Dr. Alien

I'll have to admit...I LOVE this movie. The movie itself is Comedy/Science fiction. The effects are great. The plot is..well..cheesy...but who cares? Anyone who would be reading comments/reviews for a movie entitled "Dr. Alien" obviously is looking for good old B rated Science fiction movies. I would recommend renting this film if you can find it.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Dr. Alien looks so cool!

My review was written in February 1989 after watching the movie on Paramount/Phantom video cassette.

Sci-fi meets teen sex comedy in "Dr. Alien", a campy direct-to-video film. It was more colorfully (and accurately) titled "I Was a Teenage Sex Mutant" when pre-sold by Charles Band's organization years ago.

Tone recalls the Scott Baio-starrer "Zapped", and the new pic is likely to establish its own healthy following in ancillary media. Billy Jacoby is a nerdish college freshman selected by new biology teacher Judy Landers for an experiment. She's an alien from planet Altaria, who's killed biology prof Troy Donahue and is testing a formula on Jacoby in support of repopulating her world, whose males are dying out.

Filmmaker David DeCoteau juggles numerous staples of the various teen genres:Jacoby is converted into a hip dude after the first injection (and sexual initiation) by Landers; he joins rock band The Sex Mutants, and his best pal Stuart Fratkin ogles the girls' gym class for voyeur action. Girls can't resist Jacoby, including zoftig Julie Gray, girlfriend of school bully Scott Morris.

Harmless fun is easy to take, the excellent makeup effects by John Vulich include a tentacle growing out of the top of Jacoby's head and a huge blue head for Landers' real self that allows the comedienne to inject her own personality into her monster-masked scenes. Landers is quite funny, ably matched by Jacoby.

I haven't seen everything DeCoteau has directed, but yes I have suffered through most of his work -- even those cursed puppets. I don't really know why I put myself through this, but sometimes you get rewarded, and this is one of them.

Prior to seeing this film, my favourite was The Brotherhood (2001). But this one is just a bit better. It's got everything great about the 80s. Lots of naked boobies for those who are into that. Shirtless Billy Jayne and his painted-on jeans for me. Good music, pop-culture references (without going overboard like the Scream franchise), a plot, halfway-decent dialogue, and even effects that didn't look completely like leftovers from another film's trash. Most importantly, no minutes-long sequences of people walking down corridors in slow motion. We can all celebrate that, can't we?

This film doesn't deserve the horrible score it has received. It's not Shawshank, but it's certainly worth 6/10.

Judy Landers plays a doctor from space who selects a teenager as a guinea pig for her sexual experiments (just don't expect to see her bare anything in any version: her typecast wholesome and innocent nature remains mostly intact for this film, keeping her at least a step above Farrah Fawcett in talent). This leaves the teen with a phallic antenna on top of his head that drives women crazy, leading to many odd and often uninvited sexual encounters with everyone from the cheerleader squad to the school faculty.

In this millennium, we have films like Not Another Teen movie and the direct-to-video American Pie: Band Camp. In the 80s and 90s, teenagers in the throes of puberty had movies like this, which aired on USA's Up All Night several times during the late 80s/early 90s under the title "I Was a Teenage Sex Project." I gave this movie a 4 out of 10 for its place in filmdom, but for movies of its genre it deserves a 7 at the very least. I'd say it was one of the last great T&A movies to make it to the masses, more for Judy Landers than anything, and I put it right up there with Zapped, Once Bitten and a few others. After "Up All Night" went off the air and Ronda Shear and Gilbert Gottfried had to get real jobs, the line between simple eye candy and soft-core porn became so blurred that movies like this are only seen on premium cable after midnight, and T&A movies these days no longer try to be subtle with their humor. This film was produced just as the quality of this genre began to die of asphyxia, and very few made after it are worth seeing (and those of us who remember seeing Dr. Alien when it first came out are just a bit old to be watching 19-year-olds bounce around in the nude). Simply put, this was one of those movies that didn't need too much editing to be enjoyed for a good tease on basic cable, but of course you'd have to hit a local video store to see all the bare skin (That's why these movies were made, folks, so don't shoot the messenger). If you were a teenage boy in late 80s or even a bit younger, you might find this good for a nostalgic cheesy laugh coupled with an anatomy lesson, but if you're a teenage boy now with the same afflictions, then something more recent is probably what you're after (by this time most of the girls are old enough to be your mother anyway).

Dr. Aliens (1989) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a substitute science teacher who tests a new formula on one of her students that turns him into a chick magnet. As he becomes an over sexed young man he will need to figure out what's behind the concoction leading to all his success. He might not like what he finds...or he might...

This movie is directed by David DeCoteau (Puppetmasters III) and stars Billy Jayne (Cujo), Judy Landers (Armed and Dangerous), Olivia Barash (The Doors), Stuart Fratkin (FRIENDS), Raymond O'Connor (The Rock), Linnea Quigley (Night of the Demons) and Troy Donahue (The Godfather Part II).

This definitely should have been called "Teenage Sex Mutants" which was the background song most scenes and the song played at the concert (the band was actually pretty good at the concert too). The dream sequences were funny and the alien special effects were hilarious. The cast is way better than you'd expect, as was the casting of the female companions. The storyline was one long soft porn video till the aliens revealed themselves.

This is great for what it was but bad overall. I would score this a 5/10 and only recommend seeing it with the appropriate expectations.