boocwirm-1 This is what happens when you give a director $100,000 or so and tell him you want a movie in ten days...Some folks just don't appreciate bad films. I do. I've been an extra in a couple of them myself and, believe me, the people who makes these Grade Z pictures (the cast and the crew) aren't fooling around. They work hard at their craft, as hard as the people who make "real" movies, and with the added burden that they know the result is going to be pretty awful. They are basically professionals who have fallen on hard times or semi-professionals hoping to make it to Hollywood proper. When you watch ALIEN OUTLAW pay attention to the scene where the heroine is discussing her new contract with the head of the management agency. It's an interminable scene, with some of the worst dialogue ever written, but the two actresses give it everything they've got. You really have to give them credit for professionalism and effort. That being said, if you think you're going to be treated to something like the Sigourney Weaver ALIEN pictures you're going to be sadly disappointed. ALIEN OUTLAW is a mindless story about marauding extraterrestrials whose idea of attacking the Earth is, essentially, to sneak around the middle of nowhere bush-whacking Appalachian stereotypes and vandalizing parked cars. They make the aliens from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE look like evil masterminds. They don't even have ray guns or blasters, but try instead to use Western six-shooters they clearly have no idea how to handle, as every second or third shot results in a jam. At which point they toss the weapon down in disgust and run slowly away from danger, no doubt squealing the alien equivalent of "Boy, we're in trouble now!" Earth should be so lucky as to be attacked by these guys. The film has a few good points. The heroine is quite sexy and not a bad actress. Most of the other actors (including several legendary B-Western stars at the end of their careers) at least give it a good effort. And for those viewers who might someday want to make their own picture, it carries a very clear lesson: no matter how small the budget, hire a decent screenwriter before you do anything else.

robertstjames This one is beyond awful. The aliens look like guys dressed in frog suits with cheap Halloween masks and seem to have no purpose on earth but to twirl six guns (for real, that old fashioned swing the gun by its trigger guard thing), bust out windshields on cars (interstellar vandalism...huh?) and from time to time, shoot people for no particular reason (do these guys not have laser guns or any weapons other than what they find laying around?) Not to worry, tho...awful acting and cornball plot fill in the very large blank spaces between action scenes. You'll be so desperate for something to happen that you'll find yourself cheering the car destroying scene. And then turning the movie off because not even Rifftrax makes this steaming pile worth finishing.

doctorsmoothlove My good friend Neb Rogers did some audio work on this film while attending UNCG's film school. The director asked him to create some audio effects for the gunplay scenes, which he did though few appear in the final cut. As you watch the movie, whenever you hear a crisp sound effect, Neb probably recorded it. The rest of the effects sound generic. Neb wasn't credited with his role nor was he paid, though he was finally given some credit on the IMDb page.I live in Greensboro, NC, where Alien Outlaw's "auteur" director Phil Smoot attended university. He directed this film and one other called The Dark Power in the mid '80's before graduating to work on direct-to-video horror movies, though never again with the level of creative control he had on these films. That's a good thing because more than twenty-five years after its release, Alien Outlaw is even harder to sit through than it was back then. It's inept in many ways a movie can be save the near-nudity of its leading actress and some cool costumes. Even the loving casting of Lash La Rue doesn't hide the technical limitations and lack of underlining story. Still, it's far from the worst movie I have ever seen.A poorly rendered spacecraft crashes in central North Carolina and three maniacal aliens hell-bent on destruction are unleashed. This movie like many of its ilk completely adheres to the strange cliché where highly intelligent life forms inexplicably attack people like savage beasts. How did they manage to travel through space if all they seem capable of is acting like mindless movie villains? This film does better than most in this regard by positing the possibility that these beings are only destructive with no other motivations. Maybe higher life on their planet built the crafts to get them out of there. Perhaps if there were any kind of plot, we could satisfactorily answer that question.Smoot deserves some credit by keeping the aliens focused on whatever their underlining objective is. He doesn't add a love story subplot like a lot of these flicks have, though he does show a bunch of rednecks drinking beer and chatting. This should be boring but one teases the other for his effeminacy, keeping it giggle-worthy. Interplay like that is only praiseworthy in trashy productions like this where it keeps us awake. Anyway, they're quickly killed off before the heroine Jesse Jamieson (get it?) and Lash La Rue's character make quick work of them. Their costumes aren't that bad either. They look like they were made from wetsuits and Smoot appropriately has them emerge from the water to attack various people. Alien Outlaw has been released on DVD in the U.S., and isn't quite as bad as its reputation would suggest. At least Jamieson wears really short shorts and the direction is competent if unspectacular. It's still a poor movie, but I wasn't bored enough to call it unwatchable. If you ever see this on a public domain boxset someday, it's worth a watch. Not Recommended 21st of 2011

JoeB131 I'm really surprised this film still exists. I'm guessing someone bought the rights a garage sale and put it on DVD.The plot is that a trio of aliens land their spaceships somewhere in North Carolina, and for some inexplicable reason, go on a killing and rape rampage after finding a trailer load of guns belonging to carnival gunslinging gal. Amazingly, the aliens are not only able to easily master human weapons, but riding horses as well, because apparently there are equestrian events on Zeta Reticuli B.Well, the gunslinging gal wears a dress with a hemline that barely covers her buttocks, no doubt to detract from the fact she was flat-chested and had misaligned teeth. (A professional actress- NOT!) After an encounter with the aliens where she barely avoids being sexually assaulted, there is a big showdown at the end where she kills all three aliens, who apparently went hunting on Earth with exploding backpacks.E.T. this ain't, but you suspect that the reason they got backers is that you could get backers for anything with the word alien in the title. In some ways, the plot is like Predator. Except now Predator takes on a new luster compared to this.Another note- There is a bit of nudity in this film, making it a drive-in classic. (You never see much nudity in today's films, thanks to the prudes at the MPAA.) I think it shows we've gotten more reserved on that since the 1980's, not less.