Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 7:2	Budget Medium

This is part three of a three part discussion on Unseen Evil, it's sequel and compares/contrasts the two.

I actually saw these movies out of order and watched Alien 3000 first. Despite the shoddy production and the cheesy dialog, I enjoyed it. There were some flashbacks that looked to be part of a previous film so I dug up a copy of Unseen Evil and watched that. With Alien 3000 we know we are dealing with BEM's right from the get go, so as I was watching Unseen Evil with it's Yuma mythology I was thinking that the movies had nothing in common. Then about two thirds of the way through, ET shows up looking very Roswellish (Roswellian?), big eyes, big head, stick like body. ET is hauling a suitcase that contains our monster. No real attempt is made to tie this turn of events to the opening shot describing the Yuma's creation myth, but then again there was nothing to tie the apparent virgin sacrifice either. It is worth noting that the entire ET presence in this film could be edited out without affecting the plot one bit. Nothing that happens in the story is better explained by an alien monster rather than a vengeful Native American spirit.

While Unseen Evil has only Tim Thomerson as a name actor, Alien 3000 has Priscilla Barnes and Lorenzo Lamas. Priscilla is a good actress for whom I have had a soft spot for for years. Lorenzo on the other hand, not so much. Neither of these actors are even on the B list but still should be better than the amateurs they are working with and for the most part they are. The scene where Priscilla exams the monster is really silly, why would anyone would lean so close in to a body to exam it? It has been a couple of years that have had the body apparently lying on a table in an air conditioned room. At the very least I think it would start to smell and why haven't they cut it open? Seriously it is an alien life form, after I CT scanned it, x-rayed it, ultrasounded, MRI'd and photographed it a dozen different ways, I would chop it up into about a hundred pieces and get it to every type of scientist I could. Yes I know that the reason it was just lying around was IITS, but this theme of stuff coming out of left field is one of the things that obviously ties the films together. In the first film ET shows up out of nowhere and in the second an extra extraterrestrial just suddenly is there. While it looked like there were two monsters in the first movie, it was stated and shown that there was only one. Don't expect any logic in either film.

Unseen Evil does not rely on special effects all that much, most of the monster effects were handled with CGI and while they were not spectacular, they weren't laughingly bad. For Alien 3000 though they had to raise the bar significantly in the special effects department and did not fare too badly if you are very forgiving and don't look too close.

Because of the extended big action scenes Alien 3000 comes off as being the sillier of the two movies. They definitely had a decent budget for special effects and the camera work with the models was pretty good, they are filmed close up and that the shots are short enough to limit the times the models were on the screen. The scene I mentioned in my review of Alien 3000 discusses a ridiculous scene where they keep switching back to the girls for reaction shots. On a basic level it is really funny because the girls could not see what they were reacting to. But without the reaction shots we would see way too much of the special effects and the model work would become painful obvious.

The films are very similar in a couple of ways but the strongest common thread is the insistence by the monster to only kill one person at a time and to take a rest in between. It is invisible and in both movies walks right into the heart of our heroes camps, only to walk out without doing anything. Think about it. Your job is to kill anyone who touches the gold. You have them all in one spot and instead of just wasting the whole lot of them, you wander off. Later you have to track them down individually and even when you have found them again, you still only take out one. As it happens, I have a theory about this. It is related to the fact that the guardian that was chosen to guard treasure in a cave could not see in the dark.

ET: I want to buy a guardian for some Native Americans on another planet.

ET Salesman: I've got a nice model for 25,000 alien bucks.

ET: Woah! That's too much! Got anything cheaper?

ET Salesman: Well I do have this factory second that can only do one thing at a time and can't see in the dark that you can have for 1,000 alien bucks.

ET: Sold!

There is a solid workman-like attitude to both films. The people involved knew they were not making epics, but still did the best they could under the circumstances. Granted had the scripts been worked over a bit more they could have fixed a bunch of things, but the films are earnest and meant to be taken with popcorn and soda pop.

Got a comment or different opinion? Send a message.