instruction on how to act gracefully so he could court a court hottie, a widowed marquise who only entertained nobles. The countryside is full of shallow nobles, rich merchants who have no idea about the value of things, bored wives, and daughters who don’t want to follow their parent’s wishes. Hmm, come to think of it, maybe not that much has changed in 400 years. The movie is full of beautiful sets, multiple belly laughs, and thoughtful seriousness as Moliere gets a number of life lessons as the movie progresses. If you don’t mind subtitles, this is one to watch. The movie is rated PG-13 for: excessive satire, multiple lustings, dim nobles, poor nobles, scheming nobles, and for the happy ending that falls together just in time.

The Invisible

The Invisible (2007): Try this one on for a plot and see if it fits. Tough high school girl along with a couple of aide de thugs continually punch, slug and dent a brainy student’s friend over some tardy drug money. She then thinks brainy guy has snitched to the cops and really pulverizes him and leaves him for dead hidden in a remote sewer system. Other than that, she’s a real charmer and the movie tries to build up sympathy for the nasty ingénue by showing her really crummy home life. Ok, so a tough upbringing apparently is grounds for drug pushing and murder, is that what they are trying to say? But wait, this is a ghostly suspense movie so it turns out the guy is only pre-dead and his ghostly presence pops up wandering around yelling at everyone but no one can hear him. How many movies have you seen where spirits can see and hear everything but can’t be heard, must be in double figures I’ll bet. Brainy pre-dead boy follows his murderess around and he actually starts to find her attractive, yells at her a lot and eventually sort of gets her to tell someone where his body is hidden. His pre-dead body has to be found and resuscitated before he becomes real dead or he is….well…..fully dead. In the end he survives but his other pal that becomes pre-dead succumbs to reaching room temperature. The gal eventually goes to his hospital room and leaks some kind of karma or something into brainy boy and he recovers and she dies in his arms. Touching, no? NO! This was not a great movie and didn’t have very many redeeming features. The movie is rated PG-13 for: high school thuggery, multiple juvenile delinquents, screaming silent ghosts, nasty but sympathetic killer ingénue, wasted mother, useless father, and for the general all around depressing feeling generated by this flick.