'UFO: Target Earth' is a misfire

UFO: Target Earth (1974)
Starring: Nick Plakias and Cynthia Cline
Director: Michael A. DeGaetano
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Alan (Plakias) and his psychic sidekick (Cline) search for evidence that a UFO has crashed in a remote, backcountry lake, and of a possible government cover-up. Viewer boredom ensues.

While the advent of the DVD made many worthy films once again available to the general public, a lot of films that deserve to simply rot away have also been retrieved from the abyss of time. "UFO: Target Earth" is in that last category. Watch it, and all you'll find when the film's over is a deep wish you could reclaim the time wasted.

"UFO: Target Earth" starts out trying to present a documentary feel, but by the time our heroes head into the forest in search of the UFO, the filmmakers have given up on that conceit. Instead, they present a film that sounds like an 11th grader's research paper and a 9th grader's poetry served as its script, with a couple elements badly mimicked from "2001" and 1970s occult culture tossed in. And they present it in the most turgid and mind-numbingly dull fashion. I'm sure the filmmakers thought they were being artsy... but the null-zone of talent surrounding this movie resulted in something that's just dull.

I don't usually say things like "worst movie ever" or "worst actor ever", but I feel fairly confident in saying that Plakias is in the running for the Top Ten Worst Film Actors Ever award. The guy is so wooden that he might as well have been replaced by a department store mannequin in this film. His facial expression never changes, his inflections never move up or down... every line is delivered with the vacant tone of a heavily medicated mental patient.

Plakias is only the worst of a bad bunch. There isn't a good actor anywhere in this film, although those playing interview subjects early in the film come close to giving something resembling good performances. Of course, actors can only be as good as the material they are working with, and the material here is damn awful. The film only manages one bit of true suspense, giving the viewer hope that maybe something entertaining will start occurring--when the psychic starts hearing creepy voices over the walkie-talkie--but it soon becomes apparent that the filmmakers were just teasing us.

Some films need to be seen to be believed, but this is a film that shouldn't be seen by anyone.

A mystery wrapped in an enigma and crap

They (aka "Invasion from Inner Earth" and "Hell Fire") (1974)
Starring: Paul Bentzen, Debbie Pick, Nick Holt, Karl Wallace, and Robert Arkens
Director: Bill Rebane
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Four men and one woman are in a remote wilderness when they hear reports of some strange calamity that has gripped the rest of the world. While trying to contain their own panic, they attempt to reestablish contact with the outside, but all they can raise on their shortwave radio is a strange, haunting voice.

"They" is a movie that starts with a mystery and ends with a mystery. It never bothers to explain what's going on, although clearly SOMETHING is, because the filmmakers here don't understand the concept of P.O.V. and voice and they keep cutting away to show what's happening in nearby towns. Are aliens fumigating Earth in preparation for a takeover? Are people being "vanished" into the Inner Earth? Is this movie only watchable if you're really, REALLY stoned? None of these questions are answered.

Although it did keep my interest to the point where I kept watching, the film doesn't have a single good actor in it, the dialogue is lame, the music soundtrack atrociously inconsistent and inappropriate for many scenes, the special effects terrible, and the whole film ultimately pointless.

'The Alpha Incident' is a non-event

The Alpha Incident (aka "Gift from the Red Planet") (1970)
Starring: Stafford Morgan, John Goff, Carol Irene Newell, George Flower, Paul Betzen, John Alderman, and Ralph Meeker
Director: Bill Rebane
Rating: One of One Star

After a dimwitted, clumsy railroad worker (Flower) breaks open the badly secured samples of a Martian virus being moved from one government lab to another, the agent escorting it (Morgan) must keep himself and a small group of local yokels at an isolated train yard until a cure can be found.


We have a typical Bill Rebane effort here. The acting is third rate, the story goes nowhere, the characters never even rise to the level of figures they're so badly developed, neither the writer nor the director seem to have much of an ear for dialogue, nor a sense of how to tell a good story. Whenever the film seems to start making a point--it repeatedly flirts with what stress and danger does to transform a person--it either backs off from it, or does it so ineptly the viewer (and just one viewer.., the person so wired on coffee and chocolate they've not been bored into a stupour, so they are still paying attention) must wonder if anyone involved with the production side has ever had any relationships with real people.

The acting here is generally better than what might be witnessed in the other Rebane opus I've seen, but the story is worse and even more pointless. Its slow, and, like the train featured in it, seems to start a trip but ultimately ends nowhere.

Take my word for it and skip this one. The only reason for watching it would be to confirm that Bill Rebane is, indeed, in the running for Worst Filmmaker Ever.