1982 Alien clone
Rating: 8/20 (Libby: 7/20; Josh: 5/20; Fred: 6/20)
Plot: A space guy with an android friend is sent to a planet where research and experimentation is happening. Oh, and sex. That’s apparently happening quite a bit, too. While there, the experiment they call a Ding Whopper (seriously, several times) breaks out and wreaks havoc.
An alternate title for this is Mutant which is more appropriate because it’s a one word title like the classic it’s ripping off. This is from a story by shane-movies favorite Jim Wynorski (and frequent collaborator R.J. Robertson) who co-directed Dinosaur Island and was the subject of this kind-of cool documentary. And that’s unfortunate because the writing is easily the worst thing about this movie. I guess we can blame screenwriter Tim Curnen who also wrote something called Ghost Warrior about a samurai in deep-freeze before he was never allowed to write anything again. The storytelling’s languid when it’s not unnatural and goofy, and I’m not sure Wynorski or anybody else associated with the writing of this has ever heard of science. Or maybe they just made filthy doodles in the back of their science classrooms like I did when I was in school. The acting also makes it impossible to take this seriously. The pair of women space scientists don’t look like the type of people who have even heard of outer space, and they definitely don’t belong anywhere near a spaceship or a laboratory. They look like they might have been “discovered” in a strip joint actually, and that’s about what their characters are in this for anyway. Seriously, this might have the most gratuitous nudity and sex I’ve ever seen in a movie. Guy arrives, horrible monster kills somebody horrifically, sex happens, more mutant mayhem, same guy almost gets it on with the other woman. And this is exactly the type of movie that’s going to throw a scene where the two gals are having a conversation while showering just because. Don’t get me wrong. I love female nudity as much as the next guy, but it just didn’t make any sense here. One of the women, Dawn Dunlap, played Taramis in another Bad Movie Club flick, Barbarian Queen, so there’s a pretty good chance we’d already seen her naked since they were all naked in that movie. June Chadwick was the other female scientist, and she had more of a career. She was even in This is Spinal Tap and a couple episodes of The A-Team. The worst acting comes from Linden Chiles who played Dr. Gordon. Chiles can’t play angry realistically at all which is not good at all since he’s angry for almost the entire movie. Well, until he’s replaced by an oozing special effect. Those special effects–including different evolutions of the titular mutant–are really pretty effective, at least if you’re into gross-out squelchy stuff. There’s an effect near the end, one that has to do with a twist that would be cool if it wasn’t for science and stuff, that was really disgusting, and what happens to some of these characters is often hard to watch. The ship and weapons used by the characters aren’t half bad either. But none of it is enough to be an adequate life preserver to save Forbidden World from drowning in its bad acting and worse writing.
Ding Whopper though. You’ve got to give them credit for that one.
I’d apologize for the poster creases up there, but this is a movie that deserves creases.
