Director: Ricardo Jacques Gale
Writers: Nick Stone
Cast: Billy Dee Williams, Maxwell Caulfield, Tracey Scoggins, Gary Roberts, Richard Cody.
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 120 mins
Release date: Unknown
Plot: The future. A cargo space ship needs to be salvaged after the crew mysteriously kill each other. Commander Skyler (Williams) recruits a team of assorted misfits from a high security prison to travel with him to the stranded ship. Along the way, (more mystery), the crew experience delusions (or do they?) after engaging in use of the ship's 'state of the art' Virtual Reality machine.
Review: BILLY, BILLY, Billy. Why? Was it the money? Desperation? Why?
The Star Wars actor heads up the cast as 'Commander Skyler'. Like Lando Calrissian, it's a cool name, but the similarities end there. Lando was a space hip-cat, too funky for the Empire. Skyler is a morose, love-sick loner.
The story is basically that a woman, 'Ariel', some kind of alien space virus type baddie, warps men's minds out in the cold vacuum of space. She makes them fall for her and fight over her. Skyler experienced this on the ship he and his crew are on their way to intercept, and now he's going back to...actually we're not sure why he's going back. By the look of Williams I'm not sure he knows either.
Of course the alien 'intruder' infiltrates Skyler's new ship (through the VR machine) and warps the men's minds. How does this happen? We don't know.
Most of the film is made up of scenes from the VR machine. The jist is that every Friday the four crew men indulge in a VR 'weekend'. They always each go back to the same scenario; a western, a jazz club, a beach house and a biker convoy. Sex is involved, of course. And jazz. And guns.
Ariel appears in each of the men's fantasy 'weekends', distorting their scenarios and driving them crazy while pervy Lando watches on what is essentially a futuristic peep show. Ariel makes every man fall for her and soon they all end up confused and angry.
Then she starts showing up on board ship. Now apparently only one person can see her at a time, which is confusing for everybody on the ship but quite amusing for the viewer. At one point a crewman is getting really romantic with Ariel, er, physically, when someone else walks into the room and finds the other guy seemingly engaging in a serious bout of dry humping. Nice.
Strangely, Billy Dee Williams is by far the least interesting actor on screen. He seems a shell of his Star Wars personality. He looks bored, confused. Never before have I seen an actor so obviously aware the film he's in is going to turn out very, very bad. Is Williams actually a good actor though ?He's amazing in the Star Wars movies of course, but is shouting, "The shields are still up. That thing [The Death Star] is still operational!," really acting? But who am I to judge. Who are any of us to judge anybody, really?
The other actors are fairly interesting. I won't describe them for you, what would that achieve? Just rest assured that the cast of Alien Intruder (minus Lando) are a tight bunch, their relationships solidified by months in space. Well, until they all kill each other.
Wouldn't tensions be reduced if Skyler took along women instead of horny male convicts? It doesn't make any sense at all. Never mind. I won't go into who killed who, but at the end it's Lando up against one of the other guys and Lando gets fried after declaring his love for Ariel (sample dialogue: "I love you!" - brilliant).
So bang, bang, bang. Everyone dies.
Except one of the crew. I'm going to call him D.J. He blows up the ship and leaves, escaping Ariel. Phew.
Except that he doesn't escape! She's in the escape pod with him. Fantastic! Now he's all alone and will have to hang out and have sex with a really hot alien space chick for months. Hahah, too bad Lan- actually, wait. That sounds kind of cool.
Alien Intruder delivers in the way all rubbish films deliver. The story makes absolutely no sense, the effects are AWFUL and the pacing of the narrative is poor.
Some people think Billy Dee Williams worst negotiating moment was when he sold out to Vader in Empire. Wrong! It was agreeing to star in Alien Intruder.
Bad film, good way to spend time.
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