Alien Express

What do you get when you put Lou Diamond Philips, Todd Bridges, Barry Corbin with a bad toupee, and an alien all on a train? You get a very bad movie called "Alien Express" or "Dead Rail" that would be more entertaining on Comedy Central's old series "Mystery Science Theater 3000." You name it, this awful movie suffered in areas of acting, plot, storyline, and special effects. In fact, the exterior passenger train shots looked like the production staff used a common HO scale model in front of a painted background! The rest of the special effects goes downhill from there.

The plot is very predictable and is similar to two 1970's movies called "Horror Express" and a disaster movie called "The Cassandra Crossing." At least "The Cassandra Crossing" had a better cast, an engaging storyline, and real train scenes.

If you want a good laugh and a movie to mock at a "B movie" party then watch this; otherwise, "Alien Express" derailed long before departing from the station!

I stumbled into this mess of a movie whilst too amped from viewing sports history. The Giants just upset the Patriots in the Super Bowl, and I couldn't sleep. I assumed/hoped this movie would put me to sleep, so I didn't surf away after only 1 minute, as I probably should have. Life is too precious. Puzzled, I IMDb'd it, and soon ended up in the reviews. They were better than what I was simultaneously watching, and I could only try/hope to watch the whole movie just to verify the unanimous disdain (excepting one apparent idiot). I don't know exactly how to say this, but I think that all of the reviews sell this movie short. It is worse than Plan 9. It takes the cake. It's unbelievably stupid. Actually, that last sentence could be misinterpreted. Not only is it unbelievable, it's unbelievable that it was even conceived and completed as a "movie". And it's way beyond unbelievably stupid. The hemorrhoid commercials every 12 minutes were a real relief, and I've never felt that way before! This movie must have been a pet project of Sci-Fi channel's accounting dept., as it can only be some sort of tax write-off against capital gains. If that's the case, the accountant should get any positive recognition as a true visionary. Other than as a wonderful way to rewrite off all of the company's cheepo garbage props out in desert storage (one last time, maybe), and give a bunch of slumming B-actors, a busman's holiday out in the desert, it must have been a way to hold a clinic for all of their new upcoming producers, directors, techs, etc. They should all consider themselves survivors. And they should all look for new lines of work.

A truly deplorable effort. But not exactly a waste of time. I now have a new bar to judge other movies by. And I can't wait to revisit Battlefield Earth. That movie is infinitely better than Alien Express. And to think that they left room for a sequel!!!

I have seen worse movies off the SyFy channel, but that is not saying much. Everything that I dislike generally about the SyFy original movies is here. And where to begin is going to be start.

1) The special effects are not quite Titanic II bad, but they still have a very artificial look to them. The train itself is not convincing at all, almost reminiscent of a miniature train with the inside shot elsewhere. That may not be the case, but that's how it seemed to me.

2) A lot of SyFy movies have slipshod editing, and Alien Express is no exception. Actually a lot of it is so bad that everything in some scenes look blurred together.

3) If you are looking for a good story, or a good telling of it, look elsewhere. The concept is okay if barely original, but like other SyFy movies the execution is awful. The story itself is leaden in pace, thin in structure and predictable in how it is written. There is also no real tension, thrills or suspense.

4) Not only that, if you are looking for likable characters, Alien Express is not for you. The characters aren't just clichés of the genre, but also SyFy clichés. But clichés don't actually bother me as such, as long as they are well written and not annoying. Alien Express fails on both counts. The characters are underdeveloped, and at the end of the day, while there have been far annoying character before especially in the SyFy movies of the past three or so years, I just didn't care for any of them.

5) Was I expecting the acting to be great? No, not really. But I was expecting some enthusiasm. I didn't get that. Everyone seemed wooden and pretty much phone in their performances.

6) But if I were to single out the worst asset of Alien Express, it has to be the script. Although I do dislike most of the SyFy movies, I do keep watching them for the novelty value and to curiously see if they do anything worthwhile. I may have seen about 40 or so SyFy movies in the past couple of months, but few have had dialogue as atrociously bad as that of Alien Express. It's all stilted and spoils any attempts to give some tension or thrills with how unintentionally funny it is.

Overall, a terrible film, even for SyFy. Not their worst, but towards the bottom end. 1/10 Bethany Cox

We all know that special effects cost money, but it seems as if they could have used the money they saved writing the script to get some better shots. The train is obviously a model in most moving shots, the helicopter is obviously computer generated, the alien looks like the one from the end of Spaceballs, except it's a decade later and Spaceballs had an excuse.

The only smart thing they did was blur all of the special effects to make them harder to see.

Not even the actors could compensate for such a poorly written script and it's pretty obvious they didn't really try either.

Please, don't waste your time. Please.

I am a big fan of sci-fi movies. So, when I saw this movie in the EPG, I thought I was in for a pleasant evening. What a disappointment ! Such a poor display of "special" effects I could not imagine in 1980, but in 2005 ? Come on, why would you do special effects of an helicopter flying in the desert when you can film a real one for a much lower price (I guess) ? And those killer "muppets"... well, I could do better than that in a couple of hours in the garage. You can expect to have a low budget on a movie, but I don't think it's reasonable to have a low movie for any budget. As for the "star" of the movie (I use a lot of quotes tonight...), Lou Diamond Philips, the guy is not even remotely an actor. Maybe he should have stayed to the martial arts movies. All in all, an awful movie. Maybe I am in a bad mood tonight. Then again, maybe not. A sincere 1 out of 10.