Because simply loving them wasn’t enough, X-Files producer R.W. Goodwin chooses to actually make his own cheesy ‘50s sci-fi film with Alien Trespass, a saga too jokey and graphic to be taken as a straight homage, and yet also a touch too straightforward to function as loopy satire. The result of this indecisive approach is that his out-of-this-world tale – about an extraterrestrial who crash-lands on Earth and attempts to stop the people-devouring monster that’s escaped from his spaceship – merely coasts along limply, lacking ribald tongue-in-cheek humor as well as the unironic self-seriousness that epitomized its spiritual predecessors, of which The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers are the most obvious. The prelude, in which a phony newsreel precedes (and hypes) the “feature presentation,” sets the off-kilter mood. Yet unlike with Grindhouse’s phony peripheral trappings, Goodwin’s intro can’t muster much in the way of laugh-out-loud humor or meta-cinema commentary. Instead, like the subsequent action, it just sits there, almost as lifeless and inert as the puddles of human remains that are left after the alien creature Ghota has eaten.
In California’s Mojave Desert in 1957, a meteor shower watched by nearby townspeople, including astronomer Ted Lewis (Eric McCormack), brings with it a plummeting UFO. Much to his horny wife Lana’s (Jody Thompson) frustration, Ted goes to investigate, and is promptly snatched by a towering, silver, Gort-like figure known as Urp who inhabits Ted’s body and goes looking for the one-eyed, tentacled, man-eating Ghota before it begins to reproduce – a process that wouldn’t stop until the global population had been consumed. Meanwhile, a pushy boy and his prudish girlfriend canoodling at a lover’s lane narrowly escape the Ghota (which can make itself invisible) and, together with a greaser buddy prone to spouting era-specific slang, try to warn their fellow citizens, which include Ted-infatuated waitress Tammy (Jenni Baird), cop Vernon (Robert Patrick), and chief Dawson (Dan Lauria). Corniness ensues, with Goodwin shooting in rich Technicolor, employing a spot-on orchestral score, and replicating his beloved genre’s rhythms and tropes with enough fidelity that his film soon reproduces the torpid pacing and distinct absence of suspense typical of crummy B-movies.
McCormack, Baird and Patrick all deliver predictably wooden and/or broad performances, but the Ghota (despite being seemingly made out of rubber) looks too good for a supposed cinematic relic, just as the sight of Lana showing cleavage and wearing lingerie, or a deputy’s discussion of the vomiting and bloodletting that accompanies radiation poisoning, are too explicit for what’s supposed to be a project produced under the watch of the Hays Code. Of course, exaggeration is an acceptable means of parody, but Alien Trespass never goes far enough to warrant such a designation, instead occupying a dull, purposeless middle ground. The film’s aimlessness is epitomized by Tammy’s climactic speech to save Urp from those who believe him to be a murderer, an oration that evokes the this-is-the-underlying-message sermons of likeminded sci-fi adventures, yet – because Goodwin hasn’t bothered to lend his material even a whiff of subtext – meanders about in search of direction. More tepid-cute imitation than captivating critique, Alien Trespass merely makes one pine for the un-self-conscious predecessors that inspired its creation.