Illegal Aliens (2007)

Why is that that when celebrities die, their Hollywood stock value goes through the roof and anyone who’s ever worked with them or known them tries to cash in posthumously? Had it not been for Anna Nicole Smith’s death recently, Illegal Aliens would have arrived at your $1.99 DVD bargain bin at Wal-Mart without fanfare, but instead it must now flood the shelves of your local DVD store.


Three aliens (Anna Nicole Smith, Lenise Soren, Gladys Jimenez) are sent to protect the world from whatever forces threaten to destroy it and take the forms of three hot babes. When not saving the world, they work as stunt coordinators in Hollywood. Everything seems fine and dandy, until fellow alien Rex lands on earth, takes over a woman’s buff bod (you remember wrestler Chyna?! She’s now Joanie Laurer) and begins building a mega-gravitron to crash the moon into the earth and snuff out all life as we know it. It’s up to the scantily clad “hot babes” to save the world from sure destruction.

It’s not hard to tell that this movie doesn’t take itself seriously and was meant to be a funny, bad B-movie. The bad news is that there isn’t anything funny about this movie! It is all bad, and not in the so-bad-it’s-good sense! As the movie limped on and I was forced to sit through increasingly horrible performances, bad jokes and horrible hokey dialogue, I thought I’d traveled to one of the worse circles of Hell. Yes, it was that painful.

Not only that, but I found some actions of the female characters and other characters’ reactions to female characters downright insulting. First of all, the whole storyline is a sci-fi nerd’s dream come true: three aliens take the forms of three hot women, save the world, have a “girl fight,” and make out with the nerdy scientific guy. Secondly, for “advanced” and “intelligent” life forms, the girls sure aren’t that bright – Smith plays her blonde-haired bimbo like a retarded 2-year old. Now, a full-grown woman acting like a baby (literally talking in a little girl’s voice, wearing little girl clothes and reasoning like a little girl) and playing it off like it’s “cute” or “hot” is insulting to me as a woman. What insults me most is that this is insinuating that men want a dumb, airheaded and obedient woman. The other two aliens aren’t as bad as Smith’s character (who was basically just playing herself anyway), especially the one who is in charge (played by Lenise Soren). Still, when the one in charge starts crushing on the cute scientist they rescue, she gets all googly-eyed and neglects her duties.

I cannot count how many other scenes irked me, but they sure are plentiful! The acting alone is annoying, from the previously mentioned performance by Smith to Laurer (aka Chyna) playing the screwball and painfully over-the-top evil alien Rex. Her facial contortions and frequent pitch changes in voice were freaky enough, but the dialogue she spewed out made me want to jab sharpened pencils in my ears.

The action sequences, on the other hand, were pretty well done…though most of them were intercut with stock footage. One sequence toward the end that was actually funny was an action sequence that used the most random of stock footage – people jumping out of buildings, cars burning, nuclear testing footage, etc. – for a huge explosion scene. Another action scene I actually enjoyed was when the girls are nearly attacked by a giant horde of spiders commanded by Rex. That definitely harkened back to 1950’s drive-in horror that featured giant bugs and monsters attacking the populace.

Though Illegal Aliens keeps its tongue firmly in cheek, this didn't make it any good or even funny. It lacks the charm of old B-movies, overuses fart jokes and kinda makes me wish Anna Nicole Smith was still alive so she could be properly chastised for her awful performance. To sum it up, if Charlie’s Angels met Plan 9 From Outer Space and had a deformed, ugly baby, that baby would be Illegal Aliens. Look for it at your local $1.99 bargain bin!

Available from Amazon!