Fugitive Alien (1987)

Very disappointing...

The Worst Film Ever

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Nice guy alien Ken gets deemed a traitor by his race after he kills his buddy after he refuses to kill a little boy and his mother. Fortunately, Ken manages to make the best of a bad situation by joining the crew of a spaceship. Meanwhile, the vengeful Rita tracks Ken down so she can kill him. Boy, does this honey possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as a real four star stinkeroonie: The ham-fisted (mis)direction, hilariously horrendous dubbing, ineptly staged action scenes, tacky (markedly less than) special effects, sloppy narrative, on and off erratic pacing, tin-eared dialogue ("The thought of killing anyone is just too horrible"), corny flashbacks, groan-inducing moments of sappy sentiment, broadly drawn characters, and the frustrating to be continued cliffhanger ending all provide a wealth of unintentional belly laughs. A total howler.

This is a Japanese production and a pretty good one. Its visually interesting and the plot is easy to follow. I found it to be reasonably entertaining despite a couple of slow spots here and there. There are some campy stuff like the way the characters shrug off tragedy in their lives. The love of Ken's life dies and he pretty much goes on about business without shedding a tear. Captain Joe loses his daughter and Wife and next day he is back at work, eager to get busy. Despite its flaws I enjoyed the look of the show. The ships and space battles look pretty nice, the bad guy looked nasty, and the English dubbing wasn't very distracting. I liked some of the costumes and locations as well. ,,,, You know, to be totally honest about it, if William Shatner had played Captain Joe, there would probably be tons of interest in this neat little science fiction flick. Definitely deserves a much better rating that it gets here. I give it a 5.5...its fun.

....and none of my feverish hallucinations ever came close to the sheer insane absurdity of this complete nonsense. This is definitely one of Sandy Frank's most entertaining - admittedly for all the wrong reason - efforts (although that is a little like saying that this is one of Coleman Francis' most fun-filled features); certainly better than the steaming pile of acidic manure that is Time of the Apes. Seriously, that movie made my eyes hurt. At least Fugitive Alien, for all its incoherent attempts at plot lines, for all its sloppily spliced together scenes from some cheesy Japanese TV series, for all its insanely awful dialogue ("You're stuck here!"), is unintentionally hilarious. And I mean HILARIOUS. As in, John-Cleese-eat-your-heart-out, knee-slappingly, air-gaspingly laugh out loud hilarious. If you have to choose between watching the latest shrug-worthy Adam Sandler/Vince Vaughn/Ben Stiller "comedy" or this... choose this. It's colourful, stupid as hell, and unbelievably entertaining for the most part. Wait, am I recommending a Sandy Frank movie? Oh well, I guess it's finally happened. I've gone insane. There is no hope left for me now. I guess I'll just go and watch Fugitive Alien again. It makes my brain... comfortably numb.

Yes, this story of Captain Joe and the Backus 3 (if I remember correctly) is one humdinger of bad film. I don't remember much except shots of the actors in the ship and stuff happening. Having them in a centrifuge or something to give the effect of massive g-forces on their bodies. Them walking around and fighting like they were the power rangers without the costumes and martial arts (if you can call it that). Of course, I saw it on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 so it was great thanks to Joel and the 'Bots. Watch for the forklift part. Joel does this great impression of chipmunked-cheeked Captain Joe. Wait until he laughs and says:"You're stuck here!" imitating the character. It's the only way to see this film and frankly, I dare not see it with the MST3K version. Find a tape of it. They trade them over the net. Also one of the early KTMA episodes of the MST3K that they did over. Just see the MST3K version. Seriously.