Alien Species (1995) (aka Alien Terminator)

Plot
Five miles below the Earth's surface, a group of scientists are working on a series of DNA experiments which could change the world. One of the experiments goes wrong and creates a near-immortal organism which can regenerate instantly after being injured. The creature escapes into the facility and grows bigger before starting to pick the crew off one-by-one.

Review
You'd have thought that films riffing on Alien would have worn about by 1995 but no, the low budget vaults still continued to crank out the cheap-and-cheerful clones for the undemanding sci-fi horror fan. Alien Species sticks tightly to the traditional formula and simply transfers the story from outer space into miles below the Earth's surface. Take out any budget that Alien had. Stick in a few females who like getting their kits off in low-grade erotica. Trawl through a fancy dress shop's clearout costumes. And the end result should look something like this.

Despite the alternative title desperately trying to appeal to those who remember two classic films, Alien Species (to give it the UK release name) is a poor show all around. For a start the creature isn't alien - it's a man-made virus which is given a host in the form of the test mouse. Nothing so much as a sniffle of it being from outer space and given that the location is five miles underground, how any alien would make it down there undetected is another matter entirely. The setting itself is so small and dark that it's hard to really get a sense that this facility is any bigger than a handful of tiny rooms. The sets themselves are tacky, with panels and equipment looking like the faintest touch would send the whole thing crashing into the ground. It does come with the requisite number of dark corridors for our characters to stumble around, small air vents to crawl through and plenty of airlock doors for the obligatory scene where they attempt to seal the monster off. Even the sole appeal of these films - the monster - has been skimped upon. You never get a good look at the thing with either the camera keeping it off screen whilst it's attacking people or simply getting a very brief glimpse of a claw or mandible every now and then. From what I can gather, it's some sort of giant shaggy dog but maybe that's just wishful thinking. It's a joke to think that the budget would not stretch as far as the sole reason why people watch these films. As a result, the attack scenes are also relatively gore-free. The 'chest burster' moment looks to have been done on a zero budget as the creature conveniently opts to burst out of the person's back and onto the floor, no doubt to save on dry cleaning bills.

At least the two females in the film do what they must do in a film like this and that is proceed to get naked or wear as little as possible. I don't buy either Maria Ford or Lisa Boyle, two actresses who have starred in plenty of trashy films and cheapo erotica during their careers, as scientists. But let's face it, they're here to do one thing and one thing only and that is keep the adolescent male audience happy. Boyle does the duty twice, once in a make-out scene with her on-screen boyfriend in a tunnel and then pops back up later on for an obligatory shower scene. Even underground these scientists need to keep clean! One may question the need to watch this monster flick when you could go off and watch one of their more 'adult-orientated' flicks. It's a sign of how bad the rest of the film is when the token chick has to get naked twice to fill the screen time up. That's not saying they are great actresses, which they're clearly not. They've been hired for physical asset-related reasons and kudos to whoever hired them because job done! The rest of the cast are made up of guys with really bad mullets or ones who look like 80s hair metal rockers. Brawn over brains is the order of the day for them and they're not very smart. In fact they'd all look more at home in one of Lisa Boyle's adult movies than this sci-fi horror.

Verdict
Watch Alien if you want to see how this type of film is masterfully done. Watch porn if you want to see Lisa and Maria getting naked (and believe me, after seeing them in this film, there's not much more to see of Lisa!). Alien Species is shamefully bad filmmaking to say that it was made in 1995.