Back in the days before infomercials, there was a movie that seemed to be on TV almost every other weekend, The Alien Factor. The plot was simple, an alien spaceship crashed and let some caged extraterrestrials loose near a small town. Somebody at The Asylum must have seen it a few times. Because that’s the jumping-off point of their new film, Monster Hunters.
An alien ship crashes in the hills outside of LA, much to the delight of Dale (Jonathan Nation, Jurassic Galaxy) who is finally proven right about UFOs existing. That delight is short-lived as he promptly gets eaten by one of the craft’s occupants.
However, Dale was an observer for the government agency that deals with these kinds of things. When he doesn’t radio in Shepherd (Anthony Jensen, D-Railed, Reed’s Point) and his boss Colonel Mayweather (Tom Sizemore, The Runners, Hell Girl) become concerned. After the aliens easily take care of the team sent to check on Dale it falls on an inexperienced squad with untested alien weapons to stop them.
Monster Hunters is director Brendan Petrizzo’s first feature film, but he’s had plenty of experience on sets in other roles. Among other things, he did second unit work on Clown and Verotika. He was also a production assistant on Zombie With A Shotgun and The Wretched. He’s learned well, Monster Hunters looks good and is free from a lot of the usual gaffes we see in films from The Asylum.
The script by Jeremy M. Inman is much better than the one he wrote for Battle Star Wars. This time he’s actually caught the spirit of these B movies and the results are quite enjoyable. The film has a good pace and a decent amount of action for a change. The nerdy alien weapons expert Robert Drake Aka Bob (Mark Valeriano, The 27 Club, The Dark Military) is way more annoying than he needs to be. But otherwise, the main characters are well done for once.
The effects are, as usual, a mixed back. The CGI aliens and spaceship are actually good by low-budget standards for the most part. As are the couple of gore scenes we get. However, the fire and explosion scenes are awful. You also have o deal with the usual ridiculous moments like when they hook the alien ship’s power supply into their system with jumper cables. I guess having there really is an Auto Zone everywhere.
Overall though, Monster Hunters is an enjoyably brainless bit of fun. Which is quite a surprise coming from The Asylum. It’s available on streaming platforms with a DVD release planned for next month. You can check its website and The Asylum Facebook page for more info.