Mary Jordan (Shellie Block) loves to jog, and she even has her sights set on
Olympic gold in the near future. If only
she hadn’t been abducted and inseminated by aliens. Now her life is in mild turmoil. Enter journalist Mark Timmons (Steven Blade), who types while wearing
sunglasses indoors as if he were Saturday
Night Live’s Michael O’Donoghue,
and has been in contact with Mary for the purpose of telling her story to the
whole, wide world. Of course, Mary is also
being pursued with much more malicious intent by the probably/definitely insane
Dr. Stone (Erik Estrada), and when Mary’s
sister Lisa (Heidi Paine) gets
abducted too (gee whiz!), all bets are off.
Not that they were ever really on.
I am in absolute amazement how vivid and downright coherent dreams are when portrayed in media. They may have odd elements in them, but oftentimes they’re little more than either a clue to a mystery the characters need to solve or a shorthand to delineate a character’s inner turmoil. Personally, I rarely remember my dreams, but several differences stand out between mine and those in fiction. One, the people I’m with are rarely people I actually know. In fact, outside of a few instances, they’re simply bodies serving as placeholders in whatever events are taking place, and they are just as likely to become someone else (recognizable or unrecognizable) ten seconds down the road as not. Two, not only do the people change at a moment’s notice, but the settings do as well. I don’t even need to leave one place and go to another. Sometimes all I have to do is turn my head, and suddenly I’m nowhere near where I started. Three, nothing ever seems to be resolved at the end of my dreams. They usually begin (if they have beginnings at all) and end with very little having taken place and very little of anything with any explicit value having been learned.
I am in absolute amazement how vivid and downright coherent dreams are when portrayed in media. They may have odd elements in them, but oftentimes they’re little more than either a clue to a mystery the characters need to solve or a shorthand to delineate a character’s inner turmoil. Personally, I rarely remember my dreams, but several differences stand out between mine and those in fiction. One, the people I’m with are rarely people I actually know. In fact, outside of a few instances, they’re simply bodies serving as placeholders in whatever events are taking place, and they are just as likely to become someone else (recognizable or unrecognizable) ten seconds down the road as not. Two, not only do the people change at a moment’s notice, but the settings do as well. I don’t even need to leave one place and go to another. Sometimes all I have to do is turn my head, and suddenly I’m nowhere near where I started. Three, nothing ever seems to be resolved at the end of my dreams. They usually begin (if they have beginnings at all) and end with very little having taken place and very little of anything with any explicit value having been learned.
There are themes that run through
many of these dreams, I’m sure, and I’m even more certain that there are those
who would suggest that the reason these themes remain constant in my dream life
is because they remain unresolved in my waking life. I understand the reason that dreams seem so cogent
in movies, television, and so forth.
They need to serve some narrative function, so they can’t be as
deliriously frustraneous as those I’ve experienced. And that’s what, funny enough, Bob James and company get (mostly)
right in their film Alien Seed. The dreams in this film are nigh-unintelligible
outside of the god-awful EBEs (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities) that are
peppered here and there in them. There
is a woman sleeping in a very wet bed with some unknown person next to her. There are women in nighties getting splashed
with blood (the only reason I could decipher for this one was as a surrogate
wet tee shirt shot). There are shots of
fire. The point is little to none of
what we’re shown is integrated into the film in any significant way. I suppose that some of it is meant to mimic
what UFO abductees have recalled of their experiences, and I can appreciate
that. But so much more of it is just
visuals. Granted, there are some nice
boobies in said visuals, but otherwise there’s little point. But that’s enough for some folks, and it
absolutely fits with my personal experiences.
The “alien messiah” angle of the
film is easily the most intriguing. As
has been posited by people for decades now, aliens have supposedly been
integral in forming and guiding our civilization since its very beginning. It’s been said they helped build the pyramids
of Egypt (most famously). It’s been said
that they have regularly chosen humans with which to breed. It’s been said that the human race sprang
forth as an experiment conducted by aliens, that we’re living on a gigantic Petri
dish under a galactic microscope or worse, that we’re being bred as some form
of cattle (in which case you would think they should have harvested their
product some time ago and/or should really get on the ball with the seeming
state of global affairs). For my part, I
can’t fathom why aliens would want to interbreed with human beings, especially
if they’re so vastly superior and so much further evolved from us. Unless, of course, Earth is a big old
interstellar brothel for extraterrestrials, and their outer space contraception
isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Regardless of how involved or
uninvolved one wants to get in considering this subject, Alien Seed does its damnedest to play it all inconsequentially and
straight down the line. The government
(read: The American military-industrial complex) wants to possess Lisa’s baby
to harness its power and increase their influence across the globe, because
peace doesn’t sell (contrary to what Dave
Mustaine may tell you). The Reverend
Bolam (David Hayes) and his “ministry,”
which I believe is in league with General Dole (Terry Phillips), also claim ownership of the infant and the power
it will bring, but his motives (whatever his specific aims may be) are more personal. Bolam is depicted as a genuine man of the
cloth, but he is also depicted in the standard cynical way for this type of
character. The very first scene he’s in,
Bolam’s eyes bug out of his head as he reminds his secretary (Marilyn Garman) that they will have
their usual sexual liaison that evening.
He is in a constant, diaphoretic state of agitation. We even get a throw away shot of him tossing
his clammy head back in revelatory ecstasy while kneeling by some votive
candles (though he could just as easily be getting his knob shined by his gal
Friday). The most intriguing pursuer of
Lisa and Mark is Dr. Stone as a biological riff on the Terminator (though
neither the character nor the actor portraying him come even close to the impact
of the James Cameron/Arnold Schwarzenegger/Stan Winston creation), but he gets so
little screen time and he’s so ineffectual, you really have to feel bad that Estrada actually put his name on this film
as a producer (an associate producer, I grant you, but still…)
What undoes this film in the final
analysis isn’t that it’s dumb. There
have been plenty of dumb films stretching back to the very dawn of cinema. And a lot of them have managed to be
entertaining, even when they have been incompetent (and some are entertaining
because of their incompetence). Alien Seed is not one of those
films. There are elisions of time and
plot points we are only told about when it becomes important to what narrative
there is (and I’m being generous when I use the word “important”). One can deal with characters who behave
unlike actual human beings, but when it’s done with the intent of plot
convenience, it’s irritating.
Motivations change just to attempt generating tension to keep the story
afloat for a longer run time. It doesn’t
work.
It’s been a complaint of
reviewers for many years that chase scenes are nothing more than padding for
films/television shows that are light on content. Now, you and I know this isn’t strictly
true. Some chase scenes are so well done
and so well thought out, they become integral to the potency of the work in
which they are featured. With that in
mind, there are no less than three chase scenes in this film, and I can tell
you confidently that not a single one of them adds any value to this film as
either narrative development or spectacle.
So, no, I don’t hate this movie because it’s dumb. I hate it because it’s dull. But you can just read that as “it stinks.”
MVT: There are several
scenes set in the topless bar where Lisa works (Mary may work there too, but
who can tell?). They’re entertaining and
engaging for the most obvious reason.
And they’re the only reason I could see anyone watching this film. Too bad there weren’t more of them.
Make or Break: The scene
where Mark visits Lisa’s apartment is stalker-y and implausible in the
extreme. He brings her Chinese food, and
then she lets him in, and then she tells him to leave. Then he sleeps on the couch. If this scenario took place in reality, it
would end in restraining orders, I assure you.
Score: 3/10
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