Saturday, April 30, 2011

Alien Warrior

(Ed Hunt, 1985)
If Tax Shelter films are supposed to be so single-minded about filling the needs of the market, how do things like this happen? One possible answer: by trying to be all things to all people. In short, this is a sci-fi blaxploitation Christ parable for kids, with rape scenes. The resultant hash may be laughably wrong, but it's also majorly entertaining in a distinctly Edwoodian way. A plethora of car chases, foot chases, fist fights, knife fights, and gun fights alternate with the burly E. T. helping playmate Pamela Saunders run a literacy center over the objections of her useless boyfriend. As anyone who sees this will tell you, there are three untoppable highlights: the building of the car, the karate chopping of the stop sign in slow motion, and the Tipper Gore Memorial Graffiti Wall. None of these highlights involve the pimp stuff, which is pretty fucking painful in more ways than one. Still, better complete enveloping chaos than suffocating competency, and the Viral Gentility Effect doesn't get any more gloriously self-defeating than this.

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