Alien Trespass
Directed by: R.W. Goodwin
Written by: James Swift, Steven P. Fisher
Starring: Eric McCormack, Jenni Baird, Dan Lauria, Robert Patrick
Lost “Alien Trespass” Found Wanting
When the greatest actor of his generation, M.Eric McCormack butts heads with a powerful studio executive, his latest film’s release was cancelled. All of its existing prints destroyed, its negatives burned, a science fiction classic lost forever. When Meric’s (as his fans called him) grandson, Eric McCormack heard that a lost print of “Alien Trespass” was discovered, he wasted no time in getting the film released to show the world his grandfather’s greatest performance.
Meric plays both Ted and Urp, the former a dashing astronomer who’s also a bit of a local celebrity and the latter, an Alien policeman who possessed Ted’s body to pursue an escaped creature. The monster, called the Ghota, starts wreaking havoc on the small town killing off its wacky residents and leaving nothing but puddles in its wake. Urp enlists the help of the once-idealistic artist-now-worn-down-waitress Tammy when she picks him up hitchhiking. Initially freaked out by his weird behavior, she’s eventually convinced of the Ghota threat and helps to bring the creature down. The police, meanwhile, still think that their celebrity astronomer has gone nuts and it takes Tammy and some meddling kids to convince the authorities to let Urp go. Tammy’s alien hunting experience is the kick in the backside she needed apparently as we last see her on her truck to chase her painting dreams.
If you haven’t guessed by now, Eric McCormack doesn’t have a famous movie star grandfather named Meric (or maybe he does, I didn’t check) and there’s no long lost science fiction epic called Alien Trespass. The movie takes pains to convince you otherwise though, even starting off with a fake newsreel on the history of the feature. It doesn’t stop there; the DVD is an exercise in verisimilitude, filled with in-character cast interviews, fake news stories and even movie critics debating the authenticity of the film. The film itself seems genuine until you see the CGI flying saucer (rendered in a UNIVAC perhaps?). But the saucer is a minor misstep as the whole film pays homage to the old sci fi creature features that we love so much. The Ghota is a delightfully real rubber costume, and Urp’s true form looks like something someone from the 50’s would dream up and with the actors hamming it up as the script requires it’s not hard to see that the guys behind this film really loved their B-movies.
As a deadpan homage to sci fi pictures of old, Alien Trespass is gold but it’s hard to see the point of meticulously recreating an old school feature when the originals are still there to be enjoyed. Definitely worth watching once but buy it if only when you’ve exhausted the classics.
