ALIEN TERMINATOR a.k.a TOP LINE (1988)

DIRECTED by  Ted Archer

SCREENPLAY by Roberto Gianviti & Nello Rossati

STARRING  - Franco Nero as Ted Angelo,  George Kennedy as Heinrich Holzmann,  Deborah Barrymoore as June,  Mary Stavin as Maureen De Havilland,  William Berger as Alonso Kintero, Shirley Hernandez as Juanita.

PLOT - Ted Angelo is a washed-up alcoholic journalist based in Columbia. He's just been fired by his publisher (who also happens to be his ex-wife), he has no money, no career and only his plane fare home. Things are looking bleak...when suddenly he gets wind of the story of the century, a story that could help him regain his career, his shattered reputation and his life.

A series of murders are taking place surrounding a sunken ship and its ancient Conquistador treasures. Ted manages to locate the ancient ship and finds that the ship is not sunken but is instead located in a hidden cave which turns out to be a crashed extra-terrestrial spacecraft.

Having uncovered evidence of life on other planets and determined to expose the story, Ted uncovers a seemingly global conspiracy to cover up the existence of the alien craft. Joined by a young art historian named June, Ted is soon running for his life from hitmen determined to silence him but they're not the only party looking to ensure the story stays buried...something else is hunting Ted and June...something alien...

PERFORMANCES  - Franco Nero needs no introduction to fans of cult cinema as he's perhaps best known for playing the original Django in Sergio Corbucci's classic Speghetti Western. Throughout the 60's and 70's Nero went on to star in numerous Italian exploitation movies, usually in the western or crime genres.

Back in his heyday, Nero cut an imposing figure - he was usually cast as a lean, mean, killing machine. Here though, in the role of Ted Angelo, Nero is looking a little bit past his prime - he's paunchy and tired looking, a far cry from his glory days as Django. This is no criticism though, as I think his "past his sell by date" looks actually help make the character of Ted seem more realistic.

Ted is shown to be a shambling washed up drunkard whose life is clearly on a downward spiral. This is a man whose ambitions are fastly swirling down the shitter and departing round the U-bend. Nero plays it well but he's severely hindered by the unengaging script and choppy editing which cuts away from scenes way too quickly, leaving the viewer wondering what the hell is going on. Narrative coherency is NOT this film's strong point.

For the first half hour of the film, Ted wanders round in his standard issue white suit and Panama hat, getting drunk, chasing his story, getting drunk some more, patronising island natives, getting drunk, intimidating possible leads for his story, getting drunk and being hit on by women young enough to be his daughters (for some reason hot young women in thier twenties seem to find sweaty, mustachioed, hairy, middle-aged men irresistible in the universe in which this movie is set).

The film lurches along like this for so long that you actually start to get slightly bored as well as being confused. Then Ted hits paydirt, finds the crashed UFO and things start to get slightly (but only slightly) more interesting.

Its at this point that the various powers that be decide that Ted needs to be silenced, among them is a retired Nazi war criminal/art dealer called Heinrich Holzmann. Heinrich is played by the usually reliable George Kennedy. I say usually reliable...but he's really not very good in this. He's built up to be this big dangerous villian (he "kills gypsies" apparently - what this has to do with the overall plot I have NO idea) but he's only onscreen for about five minutes (even though he gets second billing on the credits) before he confusedly stumbles into a grain silo and gets "drowned" in grain (clearly he's never watched Dark Night Of The Scarecrow otherwise he'd have known going anywhere near a five mile radius of a grain silo is a massively bad idea in a B-movie, he was probably too busy killing gypsies...). To say that Kennedy is "phoning it in" is probably being generous. He just looks bored by the whole thing.

