There's always a feeling in the back of my mind that this is just a rough first attempt, rough draft kind of deal. My recollection of Peter Jackson's debut is that it's a test run on the road to his grand zombie outbreak comedy Braindead. However that might be a bit too judgemental, since on repeat viewings the enjoyment factor is always surprisingly high. It's not a high quality production, sure. But there's always a certain pleasure in seeing this kind of ultra low budget story unfold. Perhaps it's just because you can feel the energy involved. It's the sort of thing I'd imagine most of us can picture putting together at a certain age if we had the right equipment and a little twisted inspiration.
As a whole it's a crass and juvenile exercise, filled with prat-fall humour, stupid lines and a lot of cartoonish violence. The acting is generally either over done to the point of lunacy, or so stiff that it barely gets a pass. The leads work for an outfit called the Astro Investigation and Defence Service... what I'm saying is this isn't generally a high brow piece of film making. But why does all of this work? Much like The Evil Dead this falls into that magical category of enjoyable fledgling efforts where real effort was made. The edges are rough, the contents are rougher... but there's a lot of imagination at work, and an emphasis on just entertaining the audience.
Generally speaking direct-to-video efforts and today's VOD releases are barely watchable at all because they want to sell the movie first. They slap any old rubbish together instead of making it because they genuinely want to. But here things are different. Where else would you find something like this, filmed on the weekends over several years. What kind of insane person would do this just for an alien invader story? And what must be wrong with them to include scenes in which cracked skulls are tied together with leather belts, and bazooka shots gone awry decimate stray sheep. Of course, the man for the job was Peter Jackson.
On both directing and acting duties here, he puts together quite a show - as long as you have the stomach for it. In terms of actual plot there isn't a whole lot of depth but it's always funny. After a shadowy government figure gets wind of a sinister plot, he decides that 'this is a job for real men' and for some reason despatches The Boys to investigate a deserted coastal town. Here it seems that the only people alive are an odd group of bumbling guys all wearing the same blue shirt, and the locals have vanished after leaving out donations for a charity. Derek (Peter Jackson) is sure this is an alien conspiracy, and to prove it he's captured one of the group, Robert (Peter Jackson) who he interrogates with some rather unorthodox methods.
Things then go pretty badly for Derek from here, and he spends most of the film stumbling around after falling off a cliff and sustaining a very nasty head injury. Luckily he has a nice hat to hold his brain in for the time being. Elsewhere the investigation uncovers the plans of fast food mogul Lord Crumb (played by Doug Wren but dubbed by Peter Vere-Jones) and things start to get a whole lot messier. The gang will have to shoot their way through dozens of his underlings to rescue a charity collector and save the planet. The big bad's corporate speech is one of the main highlights here, and generally there's a childish glee to all the ghoulish goings on inside his house-come-spaceship.
If there were any real complaints to be mentioned here it's probably just that the big shoot out in the finale goes on for way too long. It becomes pretty exhausting despite the inclusion of plenty of gags and a few nice metamorphosis scenes. I guess they just couldn't waste any footage on the lawn of the property. But even this doesn't dampen the spirit of fun as the chainsaws and rocket launchers are brought out. It's a vomit swilling, brain splattering, sheep exploding adventure in which the villains just want to get off the Earth as soon as possible so they can return to run a chain restaurant business. It's gross, and it's frequently silly. But it's always a pleasure.
4/5
