Alien Infiltration

ALIEN INFILTRATION (aka ALIEN OPPONENT) (2010)

Directed by: Colin Theys
Screenplay: John Doolan
Starring: Jeremy London, Roddy Piper & Ashley Bates

B-movie to the max, Alien Infiltration throws in everything but the kitchen sink in order to entertain, gross out, and up the ante on the last mad-as-a-bag-of-smashed-frogs scene. Sci-fi, action, gore and a whole heap of absurd comedy keep the running time rocketing along as a bunch of rednecks (and a few other stereotypes) take on a big badass alien in a scrap yard. Yep, that’s the set-up in a nutshell: some crazy country folks promise a hundred grand to whoever can ever retrieve a dead body (which they hope to cash the life insurance in on) from within the bowels of the scrap yard and avoid the big, nasty, alien robot that has crash landed in it. The locals line up, tool up and it’s not long before they are being dispatched in every increasingly creative and ludicrous ways by the alien and its many traps and contraptions.

Much more of a comedy that a straight up action sci-fi flick, Alien Infiltration is still a lot fun that cruises along on its ample manic energy. The filmmakers are obviously having a hoot, cramming in any absurdity, demented character, inventive death or crazy action scene they can think of. In fact, they seem to be having so much fun that all coherency flies out the window in favour of frenzied fun. The flick is all over the place with its host of endless weirdo characters to kill, meaning scenes often start, stop abruptly for another scene to start to then only come back to the previous scene some time later. This makes everything very disjointed but when there is this much trigger happy madness and alien killing carnage going on, it really doesn’t matter.

Despite the singular setting, the filmmakers use their limited budget wisely and the alien design is pretty cool. A big hulking robot, the alien is menacing enough to feel like a threat and has a few inventive tricks up its sleeve: including building another killer cyborg complete with buzz saw arm, that looks like a cut price mecha from some anime TV show. The action comes thick and fast and uses every type of weapon and small town stereotype (including the football and baseball teams, who have a go at taking out the alien!) to imaginative and gory heights. No person if safe from death (not even children, the poor local kids karate club coming to an untimely end in one particular WTF moment!) meaning you never really know who is gonna make it to the end of the film.

The humour is as copious as the action and is lewd and crude but often laugh out loud funny. Plus not what’s not to like when you have the always awesome Roddy Piper as a machine gun wielding preacher who after being killed comes back to life, in one of the film’s more outlandish scenes, by way of parasitic alien and has to be put down via the way of the age old, but always reliable, chainsaw dismemberment? Awesome.

It doesn’t always make sense and you will often find yourself going “What the fuck?” but with some slick special effects, an infectious vibe of fun and lots of alien bashing action, Alien Infiltration is a hoot.