The title suggests that it’s going to be a rip-off of both Aliens and The Terminator. It doesn’t actually have much to do with either of those movies. But it does have an ultimate warrior android. It also owes a bit to The Astounding She-Monster (1957).
Jan-Michael Vincent is the Commander of a prison planet. This planet is in a distant part of the galaxy and although this is a humanoid civilisation it has no connection with Earth. No-one on Earth even knows that this distant interstellar civilisation exists.
A particularly dangerous prisoner, Kol (Ross Hagen), is about to be executed. The commander has no moral qualms about this. Any prisoner who has ended up on his prison planet has committed truly horrific crimes. The Commander has other things on his mind, like his assistant Tara (P.J. Soles). Or rather he has his mind on her cleavage. You can’t blame him.
Kol pulls off a daring escape, steals a spacecraft and ends up on Earth.
He encounters a bunch of college kids in an RV deep in the woods. Kol has been injured. The kids pick him up and take him to the cabin of forest ranger Ward Armstrong (John Phillip Law).
It soon becomes obvious that Kol is a pretty strange guy. He spins this story about being from another planet. And he claims that a deadly killer robot has been sent to hunt him down.
It soon becomes apparent that Kol really is from another planet and the killer robot from outer space is real as well. Ward and the college kids are not entirely sure about Kol but they seem to have no choice other than to try to help escape from the killer robot. They figure the robot is trying to kill all of them.
The robot, the Alienator, is a lady killer robot (played by female bodybuilder Teagan Clive). The Alienator seems to be unstoppable. Bullets definitely do not stop her.
Ward turns to the Colonel (Leo Gordon). The Colonel was in Nam. He’s a war hero and a super-tough hombre. The Colonel doesn’t buy all this outer space stuff but he’s a man who never runs away from a fight. The Vietcong didn’t scare him and killer robot girls don’t scare him either.
Of course Ward and the college kids and the Colonel have have all been operating on the assumption that the Alienator is the villain, or rather villainess. That might be true but the action on Earth is intercut with action on that prison planet and the situation might be a good deal more complicated.
This is a very low-budget movie which usually didn’t bother Fred Olen Ray who always figured (mostly correctly) that energy and enthusiasm could compensate for lack of money.
The problem here isn’t the crude spaceship models. The problem is the Alienator. She doesn’t look very scary in a conventional way. She looks like she’s hoping for a gig as bass player in a really bad 70s metal band. Her whole look is so terrible that it achieves a bizarre kind of greatness. And Teagen Clive does have a certain presence. She’s certainly memorable, and that’s what counts. Like P.J. Soles’ cleavage in the early scenes she gets your attention.
The overall tone is pleasingly odd, with everyone playing things as straight as they can no matter how goofy things are getting.
There’s no graphic violence and no nudity. It’s silly lighthearted fun.
Fred Olen Ray had a knack for getting away with movies like this. You get the feeling that he was having a great time. You’ll need a lot of beers and a big tub of popcorn but if you have those things you’ll have a good time as well. The Alienator is recommended.
My copy is a Spanish DVD release (in English with removable Spanish subtitles) and it offers a pretty decent transfer. I believe there’s a Blu-Ray release, from Shout! Factory.
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