The Alien Within (1995)

Just perfect...

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This review may contain a few spoilers, if you can't handle spoilers, then stop reading right there. Without further ado, let the review begin. Unknown Origin (or The Alien Within) is a 1995 Horror Sci-Fi direct to video Leviathan rip-off. The plot of this movie is about a crew team in the underwater faculty have discovered an alien life- form virus, it's up to the crew team to survive this alien virus. This movie has tried hard to be a half-way decent low-budget Leviathan clone, but in the end, it turns out to be a cheap below average experience at best. Pros: - Good special effects for a low-budget movie - It's not long at all (it's 75 minutes or 1 hour & 15 minutes long) - Okay action scenes Cons: - Bad acting - Bad plot - Bad soundtrack - Miserable concept & presentation Overall, just watch Leviathan or The Abyss instead, just forget this low-budget below average rip-off. 4/10, the endRated R for violence, moderate coarse language, and brief graphic nudity

The Alien Within (1995) * (out of 4) Executive producer Roger Corman was behind this "film" taking place in the year 2020 after Earth's resources have been used up. We're told corporations went below the sea to try and find new resources and this is when we meet our mining crew and before long they pick up some sort of parasite from a nearby Russian crew. THE ALIEN WITHIN, also known as UNKNOWN ORIGIN, is a pretty poor rip-off of THE THING and in fact it's so close to the John Carpenter film that I'm really shocked Universal didn't go after them. I mean, we've always had rip-offs of popular films but not many of them rip this closely to the original source. Perhaps the studio just didn't care because they figured no one would remember the film after it originally played because it was simply so poor. There's really not too much going on here and at just 75-minutes it's really amazing to see how boring it is in that time. If you've seen THE THING then you're not going to be shocked by anything that happens here and it's a pretty direct copy of that film, although there's no character development, suspense or anything like that. Each scene just seems rushed, the special effects are laughable but they do add some camp and you can tell that the actors are just sleepwalking for their paychecks. Roddy McDowell plays the main scientist and we even have William Shatner's daughter Melanie playing a supporting role. THE ALIEN WITHIN is sci-fi at its very worst and unlike most of these Corman films, this one here features no exploitation, no nudity and it really doesn't have anything in it to make it worth viewing.

In the process of recovering from a heavy cold I have had trouble sleeping, haha! I thought lets catch up with some cable movies. So in the early hours I stumble across 'Origin Unknown' ('The Alien Within' US Title). Ah, Roddy McDowell nice surprise, NOT. This is a cheap made for TV pile of alien vomit. Why is the picture so dark? I ask, to enable a spooky atmospheric setting? NO, because the budget did not stretch to any set.Have I not seen some of these plot lines before? Yes the entire Alien series is ripped apart by this shoddy waste of time and effort.Avoid like the plague. 0.5/10

OK this movie does borrow from The Thing, heavily. In fact it is more like a cross-breed between Alien and The Thing. Despite Its un-orginality and a bit of wooden acting overall it is a good B-Movie and well worth a watch if you are into this sort of thing, mind the pun.I'll give it a *** out of 5