Alien Beach Party Massacre (1996)

 

Director: Andy Gizzarelli

Screenplay: Andy Gizzarelli

Cast: John Eineigl as Dr. Bateman; Mark Fite as Jeff; Stacey Havener as Babs; Kourtney Kaye as Robin; Perry Martin as Bud; George Willis as Nagillig; Eric Zumbrunnen as Glue

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Linda, don’t worry, we know where your arm is.

Surf rock opens up on the opening credits, hurdling into outer space, and it is best for context to explain how a film like this would have come to be. Contextually, the nineties are what I have always viewed as the decade where its pop culture ate its own tail, apt as it was just before the Millennium, a new century, with both the angst of the new era coming and clearly a lot of reflection taking place in popular culture and retro trends. A lot of decades where repeated in just one, where swing revival music met against pulp comic and radio characters being adapted into films, where bands like Combustible Edison brought back lounge music, and there were some obscure remakes of old b-movies, such as Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman (1959) getting a 1995 television remake. Here, where old b-movies and sci-fi were finding themselves in the likes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and surf rock became prominent in the Pulp Fiction soundtrack or new bands like Man or Astro-Man?, this particular film, an entry in the slasher genre with some odd genre mixing and a lot of ironic comedy, makes sense in mind to this. Honestly, the biggest issue with Alien Beach Party Massacre comes from the fact that it does not fully embrace its premise, staying in an abandoned spooky house for the slasher section, even if this has a bit to it to admire, and is a parody with its tongue firmly in its cheek.

Humanoid aliens are in our solar system, having stolen from another evil species (space pig humanoids) a weapon called the “Deathsphere”, a super weapon of horrifying destructive power which they find themselves unable to flee with. Attacked and the ship forced to burn up in Earth’s ozone layer, luck and a hole in said ozone layer leaves one surviving member of the crew, the bumbling cleaner, to protect the Deathsphere. Unfortunately it is confused for a beach ball and brought to a human beach party he is also invited too, everyone believing he is a cousin of a party guest from New Jersey, with one of the pig aliens planning to slaughter anyone in their way to get the death ball back.

There are broad stereotypes at the party: the Bill and Ted surfer dudes (who are also stoners); the obnoxious college jock who presumes beer can be used as a mouthwash and gargled to clean your breath with; his suffering girlfriend; a nerdier girl, an alien obsessed scientist, and other stereotypes. It is jokey, not taking itself seriously, and some of the jokes have not aged well, usually with the women being called “bimbos” etc., but considering this has someone impaled on a surf board, for every joke which does not land and the film feeling stretched at times, a lot has aged well as openly goofy. The biggest disappointment is most of this set-up ending up in a house, when the main cast split off from the party as an excuse to get high, a shame as it means most of this does not actually transpire on a beach. You expect from this title a piss take on the early sixties beach part genre, a niche to parody in itself, only to sadly never get that.

That in truth is the real slight to the film, where a better and weirder film was left on the table un-done, with what we have. Some of the film lurches into more edgier content – there a gag, which I have seen in another horror film called Neon Maniacs (1986), which bluntly involves an act of oral sex being interrupted decapitation and a morbid joke about what happens afterwards, which is the kind of moment which may come off as poor taste than really twisted humour. Most of this is more comfortable, and more rewarding, where it is goofier even with the gore. Losing a limb, as for one character that loses multiple, is something to suffer through with the issue more the inability to drive gear stick in a car than fatal blood loss, the tone better in these types of moments.  It is a one-off from its director-writer Andy Gizzarelli, whose career in cinema is to be found in other production departments, leaving this curiosity from the irony tinged edge of horror and cult cinema which vanished into obscurity. Feeling like the chance for someone to bring what they wished to see in a film to the screen, it shows the indulgences that would result from this, both the things which did not succeed and the sections which did prove rewarding even if the entire film is a flawed mess.