Last night, I watched my Retromedia Blu-ray of The Alien Factor.
On Blu-ray, this movie looks better than I've ever seen it before. That's not saying much, since my previous exposures to the film were by way of a television showing back in the early 1980s and a bad Mill Creek 50-movie pack DVD set a few years back, but I feel that this is an impressive high definition presentation, given the source material. There's some print damage, there are a few odd "jumps" in the picture, and such, but, for the most part, the detail and clarity are miles above my previous viewing experiences. The audio quality is good, once again considering the source material. (The actors in this film all sound as though they're speaking their lines through a replayed tape recorder, and no Blu-ray presentation is going to change that.)
Ahhh...The Alien Factor...
The Alien Factor is a bad movie, but it's my bad movie, meaning that it was a film that I saw at a young age that allowed for a thrill of discovery.
I first saw The Alien Factor by way of an afternoon television airing back in 1982 or so, when I was 10 years old. My mother was watching the film as well, and this made for quite an amusing experience. Throughout the movie, my mother kept laughing about how silly it was, and about how unbelievable the story was, but I, by contrast, was glued to the screen and I was freaked out by the alien creatures and the many killings. The movie made quite a mark on my psyche at that young age, even though I was fully aware that it was not in the same league as, say, Star Wars or Planet of the Apes. All I knew was that the deaths in the film were unsettling to my 10 year-old eyes.
The Alien Factor hits the ground running with the first killing, and then maintains a fast pace, although all of the scenes not involving the actual aliens are somewhat of a chore. This film features a notably amateur cast, and the effect is somewhat like watching a bunch of cardboard pizza boxes try to act their way through a movie. This is part of the charm, though. There are also quite a few funny inconsistencies. During one scene, a man watches an invisible alien in his snow-covered yard, the scene shifts to children playing soccer in a field where no snow is in sight, and then, finally, it shifts to the three kids staring at the man's dead body.
The real strength of The Alien Factor is that the aliens are cool-looking, despite the obviously crude makeup and effects. One crustacean-like creature was reportedly made of cardboard covered with enamel, but it works for the purposes of the film. Another alien, a hairy Bigfoot-type creature, is obviously an actor wearing Gene Simmons KISS style platform boots. This sort of thing beats out computer effects any day of the week, though. One invisible creature that manifests itself later in the story is a pretty good example of stop-motion. Finally, an alien that disguises itself to assimilate with the human race is an insanely spooky character with red eyes and an unsettling face that makes me think of Native American tribal masks and such.
I was not able to watch all of the extras last night, but I plowed through a couple and got the general gist. The Alien Factor is homemade small town 1970s science fiction in all its endearing glory.
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