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Scalleum is a sinister and remote farming island off the north
coast of Wales, only accessible at low tide via a causeway
known as the 'Devils Spine'. The locals are a bizarre mob
of inbred weirdo's and the island is also home to an ancient
stone circle known as the 'Devils Teeth'. This provides the
setting for the terrifying alien abduction of local farm girl
Cat Williams. When a TV crew start to investigate the mysterious
event they soon realise they are not alone...?
Evil
Aliens (or Jake West's Evil Aliens to give it its
full title) is a British movie which takes the good old fashioned
zombie horror genre and changes the setting slightly. The
closest comparison I could think of was Peter Jackson's cult
movie Bad Taste. Apart from the similar premise, possibly
the one line that is closest to Bad Taste is the "No
one f*cks with a UFO enthusiast" double meaning line,
which is delivered in a similar way to the "Derek's don't
run" line from Bad Taste.
From
the opening scene with the gory alien anal probe (what
is it with aliens and anal probes anyway?) you realise that
you are in for something of splatter fest - although it's
the closing 20 minutes where everything goes gore crazy.
And
it's not the aliens that come to a messy end - they actually
get fairly quick death scenes (mainly being killed when their
helmets are removed and they asphyxiate). The only really
gory end the aliens meet is when our heroes find a combine
harvester and start mowing the monsters threat down (personally
my favourite scene). The humans, on the other hand, meet with
a succession of grisly ends - including being impaled (from
anus to mouth) on a large stake; having various limbs pulled
off; and being ripped apart from inside by an alien foetus.
The
photography, music, effects and basic story are all better
than I was expecting for a low budget independent movie -
in fact I think it's fair to say that these elements put many
Hollywood movies, with much higher budgets, to shame. And,
for this alone, it's easy to understand why the movie has
received so many awards. However, what did let the film down
quite badly was a lot of the acting - but then a lot of this
can be put down to the dialogue in the script. Emily
Booth ranges from okay to embarrassing and most of the other
principle actors are not much better. In fact the only actors
who made me believe that they weren't reading from a script
were Jamie Honeybourne (as Gavin Gorman); Jennifer Evans (as
Cat Williams); and Chris Adamson (as Welsh farmer Llyr Williams).
Even Norman Lovett's cameo appearance was pretty ropey.
Honeybourne
is wonderfully funny as Gorman, Head of the British UFO Research
Committee (BURC). Some of his funniest moments include him
talking about the time he nearly collapsed a church by re-routing
a lay line; his delight when he thinks he's discovered another
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan; running, in his
pyjamas to kiss the crop circle; and destroying the fake crop
circle so that the camera crew can't film it and claim it
as a real alien construction.
There
are so many subtle horror movie references and fantastic throw
away lines that you're really going to have to watch this
a few times to really appreciate it. I loved the irony of
the sound man losing his sight, as well as the various nods
to the whole ridiculous clichés that these movies usually
rely upon to create tension. One of the best examples of this
is when the crew all jump into the minibus to escape the aliens
and our hero turns around to the rest of them and says: "I
bet anyone £50 it won't start". It's the fact that
he looks genuinely disappointed when it does start first time
and they can escape easily that had me laughing like a loon.
Extras
include a featurette that interviews the director and main
actors (36 mins); additional scenes (21 mins) a lot of which
really should have been left in as there are some really great
gags; 7 mins of outtakes; a guided tour of Life Creations
(5 mins look inside Life Creations ) and a trailer. It's a
crying shame that the director didn't provide an audio commentary
though, as that would have been well worth listening to.
An
enjoyable romp that would have been a lot better if the acting
had been up to scratch and someone had rewritten some of the
bad dialogue in the script. Fans of zombie horror movies will
love it.
Darren
Rea
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