OLIVIA BARASH & BILLY JACOBY IN 'DR. ALIEN' W/ JUDY LANDERS

year of cinematic infestation: 1989

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one’s around to hear, does it make a sound? And if a movie’s meant to be awful, is it really? These are two difficult questions to answer but the second’s worth an attempt...

Judy + Olivia Autographed DVD

DR. ALIEN, a low budget science-fiction venture with Billy Jacoby as uptight high school student Wesley Littlejohn...

After becoming an experiment for the new, and very sexy, science teacher Judy Landers as Ms. Xenobia, he grows an antenna on his head and becomes lusted upon by every female on campus except Olivia Barash, the goody-goody dream-girl he’s been smitten with long before the Interstellar-Romeo morph: And unlike all the groupies, Barash's Leeanne doesn’t dig this “new improved” male slut one bit – until he becomes a rock star in a local band. And the high school sequences were filmed at Cypress College (in Orange County, California), this reviewer’s Alma mater – and perhaps personal nostalgia brings a heartfelt bias to the banal proceedings...

Olivia Barash at Cypress College SCORE: ***

But channeling the many “so bad they’re good” 1950's martian flicks including b-movie b-actor cameos by the likes of Troy Donahue, and while adhering to a 1980's sex comedy template that, while waning by the latter eighties, had become a genre in itself during this decade that has been considered a sort of Neo-1950's... this awesome cult catastrophe works despite the deliberate cheese: And when Landers becomes what she’s been hiding, a space alien with a bloated green noggin who wants to take Wesley home, you'll either go with the flow or suffer the consequences...

Consequences which are at least entertaining unlike latter films by director  David DeCoteau, such as A TALKING CAT?, A TALKING PONY and AN EASTER BUNNY PUPPY making DR. ALIEN aka I WAS A TEENAGE SEX MUTANT, I WAS A TEENAGE SEX MANIAC or, depending where you're at, SOCORRO: ME PERSIGUE UN MARCIANO or MA PROF EST UNE EXTRATERRESTRE seem like THE GODFATHER or RAGING BULL or even something like THE CRAWLING EYE by comparison.

Judy Landers in the sci-fi 50's homage in the 80's of DR ALIEN

Billy Jacoby (who's Billy Jayne now) and Judy Landers in DR. ALIEN