ALIEN OUTLAW (1985) – Starring Kari Anderson. Written and directed by Smoot … PHIL Smoot (Da dut da DAAA/ Da da-da). Phil was one Smoot operator and showed the imagination that low-budget filmmakers so often demonstrate but whose lack of financial resources prevents them from fully bringing that imagination to life.
Smoot got his start with the Dixie DeMille himself, Earl Owensby, often called “Roger Corman south of the Mason-Dixon Line.” And that wasn’t said as an insult. Like Corman, Owensby specialized in unpretentious B-movies that always made a profit due to budget-consciousness.
Before setting out on independent projects of his own, Phil Smoot worked in various capacities on Owensby’s North Carolina flicks like Challenge, The Brass Ring, Tales of the Third Dimension and many others.
With Alien Outlaw, Smoot showed the Owensby influence: North Carolina locations, meandering scenes that begged to be edited down and lots of annoying Southern-Fried humor that wouldn’t have made the cut on Hee Haw. On the plus side he also demonstrated a flair for fun B-movie premises that mixed genres.
Smoot’s other best-known work as writer-director was The Dark Power, a Toltec zombie horror film with Western elements (a work previously reviewed here at Balladeer’s Blog). Like The Dark Power, Alien Outlaw starred old, old, OLD Western actor Lash Larue, who was the middle man in the Whip-Wielding Action Star Trimurti, coming after Don Q: Son of Zorro and before Indiana Jones.
Alien Outlaw mixed Western elements with science fiction in a way that made you root for the film, despite the way Phil Smoot defeated himself at every turn. The potential was here to craft a fun, slick, modest money-maker which played like a Western version of a Tom Baker-era episode of Doctor Who. And with a butt-kicking female lead.
THE PREMISE: An alien spaceship lands in 1985 North Carolina and conceals itself by submerging in a body of water. That body of water is a stream the water level of which couldn’t even conceal a small car let alone a large space-craft.
THE POTENTIAL FIX: A lake or a make-believe cloaking device would have worked better.
THE STORY: A few aliens, wearing back-packs and masks to breathe our air, attack random people, take their guns and begin terrorizing the countryside. We are never told if their ship landed on Earth deliberately or made the best out of a crash landing. Nor are we told why aliens capable of interstellar flight have to confiscate primitive firearms. Continue reading
THE BLOOD DRINKERS (1964) Also released as The Vampire People and Kulay Dugo Ang Gabi, this was the very first COLOR horror film made in the Philippines. 
GOLDRAIDERS (1982) – A plane carrying two hundred million dollars in gold (in 1980s money) gets shot down over Thailand and lands in the jungle. A blandly-dubbed Robert Ginty plays Mark Banner, part of a hastily-assembled team sent in to recover the gold. Sarah Langenfeld is our hero’s leading lady this time around. 
May 14th will see the Scream Factory releasing Blu-Ray editions of Quatermass II: Enemy from Space plus Quatermass and the Pit. NOTE: These are the THEATRICAL RELEASE versions. If you want the original 1950s British television versions of the Quatermass Serials they are available but sometimes just on Region 2 DVD. 
SCARAB (1983) – Robert Ginty AND Rip Torn … TOGETHER! Somebody pinch me! A Spanish horror film that does NOT star Paul “Jacinto Molina” Naschy! Somebody pinch me! 
The world fell in love with him as “Artichoke Picker” in Bound For Glory and the rest, as they say, is history! All kidding aside, I think Robert Ginty’s actual life was a hell of a lot more entertaining than any of his movies or television shows. As a musician he performed with Hendrix, Hooker and others. In his acting career he showed up in some high quality productions. 
WHITE FIRE (1985) – CASTING DIRECTOR: Let’s see … the hero of this Turkish-made action flick is an international smuggler who uses a chainsaw to fight rival criminals and is so hot for his own sister that he eventually pays to have a prostitute transformed via plastic surgery into a duplicate of his sister then oinks and boinks with her … (snaps fingers) Get Robert Ginty on the phone, NOW! 
THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) – How can you NOT like a movie in which a standard bad-ass street vigilante uses a FLAME THROWER to kill the criminals he targets? 
CHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971) THE one and only Marvin Gaye made his big-screen debut in this relentlessly absurd example of the bad biker films of the 1960s and 1970s. 
Dennis Quaid aka Furious DQ is the subject of this list of brief film reviews. Ignore Buzzfeed reports that Dairy Queen (DQ) is partnering with Balladeer’s Blog to sponsor a Dennis Quaid Film Festival in Rio. In fact, you should just ignore ALL Buzzfeed reports, period, at this point. 
THE BIG EASY (1986) 
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE (1989) 
Crypt TV is a YT channel featuring original horror film shorts with a variety of deadly monsters. Many of the monsters are featured in ongoing stories that are like ARG’s but with much better special effects. This particular video features the first appearance of a violent creature whose ongoing appearances hint at plenty of unsavory, sinister secrets as well as serial killings in a small town. It’s titled The Wedding Hand, as a play on a Wedding Band. NOT FOR THE EASILY FRIGHTENED! 
January 8th is the combined marking of Elvis Presley’s birthday and the Battle of New Orleans, in which General Andrew Jackson and French Pirate Jean Lafitte defeated the British in the final battle of the War of 1812. 
LOVE ME TENDER (1956) – Elvis was the latest reason that the saga of the Reno Gang/ Reno Brothers got distorted on the big screen. The need to turn the Reno story into a vehicle for Elvis Presley made this attempt the most unintentionally funny of them all. 
Balladeer's Blog 