Is this film just a blatant, bold-faced Asylum Entertainment-style ripoff of Alien? Why yes, Virginia, it is. That's exactly what this movie is and I don't think it tries to be anything else and I congratulate director William Malone (responsible for The House on Haunted Hill remake and the terrible Parasomnia) for having the balls to make such an obvious copy. Even the name is derivative in the finest sense of the word. But does that make it a bad movie? Well, it depends on how you go into it. If you come in expecting a sci-fi masterpiece to rival Alien, you won't find it. But if you are bored on a rainy Saturday afternoon and catch this flick on TV, then grab yourself some popcorn and a soda, my friend, because you will actually have a pretty fun time. It ain't classic sci-fi, but it's classic b-movie fluff in all its gory glory.

"In the competition for new materials and advances in manufacturing techniques, two multi-national corporations have invested heavily in space. The rival firms of Richter Dynamics and NTI are locked in a fierce race for commercial supremacy." That's taken word-for-word from the brief voice over at the beginning of the movie. We're on NTI's side as we join a rag-tag bunch (really, is there any other kind?) of NTI guys whose job is to set claim to an archeological discovery of alien origin on Titan. During the voyage a girl, who is a terrible actor with a terrible accent, asks a guy to sleep with her because she thinks she's not going to make it. We get a random, nonsensical sex scene and then we continue with the film. The ship crash lands in a crater and they find that their rivals at Richter have beat them to the punch. Their ship is badly damaged, so they try to reach out to their enemies for some assistance. They are joined by a bull dyke who, possibly due to budgetary restraints, is the team's one and only space marine. Why would you need a team of rough-and-ready space marines spouting lines like "Game over, man! Game over!" when you can have a man-lady with a machine gun? See, I like to make you think with these reviews, and I am happy to be successful. Anyway, they get to the ship and find the Richter team digested and guess what's on the loose? That's right, the Creature, and I'm glad to see you're still with me. Anyway, remember that chick who wanted to get nasty because she knew she was going to die, well she was right because she's the first victim of the Creature's blood thirst.

They return to their ship, the Shenandoah, and relax a bit. But not for long because who should show up to make this movie awesome but Werner Herzog's muse Klaus Kinski as Hans, the last surviving member of the Richter team. He's not a very likable guy, and they all want to kick him out, but he is the only one who knows what they're dealing with. They have apparently stumbled onto someone's galactic menagerie of monsters from all over the universe and they have awakened something that has been sleeping for 2000 centuries, give or take a day. The sexed up girl who was killed by the Creature returns and her name appears to be Susan. She leads her boyfriend out of the ship and onto the planet's surface where she strips naked and distracts him long enough to remove his helmet and screw him while he suffocates due to the moon's lack of atmosphere. Is her dead body being possessed by the Creature or is she a zombie? Well, it's a bit of both. Meanwhile, the folks on the ship realize that they will need more air than they have so they send Hans and man-lady Marine, who he has the hots for, out to collect the air tanks from the dead Richter team. When they leave, the captain and his co-pilot Beth (played by cutie Wendy Schaal from Innerspace and Reform School Girls) get a call from the guy who was suffocated outside the ship. He is fine and dandy and now on the Richter ship. Meanwhile, Hans and man-lady Marine get attacked by a blood-spewing Susan. The captain and a few others join the guy on the Richter ship, only to become prey to the Creature. Beth is left alone on the Shenandoah and is attacked by Hans, who has suddenly become a zombie alien. Beth is forced outside and almost suffocates in the dense atmosphere until she slams her helmet on and escapes Kinski's melted face. The captain is waiting on the Richter ship, trying to contact Beth, but he can't reach her because she's on the planet's surface. Beth is captured by Kinski or Hans or whatever you want to call him and dragged into the Richter ship, which was nice of him. He is shot by an electricity gun and then has the alien parasite ripped off of his brain and stepped on, which seems to finally do the job and put him down permanently. Beth, the captain, and one other guy try to figure out a way to kill the Creature and Beth remembers how they killed the alien in Howard Hawks' The Thing (not kidding), and they decided to follow suit and slam thousands of volts of juice into the Creature. The problem is that they have to get into the bowels of the ship where the Creature is lying in wait, but they have to do what they have to do. She manage to patch up some wires in what is basically a way to pad the film out with some techie crap.

Anyway, they manage to electrocute the Creature, but Beth gets curious and goes over to check out the cooked monster, only to have it come to life and take her hostage. The men try and find a way into the compartment where the Creature is keeping Beth, and one of them stumbles upon a load of space dynamite (that's me calling it that, not the movie, but they might as well have called it that). The guy gets eaten, but not before he straps a bomb to the Creature and the captain kicks it out of the airlock, but the bomb fails to go off until man-lady Marine shows up and shoots the bomb, finally blowing up the creature. Where has she been this whole time? Well, she got lost (still not kidding). The survivors head home, a job well done...well, not really because their job was to protect the archaeological sight and...oh, who cares. Some people died and an alien was killed, a good time had by all!

You never get a good look at the Creature, which is a shame, and was probably done because it looked cheap, but from what can be glimpsed it looked pretty impressive. The film is too messy to be coherent or allow us to care for the characters, that being said, I really enjoyed watching this movie, rip- off or not. I wish Kinski would have been in the movie longer than two scenes and I doubt he was actually the guy in the zombie Hans makeup. He is wonderful to watch and is a really talented actor that would have gotten bigger and better roles if he wasn't such an asshole. The plot also allows for a lot of the red stuff to flow and we at StrictlySplatter like our films splattery, so this one definitely passes muster with scenes of face skin being ripped off and the Creature chomping on people's necks. The film as a whole is not very good, but in the case of a b-movie that is a good thing. The silly, random, odd bits of dialog and acting choice and editing or what-have-you just makes the film more unique and what are we searching for, fellow cinephiles, if not for unique viewing experiences. Now, don't blame me if you watch this film and it burns your eyeballs out from sheer sucking force. I am warning you ahead of time that this is a crappy movie, but it is kind of entertaining at the same time, and if you are in the mood for a cheesy 80s sci-fi experience then this is as pure an experience as you will find.

- Jose Prendes