Writer/Director Thomas Dixon's low-budget Sci-fi smorgasbord of pretty boy Mk-Ultra assassins, happy-helmeted remote viewers, benign, pointy-eared aliens, a fearlessly feisty female protagonist, and sinister species Michael Madsen shouting authoritatively in a limo, 'Alien Battlefield pretty much has it all; curiously omitting the alien battlefield! While not entirely without merit, the film's over-reliance on refried Area 51 backbeats, garishly purloined 'Ancient Aliens' pseudo-science, and proto-paranoid, black-hatted X-files jeopardy made for an overly familiar tableau, happily, the acting from a committed, relatively unfamiliar cast was pretty robust all round, and the clearly engaged director had the good sense to keep the pace brisk enough to disguise the frequent lapses in originality, but, ultimately, like all too many genre films today it just all feels a tad too recycled, just another shrill, rehashed old school 50s-style 'the aliens are among us!' negative head trip, it's like Philip K. Dick, and William Gibson never happened! All that being said, I still quite enjoyed watching 'Alien Battlefield', as the two imperilled leads were sympathetically earnest, and handsome hero John (Clint Hummel) was charismatically imbued with some pleasingly rough Spaghetti western charm, making for a suitably studly action man, and moody Madsen sports a natty pair of alien contact lenses, so it boisterously hit enough of my B-movie buttons to adequately pass the time! Fans of Albert Pyun, Richard Pepin, Fred Olen Ray, and 90s-era Roger Corman schlock might be more susceptible to Alien Battlefield's low wattage mind meld than others!
Review of Nomad: The Beginning
Nomad: The Beginning
(2013)
It boisterously hit enough of my B-movie buttons to adequately pass the time!
22 December 2021