The Alien Factor (1977) — Triskaidekafiles

THE ALIEN FACTOR

WRITER: Don M. Dohler

DIRECTOR: Don M. Dohler

STARRING: Don Leifert as Ben Zachary

Tom Griffith as Sheriff Cinder

Richard Dyszel as Mayor Wicker

Mary Mertens as Edie Martin

Richard Geiwitz as Pete

George Stover as Steven

Eleanor Herman as Mary Jane Carter

Anne Frith as Dr. Ruth Sherman

Christopher Gummer as Clay

Johnny Walker as Rex

QUICK CUT: Some new visitors wander into town, and cause some trouble.

THE MORGUE

Ben Zachary - A stranger who comes to town to investigate a crashed meteor, a seeker of mysteries and adventure. And something more.

Sheriff Cinder - The local sheriff who is just trying to keep things calm while trying to figure out what is ravaging his town.

I really hate how the judge from Unigdom Kinited is always so mean to the acts.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! I'd been itching to get back to the works of Don Dohler, and decided to check out his first full feature length film, The Astral Factor. This is the first in a long time that I've broken the "twisted love" theme that I've done for the Valentines adjacent reviews, because my brain just froze on the subject. But eh. It's my site. So let's take off and check this out.

Now, this movie also exists in a Blu-Ray, and 40th anniversary editions, I would LOVE to have gotten, but both of them are ridiculously expensive. So I went with the alternative of a two pack with Alien Factor and another Dohler movie, Fiend, since it was reasonably priced, and Fiend is a movie I want to do further down the road anyways. So that was a win win. If I ever catch one of those others cheap, I'll gladly grab it again.

The movie opens up on a couple hanging out in a car in the middle of nowhere. Before they can return to the middle of somewhere, a large, black, armoured humanoid grabs the man, and the woman runs off. We don't immediately see or learn of their fate, but he's dead, and the cops find the girl shortly.

Sheriff Cinder takes the girl to Ruth and Stephen, the local doctors slash medical examiners, and heeey these people are familiar. Is this movie connected to Nightbeast??

And to answer my own question; some people describe Nightbeast (The crime SOLVING beast!) as a remake to this movie, or a sequel, and if anything it's closer to the second. If you're familiar with Stephen King's "Castle Rock" novels, it's closest to that. Same setting, familiar faces, same st...er, different story!

While another couple is wandering around and somehow not getting murdered, we see another alien using a glowy thing to try and transform his form into something more human, so he won't get, I dunno, murdered on sight. We don't see his face, because ooooo mysterious.

The new alien actually doesn't complete his meatamorphosis, when the woman stumbles across him, interrupting things. She runs off scared, gets hit by a motorcycle, and the alien heals her before Homer Simpsoning into the trees.

This corpse doesn’t have a single round thing inside it…

Meanwhile, the local angry mob is itching to kill something, so they go out looking for whatever is attacking people. They assume it's no worse than like...a mountain lion. MAYBE a bear. Ohhh they are so wrong.

They find Psycho Bore-man from earlier, and while they try and shoot it, the creature makes short work of the trio.

Next, some poor guy gets zapped with a random beam from some unseen force, while the cops prepare to go hunting.

The movie then takes it's sweet time and pads things out by wandering slowly, and even having a band at a bar play an entire song, until finally someone gets attacked by YET ANOTHER alien.

But then the plot lurches forward a bit more as a stranger wanders into town named Benjamin Zachary, who claims to be an adventurer with an interest in strange phenonenae. Hmm. I wonder who he could be.

Zachary and the mayor go out wandering the forest, and eventually come across a crashed spacecraft, so at least the mayor believes now.

Lookit the size of that toothbrush holder, this alien must be HUGE!

They find an alien from the ship, on the verge of death, and it communicates via dated special effects, so Zachary can tell the audience what happened.

And I now pass along to you; the alien was transporting three species across space, but crashed on Earth, and now the escaped beasts are our problem.

