JamieWJackson This is a bad movie. There are many things wrong with it and not much right. Here are the few bright spots:* Attractive female leads* Occasionally decent (albeit incoherent and inconsistent) effects/props/sets* Plot holes and cheesiness so extreme that you will get some laughs at the movie's expense Um... that's about it, really.I won't list the shortcomings. That includes pretty much everything else, and others have done that already. I will note one thing nobody else has yet: Charles Napier's character inexplicably vanishes from the plot roughly halfway through the film, leaving us wondering why he was there in the first place. He gets enough screen time in the first half that we think there's a purpose to his existence. Oops.The beauties in this should have gotten more work; its badness wasn't their fault. Lana Parilla did that silly alien spider movie (nearly as bad as this movie) early in her career, and she makes a fine "evil queen" in "Once Upon a Time" now.Basically, if you enjoy bad movies, or are simply obsessed with seeing all sci-fi movies ever made, knock yourself out. Otherwise, this is not for you. If you do watch it, under no circumstances attempt to take it seriously. The modest amount of enjoyment I derived from watching it came mostly from laughing at it.

classicsoncall I just checked the film credits for the two principal female characters in this flick. Ashley Semrick (Stacy) appeared in two movies, nine years apart, while Jodi Seronick (Carol) only has this one. Just goes to show what a picture like this can do for your acting career.But let's not get too carried away. This is NOT the worst picture ever made and doesn't come close to cracking my Top Ten Worst List. For that, you have to go into "She Gods of Shark Reef" territory. Still, there's no way a picture like this should have even been attempted as late as 1996. Seriously, who came up with the idea of transporting convicts in a prison van (no barrier between the cops and the bad guys by the way) and putting it smack dab in the middle of a sci-fi flick?However, if you pay attention, you can have a great time of cataloging the amount of sheer nonsense found here. Like the endless supply of aliens and ammo during the entire cave sequence, the cuts and bruises that come and go on the faces of Carol and Stacy, and the sudden appearance of a grenade launcher pulled out of the back seat of Max's car just before the final confrontation. Really? My candidates though for the most inane single element in the film come down to convict Towers (Marc Robinson) adjusting the rear view mirror trying to outrun the aliens, and Stacy replying that she 'pushed the wrong button' while Max was trying to get a bead on the spacecraft. Oh yeah, and a close contender was when Towers asked Stacy to hold the antenna thingy a little higher, and she went a full arm length. You think it helped that much?But you know, films like this do serve a purpose. They absolutely bring out the best in IMDb movie reviewers, any single one of which is more entertaining than actually watching the picture. How much time we could all save if we just read them first.

Michael Martin I downloaded this movie from the New York Public Library, more to see how the NYPL system worked than to watch a movie. SciFi is one of my favorite genres and this TITLE popped up on top. A is for Alien, after all.As it began playing, I just had to log onto IMDb to see if maybe this movie was, perhaps, a sci-fi COMEDY. Alas, no. The movie is too lame to be comedy, too crappy (in all the wrong ways) to develop a cult following. From the get-go, the plot is overly convenient. Gadget geeks will love the c.1990s video monitors in the opening scene. . . "Hey, you are supposed to be watching those monitors?" "Come quick, look what just appeared on the monitors!" 1996? Looks like a time warp back into the 1980s. Check out the posters on the wall. And how about those first contact graphical special effects? What IS that software playing "Galileo 2 Raw Data Feed.wav?" On a "KFC monitor?! The lead actor didn't really pull off geeky, and his female counterpart just looked like her wardrobe came from the set of "Sexy Secretaries Gone Wild."But, I did watch it until the end, searching for signs of intelligent life (and more bad sets and lousy effects). It is one of those movies you can have fun making fun of, a la MST3K

junk-monkey This movie has nothing going for it other than some adequate SFX; the alien ships are OK - about the level of first series Babylon 5. Other that that it is a total stinker with nothing to recommend it at all.Why is it that, in utter crap movies like this......the aliens are capable of building faster than light space ship and zapping entire cities to smithereens in moments but are reduced to skulking in caves, shambling along at half a mile an hour and grabbing people's ankles? ... American cars explode so easily? You just have to sneeze on the buggers and they go up like a roman candle.... nerdy boy college types when presented with an alien artifact he has never seen before, ripped from a dead aliens wrist, can "download its data" onto his laptop in seconds whilst under fire, when most of us have trouble working out which way round a USB plug goes in? Where did that loaded bazooka come from in the last scene? Hunky hero ran to get it out of the car but it was nerdy boy's car. Do nerdy boy college types always just happen to carry loaded anti-tank weapons around with them? The dialogue is pathetic. The "plot" (hah!) is thuddingly obvious and paper thin, and to call the characters and acting "wooden" would be generous.It does however contain a hilarious alien kidnapping. If you accidentally buy this movie watch it up to the point the girl gets sucked out of her bedroom window - then turn it off and put it on eBay.(Some of the comments here are about a different film. "Alien Terminator" (a Troma 'Alien' rip-off) made in the same year was released as "Alien Species" in Britain).