By Robert Scucci
| Published 12 seconds ago
1990’s Alienator is one of those sci-fi thrillers that you need to go into with an open mind. The most succinct review for the film can be found on IMDb, simply stating, “It met my low expectations,” and that’s exactly what you should expect from director Fred Olen Ray, who has his name attached to over 200 low-to-medium quality films across his prolific career. In other words, Alienator’s low budget shows on screen more than it doesn’t, but that’s also part of its charm.
In Alienator, you get green lasers that produce sparks when they hit their intended targets. You get a goofy troupe of teens that might as well be Scooby Doo cosplayers. You get a space fugitive named Kol (Ross Hagen), who escapes from an unspecified penal colony planet, running from a bodybuilding bounty hunter named Alienator (Teagan Clive), who’s dressed in a costume that looks like it’s made from spray painted cardboard and strips of leather. You know what else you get with Alienator? Pure, unadulterated B-movie charm that simply cannot be replicated intentionally.
If that previous paragraph didn’t get your motor going, then I don’t know what to tell you. I loved every second of Alienator, not even ironically, because this is exactly the kind of movie I was looking for after watching one too many straight-faced thrillers. This is where movies like this come in. Alienator is the ultimate low-stakes, at-home viewing experience with real rewatch value because it’s campy by design, and that’s all you should ever expect from it.
Terminator Meets Predator?
Alienator is ultimately a chase movie, and we’re introduced to the main players fairly quickly. Kol, a criminal scheduled for execution, steals a ship and hightails it to planet Earth, where he crash lands. A group of teenagers driving an RV find him in a disoriented state after accidentally running him over. They bring him to safety, where he warns that “she’s coming,” just before the collar apparatus on his neck starts glowing, letting us know that danger is in close proximity.
About 40 minutes into Alienator, we finally catch a glimpse of the titular antagonist, donning a laser gun, a bleach-blonde Vince Neil haircut, a silver half mask, and a wrestler body that looks like it could bench press 450 pounds without breaking a sweat. We’re also introduced to a pair of trappers named Burt (Fox Harris) and Harley (Hoke Howell), who come into play once the chase is fully underway, resulting in some of the most unintentionally hilarious sequences you could imagine. My favorite moment involves Burt and Harley having an encounter with a bear trap, only to immediately get up and start running like they didn’t just step into a bear trap.
If you want to see what it actually looks like when someone falls into a bear trap, check out The Wrath of Becky and you’ll quickly understand why nobody is popping up and sprinting after that.
Alienator herself, according to Alienator lore, is weakened by magnetic frequencies, because of reasons never fully explained. The nerdy kid in the group figures this out using his nerd logic, and they attempt to trap her with a metal net, because that’ll definitely work without consequence. Meanwhile, back on the vessel Kol escaped from, the Commander (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Ward Armstrong (John Phillip Law) argue over the ethics of capital punishment while watching the events on Earth unfold from afar.
Know What You’re Getting Into
At the end of the day, Alienator isn’t going to rock your world, but it’s a perfectly serviceable B-movie packed with camp and dumb fun. The special effects are laughably bad, and the acting somehow manages to be even worse. Still, if you throw this on right before falling asleep and let your twilight-addled brain do all the heavy lifting, you’ll probably have a great time. All the beats you’d expect from something like Predator are here, just executed on a shoestring budget.
If you’re not into B-movies, you’ll want to sit this one out. But if you’re anything like me and actively seek this stuff out as a way to blow off steam and laugh at a cast and crew doing the absolute best they can with extremely limited resources, you might as well fire up Tubi and give Alienator a go.