Our main characters meet up to plot, and two of them go into the forest to burn shit down. At least, that's the plan until they run into one of the more murdery aliens.

Not long after they start running, the creature writhes around, and falls over dead. Zachary comes out of the woods to explain he killed the chitinous bastard with high frequency sound.

Sheriff Cinder decides this should be taken care of by the government, and goes to the mayor's to try and convince him. But, oops! The mayor's been killed by one of the aliens!

It's not long before the sheriff runs into the same alien, and drives off quickly, because of reasons. Unfortunately, the car gets stuck in the snow, as the creature advances.

People show up to take down the alien, and all their bullets do nothing, despite being told their weapons were useless, repeatedly.

Eventually, Zachary shows up with a weapon that DOES work, and he hits the beast right between the tits.

While they regroup to take down the last creature, the sheriff receives a call. He did his due diligence and checked Zachary's background, and it doesn't add up. Whomever could he be??

Edie the reporter has gone off into the woods to look for Zachary, and finds him combating stop motion double exposed film stock.

Now, considering this was what they had available to them, the creature looks pretty great, and the actor does a really good job flinging himself around and fighting nothing. They do a shockingly good job of matching the two together most of the time, as well. Fortunately, they had the foresight to say this was a creature of energy, so that goes a long way to let things slide.

Zachary explains this, draped in shadow, and says the creature is a Leemoid, and can drain the life force from others.

However, the fight took it's toll, and it is revealed that, gasp shock, Benjamin Zachary is an alien himself, come to Earth to recapture the creatures!

Edie wants to see what he looks like for real, but Benjamalien does his best to remain hidden, saying he looks hideous by our standards.

But she continues to advance, sees him for what he is, and proves just how shallow she is, by screaming and freaking out.

The sheriff comes around, and thinks he sees a monster, and does what humans do, and kills the monstrous looking thing. Whoopsie.

Would you still love me if I was turned into a worm?

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: For a low budget 70s flick released mostly on VHS, this doesn’t look half bad. When I saw this was a random two pack and wasn’t getting one of the special releases, I was expecting something half assed, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Audio: It is what it is. It could be a bit better at times, but that’s more the source of the matter I suspect.

Body Count: Not terrible, but I personally would’ve liked more from rampaging aliens.

1 - Five minutes in, and Rex gets dragged from his car and killed off screen

2, 3, and 4 - Three hunters get manhandled to death by the creature

5 - Random guy gets beamed to death outside his house

6 - Guy gets murdered in his basement

7 - Insect alien gets attacked by sound

8 - Furry alien gets shot.

9 - The final lizard alien gets killed

10 - Zacharalien gets shot.

Best Corpse: Half the bodies are killed off screen, the rest are aliens which are mostly “fall over and die” so that really only leaves the poor bastard who got his lifeforce drained away, and he looks pretty good.

Blood Type - C+: The blood in and off itself is pretty light, but the creature effects make up for it. They may look cheap sometimes, but they are all unique and memorable. As much as I poke fun at the leemoid being double exposed and poorly overlayed, the actual creature looks great.

Drink Up! Every time a new alien appears.

Movie Review: As I said, this was Dohler’s first full length feature, and I think it shows. The movie throws a lot of ideas at the screen, and they all are a little half baked, not fully formed. The broad ideas here I really like, I just wish we developed the aliens a bit more, or got to see more of them. If anything, the movie is a bit short in that regard. But the acting is very good for this budget, the effects look great, and the story is comprehensible, which is above averaged. A solid three out of five leemoids.

Entertainment Value: Worth watching just to see what the aliens look like. Everything else feels a little flat, and matter of fact. Everything gets the job done, and not much else. There’s nothing here that’s so goofy it’s laugh out loud funny, and it’s not quite good enough in it’s own right. It’s a very all right movie with mild entertainment. Still, a likable enough time, and worth watching for an early 70s creature feature. Three out of five crashed toothbrush holders.