TeenzTen
An action-packed slog
Senteur
As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
Jemima
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Leofwine_draca
Ostensibly a remake of Roger Corman's '50s-era B-movie, this is a Z-grade effort very much in the '80s "boobs and bimbos" tradition. There are more big-haired bimbos here than you can shake a stick at, and most if not all of them strip to the waist during some point in the film. Director Jim Wynorski clearly has no desire to make a high-end movie, so he just goes for lowbrow entertainment throughout.The story is simple. An alien – in human form of course, this is a no budget movie – arrives on Earth and needs a supply of human blood to stay alive. Cue the entrance of ex-porn star Traci Lords as a hot, often naked nurse to look after him. Various nubile women are killed off-screen for their blood, and the alien guy sometimes chats to other human-looking aliens on STAR TREK-style teleporters. Then the film ends.There isn't much on offer here – unless you have a penchant for surgically-enhanced female bodies. The special effects are cheesy beyond belief and the cast members uniformly suck – although Lenny Juliano's disgustingly lecherous chauffeur did get a chuckle or two out of me, I have to admit. The best thing about this is the opening credit sequence, which is chock-full of gory clips from other, better Corman directed or produced movies like HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP.
Uriah43
This film is a remake of the movie with the same title made in 1957. It follows the original film very closely with a few alterations thrown in. As in the original film, an alien from another world, who goes by the name of "Mr. Johnson" (Arthur Roberts), has come to Earth because his race needs blood. But prior to invading Earth and subjugating the human race, the aliens need more data from him on whether human blood can sustain them and for how long. His mission then is to stay alive long enough to collect this information and in order to do that he needs blood as well. After acquiring some from a nearby clinic, he hires a nurse named "Nadine Storey" (Traci Lords) to administer blood to him on a daily basis and to keep him healthy for as much time as possible. In the meantime, he continues to kill people and send their blood through a portal to his home world of "Devana". Again, it's the same story only remade with some modifications. Now, some of these changes are improvements. But some are weaknesses which, in my opinion, end up hurting the film more than helping it. Some of the improvements include the fact that this particular movie is filmed in color versus the poor quality black and white version of the original. Likewise, the fact that this was made 31 years later gives it a more modern quality. It adds more humor as well. But most importantly, the role of "Nadine Storey" is played by Traci Lords who is much more sexy than Beverly Garland was in the previous movie. On the minus side, I thought that the overall acting wasn't nearly as good. Further, the director (Jim Wynorski) chose to go with more nudity which tended to give this film a rather cheap and trashy feel since there weren't any scenes that necessarily required it. Even so, this film was intended to highlight Traci Lords and I thought this decision was a good one for the most part. That said, while she was definitely alluring, I must also state that she seemed a bit too snippy and overbearing at times which resulted in a slightly uneven performance. So, in the original film the story focuses on the acting of the attractive Beverly Garland. In this film the focus is on the sex appeal of Traci Lords. And because nobody else in this film stepped up to give any performances worth mentioning, I have to say that the original version was the better of the two. In short, the bad points seemed to weigh this film down a bit too much and because of that I feel it is somewhat below average.
nate01pa
I rented this out of curiosity to see how they remade the 1957 version which I saw several times as a youngster. The remake was fun to watch even though there is quite a bit of T & A which has very little to do with the plot. They retained much of what I remember from the original including a lot of the dialog, Johnson driving a 50's boat-tail Cadillac, his 5-phase mission, the metal case where Johnson first put the blood of his victims, Nadine's boyfriend being a policeman, and, of course, the ending. One notable omission was that the doctor wasn't killed.It would be great if the original could be successfully transferred to DVD.
funkyfry
******SOME SPOILERS*******Wynorski remade of Corman's 50s classic space vampire film for the 80s, and got pretty good results. Traci Lords (in her straight film debut) is no match in the acting department for the original film's Beverly Garland, but she brings her own unique charm and attitude to the film. She plays a nurse who's duty it is to take care of a mysterious patient who turns out to be a scout for a possible alien invasion. Lenny Juliano does a very good job here; in fact, the performances are good in the campy style all around. Some upper body nudity of Lords is well handled, but the shots later in the film with the strippers come off more as straight exploitation. Still, this film has just enough cool in it to make it one of the decade's better action/horror/sci-fi flicks. After all, Corman and Griffith's tall dark and sunglass-wearing alien WAS the original terminator.....Some of the "hipster" dialogue that Griffith wrote for the original film was actually retained word for word in this remake.....
