DamnAlienDVDReviews

October 2003
© 2003 Ernest Lilley / SFRevu
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Damnaliens DVD Review by eponymous
Note: order the films from Amazon by following the hyperlinks to buy junk food for the aliens and keep them away from the dog) Want a second opinion? We suggest www.imdb.com - Ernest

Greenings Thirders and many recyclings to you. We come with sad and angry tidings this holiday season. We regret to inform you all that we will not be able to tell you about the Lord of the Rings dvd which is produced by your New Line company. The disc we had was defective and we made any number of attempts to contact the company and get a replacement. First they ignored us. This is very difficult to do, speaking from experience. Then they pretended they wanted to help us. But we are wise to the ways of deceptive humans and did not believe them. In the end they tried to misdirect us and they lied to us and then refused to help us with the situation. We understand that there are any number of other defective discs out there as well. They are probably ignoring these too. This is no way to run a company and we wish to give you all fair warning that if you buy this thing it may not work and then you will be unable to gain any assistance. It is a shame really because we had good things to say about the hobos, unless, of course, things became very different on the disc we could not watch. This is so often the case that we shudder to even consider what mayhem may have been wrought. In the meantime we’re planning a trip in the mothership over to this Newline place to exact what retribution we can. They should not be allowed to treat people, or us, this way.

Recent Releases / Classics / SFTV / Anime

Recent Releases

You people make a lot of very strange things. We thought at first that you were just floundering around trying to discover true meaning or the theory of black holes or something else. Then we found out you just like to make things over and over. This is one of the twelve signs of an inferior species. Number 8 is shoes. The Hulk, Special Edition would be added to the list but no one is really expected to know about it based on how bad it really is. How difficult do you really think it would be to deal with a huge green, angry guy who can lift and throw your armored tanks a couple of miles? Pretty difficult we would think based on what we’ve witness of your struggle against rats. And yet this movie makes you seem to succeed. It is yet another entry in your violent discussion of who is really the monster. We know the answer to that question by the way but we can’t tell you.

Just when you thought it was safe to return to the network we discover The Matrix Reloaded. Have you people not created enough dystopian futures that you feel you must redo the process again and again? This time you allow machines to help you, much like the voters of California. Why are all these people living in a huge cave in the middle of the Earth? Why are they dressed in furs? Why do they dance like they just learned that the Mastadon hunt was successful? We don’t know and the discs don’t tell us. This was a pretty picture albeit somewhat pointless. If we wanted meaningless philosophy we would listen to your unelected leader. If we wanted dark foreboding we would spend an evening in one of your cities. If we wanted silly violence we would watch your cartoons, at least the rabbit was humorous. But, we don’t suppose that will stop any of you from rushing out and loading this into one of your devices. Well, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

I suppose it would be wrong of us to point out how close the word Hollywood is to your national holiday Halloween? There are other similarities as well. But before we regale you with our vastly superior knowledge we should tell you about 28 Days Later. Frankly we were looking for Sandra Bullock when we picked this up and not a collection of stumbling, flesh eating zombies, although from some of her earlier work it would be hard to tell the difference. So, we kept watching and wondering exactly when she would make an appearance. We were more than halfway through before we realized our error. This deep in and we believe a commitment has been made. So, we watched the whole thing. Would you be disturbed if we told you it’s about events in the future when things go horribly wrong and everybody suffers? We did not think so. More grist for the mill although we thought some of the zombies were actually being played by the inhabitants of Zelnar the furthest.

Classics

When we were just podlings floating in the pools of G our Kluge mother would tell us the story of the mad doctor and his wicked organ. This story has terrified us ever since. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. recaptures that that terror although we believe it is a different Dr. and it’s a piano instead of an organ. Still, one never knows and we are investigating the interstellar transfer files to see a match. And just to show that not all Drs. are bad you should be aware that the good Dr. Seuss was behind this story. It does have some humor as well but it still makes our tenstacles shiver when we watch it.

SFTV

There are three things we know for sure right now. The first is that spaghetti is hard to grasp with tenstacles. The second we can’t tell you until you stumble once more on fusion and the third is that the new Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Complete Fifth Season is out. There are 26 episodes here in what some called the silly season as the writers and directors tried to find their sense of humor. Please did they not know that, first of all, they weren’t really in deep space? (we’ve been there, go there all the time and you are not close) and secondly, why fool around with something that people enjoy? Why? Because you are Earthers and you do these kinds of things. Why, just look at what you’ve done to a perfectly good planet. The completists out there will have to have these shiny discs. The rest of you should just befriend a completist.

Sometimes you Earthers call things the way they are and sometimes you are just way off the mark. Take, for example, the disc wet we just got. You call it; Dark Shadows Collection 8. But what does this mean? Is it the eighth collection? It is a volume or a series? There’s just no telling. So we watched it anyway. The number 8 you know is just an upright infinity sign and we are partial to things infinite. What we discovered was a soap opera about vampires. Now we would not think that vampires, based on what we have read, would really be that interested in keeping their prey around for very long, never mind long enough to make a soap opera. But maybe you lie in your writings. You do in so many other ways (weapons on mass destruction indeed!). We liked the series although it is very dark.

We’re not sure why you would give Hercules a spaceship to begin with, considering his somewhat sordid past, but you did. Andromeda, Season2, volume 5 tells of what happens when you do such a thing. At least he’s not swinging swords around all the time. At least most of the time. Okay, there are one or two episodes where someone else swings a sword. Follow the captain of the starship boobyprize as it seeks to reform the federation. This is simply silly stuff, like they took all the stupid ideas that fell out of the Star Trek shows and decided they were not really that stupid so why waste them. Unless, of course, this is one of your infamous running gags. But seriously, we’ve done enough gagging for now.

Anime

You can take the human out of the android but can you take the android out of the city? These are just some of the questions that get asked in Android Kickaider--Conflicting Hearts. We were intrigued by your continued exploration of the human/mech interface. Frankly you are just not getting it. If you want to make something that has emotions and can work like a human, have children. It’s a lot cheaper than cobbling something together out of the spare parts in your basement. And it will provide you with a similar amount of emotional angst as well. What more could you ask for?