Battle in Space: The Armada Attacks (Allied Vaughn, 2021), Creature (Trans World
Entertainment, 1985), and Femalien: Cosmic Crush (Full Moon Pictures, 2020)

A new, 20-film marathon. The rules:

Must include aliens
Cannot take place on Earth
I haven’t seen it before
Free to stream

Battle in Space: The Armada Attacks (2021) Prime

Aliens? A couple of decent, bipedal bullies.

CGI heavy? Fairly — some decent, some not so decent.

Any good? I got tricked. Going by the title and poster, you would expect this to be a fun romp about a band of plucky rebels fighting against an evil alien empire, right? Wrong.

Here’s the official blurb:

In 2420, after aliens and powerful space wizards have enslaved human villages, a group of resistance fighters organize a counterattack against their alien overlords and launch an armada of spacecraft in a battle for supremacy in space.

LIES! DECEPTION!

What you in fact get is an anthology of six short sci-fi films with no interconnectivity, made with varying degrees of skill. They range from quite good to pretty awful, and you can see that the budgets were spent on CG spaceships, because every interior looks like it was shot in a warehouse in Fresno.

A couple of the stories were actually engaging, but I ultimately felt cheated, and only the first story had a decent alien in it, so I am petulantly scoring this lower than it deserves.

Space score: 5/10

Creature AKA Titan Find (1985) YouTube

Aliens? A goose-necked xenomorph and a couple of blobs.

CGI heavy? None.

Any good? Somehow I’d missed this one in my heady teenage days of VHS rental madness and, although it retains some cult status, I hadn’t really missed much. A blatant rip-off of Alien/Planet of the Vampires and The Thing, with a touch of Lifeforce thrown in for good measure, this really hasn’t aged well.

Directed by William Malone, who went on to helm some fun genre TV stuff, this one just rehashes the Alien plot with some added mumbo-jumbo and seriously disinterested acting, the highlight being Klaus Kinski’s phoned-in patio extension cameo.

The alien is kept in the dark for 98% of the film, which is for the best, and the practical gore effects are earnest, if not completely successful. Fun soundtrack though — some crazy synth here and there.

Space score: 6/10

Femalien: Cosmic Crush (2020) Tubi

Aliens? Some purple, alien sex-tentacles, a Cthulhu-headed space pirate and a cat girl.

CGI heavy? Some — nothing too annoying.

Any good? I’m leaving no stone unturned in my quest to watch new alien flicks, and that includes stuff like this. It’s a Full Moon feature, shot in five days, and about as good as you might expect.

However, producer Charles Band is cast from the Roger Corman mould and I’m still grateful for Trancers, so he gets a free pass from me. The acting and script are not great, but the model work and practical effects are fun, and I’m sure Full Moon fans would love it. Still, a bit of a chore, and only good for a 14-yr-old boy with an endless supply of socks.

Space score: 3/10

Beyond White Space (Vertical Entertainment, 2018), and Savage Planet (Sci Fi Pictures, 2007)

Beyond White Space (2018) Tubi

Aliens? Space crabs, space shrimp, space whales.

CGI heavy? Yes — but it’s extremely well done.

Any good? Another extended Moby Dick metaphor, and this one lays it on in spades (a ship called Essex, characters named after sailors, even Melville’s publisher), but I have to say, it’s done really well and ended up surprising me. The film looks great, the benefit of being the debut feature of FX artist Ken Locsmandi, and everyone is committed to their roles.

It doesn’t all work though, the crew is made up of tropes and an infected crew member subplot is a nasty distraction — but on the whole this is a solid chunk of sci-fi.

Space score: 8/10

Savage Planet (2006) Tubi

Aliens? Bears. You read that right.

CGI heavy? No, but what there is is rubbish.

Any good? It only took 90 seconds for me to hate this film. The opening sequence could be used in film school as an example of how never to edit a film, especially when your film includes terrible acting and stock footage of a bear.

Let’s talk about the bears for a moment. The characters in this story are teleported to a planet (called Planet Oxygen for some reason) 20,000 light years away for some bullshit reason, and are picked off one by one by aliens, aliens that happen to be stock footage of grizzly bears, or someone wearing hairy hands. I honestly believe the actors (some of who are quite decent) had no idea what they were reacting to. Dull, stupid and aggravating.

Space score: 2/10

Princess of Mars (The Asylum, 2009), and Forbidden World (New World Pictures, 1982)

Princess of Mars (2009) Tubi

Aliens? Tharks, other Barsoom beasties.

CGI heavy? Pretty much. Not great either.

Any good? There are few sentences that instil instant dread. ‘It’s behind you’ is one, ‘May cause anal seepage’ is another. The worst might be ‘The Asylum presents…’ To that end, it’s unfathomable that this hack studio should make the first screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic, predating the underrated (and criminally mistreated) John Carter by three years and made to be more of a cash-in on Avatar.

It’s one of The Asylum’s more ambitious productions, but the end result is dull and murky, hampered by dodgy effects and the mis-casting of Traci Lords, shoved into slave Leia cosplay and scowling her way through the proceedings. The original concept is updated here and Carter is now a special forces dude in Afghanistan who gets transported to ‘Mars 4’ by some plot bollocks.

The only highlight is Tars Tarkas, but that’s also true in the book and the other movie. One day we’ll get a decent adaptation…

Space score: 5/10

Forbidden World (1982) Tubi

Aliens? A genetic mutation cosplaying as a xenomorph.

CGI heavy? Nope.

Any good? Ah, Roger Corman. Not only does this movie kick off with not-so subtle nods to Alien and Star Wars, but all of the space ship scenes are recycled footage from Battle Beyond the Stars, which Corman produced two years earlier. That said, I don’t hold it against him — he is the king of knock-off B-flicks, and this one is hugely entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

A crew of scientists are picked off one-by-one by their own experiment, all to a barking mad synth score. The two female scientists, Dr. Chesty McZipper-Down and Dr. Tightpants McTwinhams both have their baps out within 25 minutes and one soft-core scene is even diagetically accompanied by a dude on a Perspex space-saxophone. Excellent fun for anyone who likes to figure out what take-out packaging was used for the corridor walls (meaning me). Glorious rubbish.

Space score: 7/10

Previous Murkey Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Biggus Footus
I Like Big Bugs and I Cannot Lie
The Weird, Weird West
Warrior Women Watch-a-thon

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Neil Baker’s last article for us was a review of The Substance. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, outdoor educator and owner of April Moon Books (AprilMoonBooks.com).