Horrorplanet/Inseminoid (1981)

This dual-titled early-80s "Alien" knockoff is little more than a thriller-without-the-thrills.

An interplanetary expedition is interrupted by an alien presence, and within minutes impregnates crewmember Sandy (Judy Geeson), and if you thought a woman pregnant with a human baby is hormonal, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Her interspecies pregnancy unleashes murderous impulses in her, as well as a taste for human flesh, and Sandy begins wantonly murdering crewmembers. This, as you can imagine, puts a strain on the mission.

Technologically, this crew seems to come from the future, but is strangely confined to the limits of the cutting-edge developments of the late 1970s. "Futuristic" wall-mounted communicators are actually white plastic telephones from the era, and their weapons are silly-looking quasi-space/disco age trinkets.

Directorially and technically the film is even worse. Cut-ins are distractlingly obvious stock footage of space and generic-looking space phenomena, which provide establishing shots between scenes and sometimes come at nonsensical points in the movie.

The alien baby effects employs poorly-constructed puppets, and an early look at the monster "daddy" looks like a rubberized version of the robot from “Forbidden Planet.” The creature is seen briefly, hits dat (in a figurative sense), then disappears for the rest of the film.

The actors were as adequately trained for fight choreography as they were for acting (which is to say not at all): the fight scenes are awkward and unrealistic, and look silly even compared to most bad sci-fi flicks. A woman with a badly burned leg slowly kneels, then falls bottom-first, then lays down on the floor. In one particularly classy sequence, a man fights Sandy by stomping on her pregnant stomach (albeit she’s pregnant with alien monsters).

A brief (and very out of place) sex scene features a man and a woman, topless, hugging and rubbing each other’s backs passionately while kissing rather dispassionately.

The idiotic crew continues to encounter Sandy one-on-one, until finally several crew members rush her together armed with weapons. They proceed to accidentally kill each other with the weapons rather than the killer. Later, as Sandy slowly approaches one victim with a weapon, a colleague flees rather than helps when the victim clearly could have escaped.

The closing credits rehashes the actors’ on-screen deaths in rather entertaining fashion. But none of it is quite as entertaining as it could be. This is a film that exists mostly to laugh at rather than with. It lacks the cornball spirit that a truly good be-movie possesses.

Rating: 2 Yaps