THE ALIEN DEAD (1980)

Unwatchable; purposefully so?  The start of writer/director Fred Olen Ray’s unaccountably prolific career (just occasionally touching mediocrity), this jump-starting entry tapped into the burgeoning home video scene/Junk Marketing Division with VHS covers promising sex, gore and affordable prices.  (Thank exec producer Henry Kaplan for insisting on that topless swimming scene.)  Not much narrative movement, just the usual White-Trash swamp-land Floridians hunting ‘gators and getting gnawed on by mutant aliens.  Shot on miserable color stock (apparently a ‘positive’ you could print off of), it boasts washed out color against pools of darkest gloom.  Cast with talent-free amateurs, staff relatives and college interns (?), a few getting face-time with old-time serial actor Buster Crabbe.  So much for the film.  Of greater interest: When did young filmmakers start wanting to be the next Ed Wood rather than the next Orson Welles?  Possible answer: While the ‘50s brought the long unavailable CITIZEN KANE back to circulation in movie theaters, the ‘70s/‘80s Home Video revolution brought Wood (and others less hopeless) into the basement.  Many hitting that ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ bell.  Heck, thought many a budding director, if Wood could do it . . .  why not Your Name Here?  Only Wood never tried to make (wink-wink/nudge-nudge) knowingly bad films, Fred Olen Rau, and his ilk, did.  Their output less film than symptom.

WTNT/LINK: The young John Sayles wrote a pair of films that show just what Ray couldn't pull off . . . and for not much more money.   Joe Dante’s highly enjoyable PIRANHA/’78 and Lewis Teague’s ALLIGATOR/’80 opening just months after this.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/09/alligator-1980.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Don’t believe our poster, the frame ratio is 1.85 : 1.

CONTEST:  Ray makes a show of film literacy with an opening a la JAWS; a mention of a McGuffin Bridge; the shambling gait of his Living Dead to match George Romero’s, even a shock intro entrance lifted from (of all people) David Lean.  Name the last (film & character) to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.