A title like 'Alien Raiders' conjures up images in my mind of a cheesy Charles Band production from the mid-80s—you know... the kind with rubber aliens, badly matted spaceships, and laser weapons; it might come as a bit of a surprise then, to discover that the film is not a gloriously daft B-movie set in the far-flung future, but rather a hard-edged sci-fi thriller that starts off promisingly enough, but which ultimately proves to be nothing more than a shameless rip-off of John Carpenter's classic 'The Thing', minus the impressive gloopy effects.
Set in the small-town of Buck Lake, AZ, the film opens with a group of gun-toting scientists storming a grocery store, where they emotionlessly shoot a few people before taking the rest of staff and customers hostage. This part of the film is handled very well by director Ben Rock: it's brutal and exciting, and keeps the viewer intrigued by having them kept as much in the dark as the terrified hostages. However, once the reason behind the sudden violence is revealed—the scientists are trying to contain a nasty organism that uses humans as its host—the blatant cribs from Carpenter's film become glaringly obvious, and the film immediately loses much of its appeal.
One scene in particular copies 'The Thing' far too closely for comfort: in order to find out who is host to the creature, the scientists conduct a test that involves cutting off a finger of each hostage. When they finally hack off the digit of a carrier, the creature reacts in a nasty manner, attacking those in the room. It was at this point, I lost all respect for the film and its makers, especially seeing as they didn't even have the decency to throw in any nifty prosthetics or gore, instead opting to have the camera shake around as though its operator was suffering from an epileptic seizure (a trick they use several times to save on proper effects).
By the time this film had finished, I actually wished it had been a cheesy Charles Band movie from the mid 80s: at least I wouldn't have felt quite so let down.
I rate Alien Raiders 7/10 for the first half and 2/10 for the second half; that averages out as 4.5/10 for the whole thing (which I'll generously round up for IMDb).
Set in the small-town of Buck Lake, AZ, the film opens with a group of gun-toting scientists storming a grocery store, where they emotionlessly shoot a few people before taking the rest of staff and customers hostage. This part of the film is handled very well by director Ben Rock: it's brutal and exciting, and keeps the viewer intrigued by having them kept as much in the dark as the terrified hostages. However, once the reason behind the sudden violence is revealed—the scientists are trying to contain a nasty organism that uses humans as its host—the blatant cribs from Carpenter's film become glaringly obvious, and the film immediately loses much of its appeal.
One scene in particular copies 'The Thing' far too closely for comfort: in order to find out who is host to the creature, the scientists conduct a test that involves cutting off a finger of each hostage. When they finally hack off the digit of a carrier, the creature reacts in a nasty manner, attacking those in the room. It was at this point, I lost all respect for the film and its makers, especially seeing as they didn't even have the decency to throw in any nifty prosthetics or gore, instead opting to have the camera shake around as though its operator was suffering from an epileptic seizure (a trick they use several times to save on proper effects).
By the time this film had finished, I actually wished it had been a cheesy Charles Band movie from the mid 80s: at least I wouldn't have felt quite so let down.
I rate Alien Raiders 7/10 for the first half and 2/10 for the second half; that averages out as 4.5/10 for the whole thing (which I'll generously round up for IMDb).