Its around this point that June (Deborah Barrymoore) decides to join Ted on his quest for the truth. June is an art historian with a cut glass English accent. Like practically every other woman in this movie she seems to find Ted irresistible and promptly beds him at the first available opportunity (telling him that she's the type of girl who "always gets what she wants" and what she wants is him). As you can probably see from the above, Barrymoore gets some absolutely terrible dialogue to deliver. Pretty much every line she comes out with is just re-acting to what's going off onscreen in the most obvious way possible (ie - someone fires a gun - "He's shooting at us" yells June, someone turns out to be a robot "he's a robot" June helpfully informs us). It's no wonder that her line delivery is so flat, not even Lawrence Olivier could imbue that type of dialogue with any sort of conviction.

SFX - For such a low budget, shonkilly made film the effects actually aren't too bad considering. The actual "Alien Terminator" himself looks fairly decent (albeit HEAVILY inspired by another slightly more famous Terminator).

His ping-pong ball "eyeball" actually moves independently of it's own accord which is pretty cool.

We also get a pretty decent alien transformation scene. In the movie's penultimate scene we learn that Ted's bitchy ex-wife is actually one of the aliens (who have been living amongst us and "guiding" mankind for centuries). Needless to say its not long before Ted's ex transforms from a sexy blonde into a green skinned bile spitting reptile woman. Its by far the best effect in the entire film and must be what a good 80 percent of it's budget was spent on (it certainly wasn't anything else).

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Theres some gratuitous topless shots when one of Ted's various girlfriends gives him a naked massage. Ted seems to enjoy it. Ted's ex also whips her boobs out seconds before transforming into an alien snake woman, just because...

There's lots of shootings and general beatings of assorted hitmen, henchmen and passing indigenous natives who get caught in the crossfire.

At one point Ted is forced to run barefoot through a load of Cactus needles, shredding his feet to ribbons in the process. Interestingly, in Django, Nero's character gets his hands shredded up, now in this film he gets his feet mangled. Its a good job he never took to acting in porn films when his star began to wane...

Theres a pretty good five minute car chase where Ted is in the back of a pickup truck full of chickens being driven by a drunken farmer. He's being chased by a C.I.A. assasain. Ever resourceful, Ted ends the chase by (get this) THROWING A BOX OF EGGS OVER HIS ASSAILANTS WINDSCREEN. This causes his pursuer's vision to be obscured and results in him losing control of his vehicle, driving over the side of a handy cliff and perishing in a FIERY INFERNO OF DEATH as his truck explodes !!!!!!

The titular Alien Terminator makes an impressive enterence by striding down a street and taking down everyone he encounters (mainly local police). He then pursues Ted and June into a city park that is conveniently holding a fireworks display. The Terminator walks into a catherine wheel (that he could have quite easily just walked around) and gets half his face blown off (revealing his true cyborg nature in the process).

The Terminator then chases our heroes onto a farm, where due to the fact that he's wearing a bright red shirt gets gored to death by an enraged bull (you honestly couldn't make this up). This leads to a nice shot of the dismembered Terminator twitching his last on the dusty floor.

And that's it - the Alien Terminator - the character the whole bloody film is named after - is no more. Total amount of time he spends on screen ? Literally five minutes MAXIMUM !!!

There is another Terminator (who looks exactly like this one) but Ted knocks his head off with an axe as soon as he sets eyes on him, so he's literally onscreen for about thirty seconds.

June shoots Ted's alien ex-wife to death with a harpoon gun (not something you get to do everyday) and that's it. The film ends.

RATING  - Alien Terminator is an utter train wreck of a movie. The pacing is so off its unbelievable. You get a slow first half that really does test your will to live - I was actually microscopically close to just giving up and turning it off at one point, but stick with it and it eventually (VERY eventually) meanders it's way towards being "so bad it's good" to being ACTUALLY good (but still charmingly shit) in its last 10-15 minutes.

It's almost like an episode of the X-files but with a fraction of the budget and with Franco Nero acting as a bleary eyed hungover Agent Mulder. For all it's many (MANY) faults its still moderately entertaining (at least it's second half is).

3 poundshop Terminators out of 5. I'd like to score it higher, but that first half is SUCH a slog to get through. If you're interested, all the best bits of this film are freely viewable on YouTube, its probably the best way to watch it if I'm being honest, at least that way you get to miss the entire first half.

ART -