Review: Alien Apocalypse

I don't have cable. Shocking, I know, but from what I see of it when I go to my mother's house for dinner or to a friend's apartment to hang out, I'm not missing that much--cable just means having access to more channels showing programs you don't want to watch.

To most of my friends who do have cable, though, the words "A Sci-Fi Original Movie" really mean "A Movie So Bad It's Not Even Worth Dumping on the Video Market."

Such is the case with Alien Apocalypse, a Planet-of-the-Apes-meets-Road-Warrior mess starring Bruce Campbell and Renee O'Connor (both veterans of Xena, Warrior Princess, as are director Josh Becker and co-screenwriter Rob Tapert) as two of four astronauts who return from 40 years on a deep-space probe to find Earth decimated. They don't seem too upset about it, though--Dr. Ivan Hood (Campbell) openly wonders how many other doctors are left when he's not flirting with Kelly (O'Connor), who looks mighty fine in a flight suit. (I'd tell you about the other astronauts, but they're both knocked off in the first 15 minutes, so who cares?)

Crash-landing in what used to be Oregon (they come across the remains of Portland), they find what's left of humanity ruled by the Mytes--big, ugly insects live in big hives and whose two favorite delicacies are wood and human fingers, which get chopped off of anyone who tries to escape from their sawmill.

Ivan and Kelly can't understand why humanity isn't fighting back against the Mytes--they're either working for the aliens or have meekly submitted--so Ivan makes a run for it and goes in search of allies to form a resistance, most especially the President of the United States, rumored to be living in exile in the mountains. Ivan makes friends and battles foes along the way, but he eventually does find the President (Peter Jason), now a shaken, discouraged shell of his former self. That leaves Ivan with a choice: Keep on going or go back to the sawmill with his newfound friends to attack the Mytes and rescue their prisoners, including Kelly.

Alien Apocalypse looks and sounds very cheap--the Mytes are either puppets or badly computer-animated, and many of the voices are poorly dubbed. (The actors look like they're mouthing the right words, so this was probably shot in Australia or New Zealand, and the dubbing is hiding the obviously-not-from-Oregon accents.) Worst of all, though, is the uneven, uncertain presentation of the whole thing: Is Alien Apocalypse supposed to be a sci-fi action/adventure flick, or a parody of sci-fi action/adventure flicks? Campbell gets plenty of opportunities to make smartass comments, while O'Connor, who doesn't get nearly as much to, is usually straight-faced and serious--it's like they're acting in two different movies.

Then there are uncomfortable moments, like when characters hold up hands that have had fingers lopped off, or when a female character gets raped onscreen, followed almost immediately by a couple of choice Campbell one-liners as he dispatches the bastard. But...she just got raped; are we really supposed to be laughing?

I shouldn't expect so much from a made-for-cable movie, I know, even if it stars Bruce Campbell, who's been so good in the past in movies like the Evil Dead series, Bubba Ho-Tep or even his cameos in the two Spider-Man movies. But just because a movie goes straight to the Sci-Fi Channel doesn't mean someone somwhere along the way can't at least try to make it good. With Alien Apocalypse, nobody seems to have cared enough to make it good, or at least consistent in tone. Why, then, should I?