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Invader (a.k.a. Lifeform) (1996) Cotter Smith .................... Dr. Case Montgomery Deirdre O'Connell ............ Dr. Gracia Scott Robert Wisdom ............... Colonel Jessie Pratt Ryan Phillippe .................. Private Ryan Leland Orser ................ Michael Perkett Synopsis Good screams are hard to come by these days but there are one or two in Lifeform, a decent Alien-style thriller released on disc by Live Entertainment (LD60293, $35). One of the Viking landers plops down in the desert on Earth, close to a military installation. Brought in for inspection, it turns out the probe has been partially converted into an incubator, but the scientists and soldiers can't get to the egg before it hatches and pretty soon something that looks like a cross between a gorilla and a praying mantis is stalking the building. The film is intelligent, decently plotted and has its fair share of thrills. The no-name cast is competent and their performances contribute greatly to selling the concept, particularly Deirdre O'Connell, who appears as the token female scientist. From DVDLaser.com Availability Unavailable. (I saw it on the Sci-Fi Channel.) The Leland Factor Supporting-size. He shows up in two large chunks of action, once at the beginning and once at the end. Allison's Review It doesn't get any cheesier than this film. (Well, maybe not. Whatever Lou Diamond Phillips movie was on before Lifeform aired made its special effects look worthy of an Oscar.) Seriously, Lifeform is so bad it's good. Despite being a B-grade alien horror flick, I felt it had a lot of things going for it. Superficially, I was pleased that the male and female leads looked like actual people instead of hot young model-types. (Traci Lords and Epicenter, I'm looking at you.) There was some intelligent dialogue concerning the American kneejerk reaction to want to annihilate whatever alien life we might come in contact with. The alien had an actual purpose in mind, other than wanting to kill humans, though I'm not entirely clear on what those purposes were. And the alien itself, once we got a full look at it, looked spectacular. The designers ought to be commended for creating something so original and making it look that damn good. Leland plays Michael Perkett, who is somehow affiliated with NASA and seems to be friends with Cotter Smith's Dr. Montgomery. It's not very clear how Dr. Montgomery gets his hands on the returned Viking lander that eventually spews the alien, but once he does, he brings in Perkett to help analyze it. Perkett reminded me somewhat of Purvis from Alien: Resurrection--he seemed to be the quiet, shy type, and had a kind of halting quality to his speech that made me think of nervousness. I liked him. Perkett informs Montgomery, while going through what appears to be boxes of photographs, that there happens to be a Viking lander that is unaccounted for, and that's most likely the one sitting in their lab. He then has an exposition scene where he explains to Montgomery and Dr. Scott what all the various contraptions on the lander are and what they do. He's the one who discovers something not quite right with the lander--there's something sticky and veiny-looking in a recess on the side. I just about screamed when he touched it, because I didn't want him to get somehow infected and then die, per usual. He does some more technical stuff, and then Montgomery tells him to go home for the night. After Perkett leaves, the shit hits the fan, and the base is sealed for quarantine. The commander of the Army troops that have moved in informs the guards on the outside that anyone trying to get in is to be shot on sight. To which I thought, great, Perkett's going to come back in the morning and get capped. Fortunately, when he does come back (about two-thirds or more through the movie), the guards merely tell him he can't enter. So he calls Montgomery, who tells him to set up a link to the computer in the lab. Or something. I was a little confused. Leland spends the rest of the movie in his Hole of Technology, trying to figure out what the alien attached to the lander and for what reason (I think it hacked the NASA mainframe). At one point, while on the phone with Montgomery, the alien showed up on a video monitor on Perkett's desk, looking like it was about to take out whatever security camera it was looking at, and I nearly freaked. I was still hoping Leland would survive the movie, even though I already knew how it ended. The ending has to be one of the great letdowns in cinematic history. The alien breaks outside the compound, and we see it outside on a hill, gazing up at the moon in what appears to be wonder. Then, with no warning whatsoever--cut to ultra-bad stock footage of a mushroom cloud. Once we as an audience have grasped what we are seeing, the camera cuts to a set of double-doors bathed in orange light. Leland comes rushing out of them in slack-jawed disbelief. (Me: "YES! He was outside the blast radius!") Then he drops to his knees in a total EpisodeIII!Vader moment. I nearly fell off the couch laughing. Suddenly a Humvee comes rolling around the corner of the building, out of which comes some Army guy we saw briefly earlier in the movie. Perkett mutters at the guy to get away from him, he killed them, he killed the alien and it just wanted to come say hi (well, he didn't say exactly that). I was totally expecting the Army guy to pull out a gun and shoot Perkett execution-style. Instead, he said that they had picked up another Viking lander entering the atmosphere, and they needed his help. Fade-out on Perkett's shocked and disbelieving profile. Verdict You know you want to see it. I'm personally a fan of cheesy sci-fi movies provided they're not completely horrendous (like that Lou Diamond Phillips movie I mentioned earlier), and I enjoyed this one despite the laughably bad moments. /back |