“Are we slipping into some black hole of hairless space?”

Justin’s rating: Meatheads… in… spaaaaace….!

Justin’s review: Are we ready for another shot of PM Entertainment insanity? I don’t recall seeing any of that outfit’s movies as set in space as a pure scifi film, so Alien Intruder is mildly exciting for me. Plus, it’s got Lando (Billy Dee Williams) and his magnificent mustache.

Williams is Skylar, the captain of a scavenging ship in the future year of 2022. To staff his ship on a suicide mission, Skylar recruits convicts exclusively from New Alcatraz. Doesn’t seem like a smart idea to me, but this is a dangerous trip and all, so maybe the thought of cannon fodder is worth the risk.

The salvaging mission isn’t really the point of the story but rather the virtual reality program that Skylar uses to keep the riffraff under control. They all get addicted to romping around in cyberspace, especially once an ALIEN INTRUDER in the system messes with their brains with the goal of turning them against each other.*

The corrupted virtual reality premise becomes the core of the film, an opportunity to jump between settings and genre. Think of it as a poor man’s holodeck, albeit one with more skin. There is a western, a black-and-white film noir, biker adventures, and so on.

I might not speak for many Star Trek fans here, but the holodeck episodes** and scenes from those shows always felt a bit hokey and tedious. I don’t need my scifi movies and TV series to cosplay as other genres when I could watch much better entries in those actual fields if I was in the mood.

And so Alien Intruder is extraordinarily tedious as well. Absolutely none of the VR scenes have any intrinsic worth, which means that these convicts are the most unimaginative bunch. I honestly forgot they were even on a spaceship for chunks of this film and instead felt like I was channel surfing through a particularly bad lineup.

As a PM Entertainment flick, there are a few good firefights and explosions, but the story wrapped around those is quite lame. Not once could I buy into the fantasy that everyone actually was on a spaceship or that the stakes were high. Poor Billy Dee deserved better than this. Heck, he deserved to play Two Face in a Batman sequel. I’d been pulling for that since 1989. I think I’ll be waiting a while longer.

*The alien also wants to get to earth to infect everyone there, so it seems to be working at cross-purposes here by killing off the crew.

**Malfunctioning or regular, take your pick.

Intermission!

• Every PM Entertainment movie has to begin with a context-free firefight right from the start, even if this one has lasers instead of bullets
• “Dance on this!”
• Flamethrowers seem like a very safe piece of equipment to lug around on a spaceship
• The Holly keeps spinning around in every establishing shot. I think it’s doing donuts.
• Was that… a Bugs Bunny reference?
• “New Alcatraz” just in case you might get confused
• All of those VR girls have the worst hairdos
• “Captain Marvelous” is a good nickname
• “Even though this is a fantasy, farm animals still carry disease.” what
• Bikers and saxophone don’t go together that well
• Spaceships are regulated by pipe valves that look suspiciously like a film studio’s sprinkler room
• Oh the second-rate Casablanca references.