ZombieDog’s rating: It’s not Aliens. It’s Lifeform.

ZombieDog’s review: In my mind I love B-movies because of their simplicity. I do see B-movies as the natural evolution of the entertainment of the masses. AAA movies are like a giant buffet of all your favorite food, cooked by experts, and is all-you-can-eat. B-movies are more like one of your favorite foods, cooked well, with maybe a little flyer that’s unexpected.

The difference really is between gorging yourself and finding something simple. To be fair, there’s a time and place for each, but I have more than a small amount of my great movie experiences from B-movies.

Lifeform (1996), also known as Invader, is a small little scifi movie that in my opinion packs more punch than it should. I’ve known about this movie for 20 years. I could find very little information on the production and my guess is it was probably played on the USA Network at some point.

It starts off with the old Mars Lander returning to earth. There’s some obvious confusion and skepticism among NASA because the lander itself is not a spacecraft. The experts initially chalk it up to some kind of hoax. However, they did track it reentering the atmosphere and it’s pretty clear that if it was a hoax, it is a very good one.

Coincidentally, it manages to land right next to an aerospace research station. After following all the necessary protocol and contacting the local army base, they decide to drag the thing inside. Once inside, the mystery only gets greater because — by all outward appearances — it is the same lander that was sent to Mars in 1971. Perplexed and extremely motivated to find answers, they remember that a duplicate lander was built and stored at the NASA facility.

It’s around this time that the Army shows up to claim the UFO or whatever it is. Surprisingly, both sides put forth solid arguments on who should have possession of it. The Army sees it as a threat that should be contained in a more secure facility. The scientists already have it in a secure facility and had the ability to study it with their skills and equipment at hand. They also argue that transporting it to another location would be an unnecessary risk in further expose the biosphere to alien contamination.

Stereotypically, the scientists think that they know best and lock themselves in the laboratory with the lander. Realizing time is short, it doesn’t take them long to find out there’s something else attached to the lander, something that isn’t supposed to be there. It looks like a component so they’re not really sure what to make of it. As they reach out to touch it, it reacts. At the very same time the Army is trying desperately to get in this lab and is preparing to cut the door off the hinges. With some plot convenience play theater, the alien jumps out of the spacecraft at the same time the Army busts down the door.

This is the core of the film and probably the biggest problem for the people who were trying to sell it. James Cameron’s Aliens came out 10 years prior and pretty much set the tone for fighting aliens. Ultimately, the differences between these two movies is why I think this movie is worth people’s time.

The alien once it escaped from the lander starts to do alien things. It’s unclear what it’s up to but it’s definitely doing something. It is dangerous yet it appears to be mostly defending itself and not going on the attack. They think it might’ve laid an egg, however they’re not exactly sure. This confusion and ambiguity is kinda cool. With James Cameron’s xenomorphs there was no nuance — the aliens were there to be shot, end of story. The element of the unknown in Lifeform is what makes this somewhat decent scifi.

In the end, though, the unidentified motives of the alien makes it understandable for the Army to do what it did. The Army vows that if the scientists don’t capture the alien or kill it, the military’s going to nuke the area from orbit just to be sure. While at this point this action is a cliché, it totally works here. We have an alien doing weird alien crap, possibly laying eggs, and has shown itself to be dangerous. If it can’t be contained it has to be destroyed. This is reasonably sound logic.

IMDb rated this movie at 4.8, and this is one of the few times I feel as though they missed the mark. In general, I know B-movies are bad, but this one’s okay. If I had to readjust, I would say 6.5. If for any reason at all it got such a low score it would be because it’s a low budget production and it shows. The alien is pretty neat though when you finally get to see it, and the story behind it, while formulaic, is respectable.

I would say save this movie for some night when insomnia hits hard. Pop it in, sit back and let it do its thing. In my opinion this is a small B-movie gem. And they come along so rarely.

Quick picks:

• IT! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
• Predator 2 (1990)