Well, after how well the last review went, I figure it’d be worthwhile to go after something else that tickles my fancy for the completely insane. And this film already wins points with one of the most ludicrously awesome titles I’ve ever seen, and with an opening narration that references the creator of Dungeons & Dragons within its first sentence, I quickly knew I’d be in for a good time. I also had a feeling that, by some crazy miracle, I was in for something that would make Titane look normal by comparison.
This is an R-rated take on the old-school ‘kid and their alien best friend’ trope, where sister-and-brother Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) find the titular alien warlord buried in their backyard, and control him with the power of a mystical gem. What follows is the kind of practical effect and gorehound showcase one should expect from a writer/director who’s previously done work with Troma. In fact, the use of rubber costumes for the numerous aliens and monsters (combined with the Ron Wasserman worship in the soundtrack) makes this into the goriest episode of Power Rangers in existence; like if Yoshihiro Nishimura was asked to direct a season of the original show, or if someone decided to make a live-action version of Apocalypse Zero.
It’s really fucking weird, and while I could get a bit deeper into the subtext of Psycho Goreman (Matthew Ninaber in the suit, Steven Vlahos doing the voice) being the ruthless opposition to an equally ruthless group of Paladins, embodied in all their Lawful Evil glory by main villain Pandora (Kristen MacCulloch), and how this all about the fight against religious tyranny… but the film itself doesn’t care. Like, actively, the film and its characters do not give a fuck about what else is going on. The entire film is from the perspective of the kids, Mimi in particular, and all they care about is how cool this all is. Seeing PG give his enemies “a warrior’s death”, discover his liking for hunky boys, playing Crazyball; it’s entertainment in its purest and simplest form. And a lot of the film involves the other characters just sitting back and watching the show.
There’s something quite charming about this whole production and how devoted it is to engaging on pure surface value. Even when it’s more abrasive, like with how impossibly bratty Mimi is in every scene (it’s quite remarkable that an actor that young can overact this much), this film’s deep-dive into low-budget filmmaking and its rarity as a piece of entertainment remain as captivating as ever. It’s built on the notion that big alien monsters being on Earth with the rest of us is inherently cool, regardless of how they got here and what they’re here to do, and the fact that it’s delivering all of this with a straight face is nothing short of miraculous.
I don’t know why I’m trying to sell this film to a potential audience, though. The kind of people this film was designed for will be sold on the title alone (just as I was), and with its intersection of classic Saturday morning television and ultraviolent B-movie aesthetics, it’s a crapshoot whether anyone outside that sphere will get anything out of this. But then again, this isn’t a film that comes around every day, or even every decade, as all the practical gore and bulky alien designs make it stand out from just about every other film I’ve reviewed on here thus far. It’s a genuine original, and with how rare such things are nowadays, that on its own is worth treasuring.
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