The Alien Factor
(1978) 80 min
Rated: G (mild gore)
Country: USA
Director: Don Dohler
Starring: Don Leifert, Tom Griffith, Richard Dyszel
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
A spacecraft carrying various alien lifeforms crash lands on a small American backwoods town.
Synopsis:
Two kids, Rex and Mary Jane, get drunk and make out in a car in the middle of a field. An alien randomly attacks the car and Mary Jane manages to escape. Rex, however, is killed and Jack, the town sheriff, begins an investigation.
That same night a guy and a girl are at a lake and the girl decides to walk off on her own in the woods. She stumbles upon an alien near a spaceship and runs off. She gets struck by a guy speeding on a motorcycle. He stops only to look at her and speeds off without aiding her. The that was previously seen alien walks up to her and touches her hand healing her.
The town’s doctor, Ruth, performs an autopsy on Rex and finds that he has unusual marks. It appears as if a large animal killed Rex.
Rex’s friends: Ernie, Clay, and Richie along with a girl, Susan, decide to hunt down whatever animal killed Rex. A black insect-like alien attacks the group. The men shoot at it to no avail. The three men are killed and Susan remains in shock claiming a creature killed them.
A man, named Ed, exits his home and an invisible monster seems to attack and kill him. Three children happen upon the dead body.
Doctor Ruth is confused by Ed’s death. She says that he seemed to age quickly as if he had the genetic condition progeria. She also finds that Rex’s body was poisoned by the lesions on his body.
Sheriff Jack is confused also by the deaths around town. He wants to call in the state police but the mayor Wicker won’t permit it. The mayor insists that Jack and his deputy Pete can take care of the investigation.
A man goes home from a bar, sits to read a book. He hears noises in his house and goes to investigate. He goes down to his basement and when he turns the light on a tall fuzzy alien attacks and murders him.
A man named Ben Zachary talks to the mayor Wicker, he says he is from an observatory and followed a meteor that landed near the town. The mayor warns him about the killings. Zachary says he’d like to help out and investigate too.
Mr. Zachary and Mayor Wicker go to investigate where the meteor may have landed. They find a large crashed spacecraft. Mr. Zachary claims to hear a noise and follows it to an alien, dying in some snow near the crash site. The alien beams information into Zachary’s head just before it dies. The craft explodes.
Zachary tells the sheriff that the alien was transporting zoological creatures carrying 3 specimens and as they crashed the 3 creatures were freed. He also explains that one alien is hard to see in the daylight.
The mayor gives Zachary the responsibility of killing the creatures much to the sheriff’s frustration.
Edie, a local reporter, and Steven, one of the doctors, find each other in the woods. The black insect-like creature finds them and chases them. Fortunately Zachary is there and overpowers the creature with a sound created from a large speaker. This kills the alien.
Mayor Wicker gets attacked by the tall fuzzy alien in his own backyard. It strangles Wicker and kills him.
Sheriff Jack drives to the mayor’s house and finds Mary Jane running up to his car and screaming. The tall fuzzy alien is chasing her. The sheriff and Mary Jane try to drive away but the monster follows.
Deputy Pete arrives on the scene. The Sheriff and deputy try to shoot it but it doesn’t die. Zachary appear on the scene and kills the tall alien by shooting it with an injection of poisonous fluid from the earlier insect alien.
The sheriff investigates Zachary’s background at the Garret Observatory. They never heard of Ben Zachary.
Edie the reporter wanders into the woods and watches as Zachary fights the semi-invisible monster. Zachary gets injured severely but manages to kill the invisible monster.
Edie walks over to an injured Zachary. Zachary explains that he is an alien also and that now the town is safe. Edie notices Zachary is standing in shadows insists she wants to see him. Zachary warns her that without his human disguise she would be horrified by his appearance. She persists in approaching him and screams in terror at his looks.
Just then, sheriff Jack approaches and shoots Zachary, thinking he was one of the killer creatures. Edie sobs, telling sheriff Jack that the thing he just killed was Zachary and that he meant no harm.
Review:
One of the few known films by Don Dohler, a director known to z-grade movie fans. This is his first film and it’s fairly bad as movies go. There is, however, a kind of charm in the menagerie of alien monsters on display. There was an earnest attempt at a monster movie here. At least, the kernel of one. Unfortunately the plot is a bit bogged down with large pieces of padding. People are walking through the woods aimlessly and at one point an entire song is played by a band.
Much of the acting is fairly wooden and badly delivered. Perhaps it can be blamed on the script, but the characters are so simple and dumb that they literally can’t figure out that there is an alien invasion occurring in their town.
This film is very slow and can only be enjoyed through the lens of humor or those willing to wade through pointless talking scenes and wandering to get to the shoddy special effects.
