Alien from L.A.

MOVIE #1,616 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 05.09.24 ALBERT & AKERMAN: AN AUTEURIST STUDY IN CONTRAST + CONTINUUM The real impetus for this project is an uncomplicated one: pair the art house and the shlock for maximum highbrow/lowbrow enjoyment. These are the yin and yang of my cinema tendencies anyway. I genuinely love both forms and these double features have (mostly) been a delight thus far. The hard part is connecting the dots, but as we enter the richest periods of each auteur’s filmography, I think it might become easier to construct these throughlines. Like Akerman’s, Pyun’s sixth film is easily his best to date: an ugly duckling fairytale disguised as a lightly comedic sci-fi romp. How much mileage one gets out of Alien from L.A. probably will be determined by how they feel about Kathy Ireland (and her voice), but I was fully charmed. I realize I’m in the minority on this one.

Ireland is far better known as a supermodel and I can’t recall seeing her in anything before (outside of a cameo role). This is her first feature film and, while she’s not ‘good’ by any traditional metrics, there’s a genuine fresh-faced innocence that she brings to the role as the meek and nerdy Wanda Saknussemm (what a name). I might be the only person to ever write this, but I think it’s a shame she didn't get more roles*.

Sure, slapping some glasses on one of the most iconic Sports Illustrated swimsuit models of all-time and seeing her get dumped because she’s too “geeky” and afraid of life is a pretty flimsy trick, part of the ‘hot girl wearing spectacles’ trope which seemed to reach its peak around this time. However, when it works, it works, folks…


What’s even more of a delight are the line-reads of what has to be, at times, a winkingly ‘So Bad It’s Good’ screenplay…


Sadly, Wanda can’t reconcile with her long-lost father when she receives a letter stating that he fell down a bottomless pit…


But hold up! She uses this as an opportunity to face her fears, and travels to Africa to get some more info on what really happened to her dad. And just like Alice or Dorothy, she’s whisked down said bottomless pit to a magical realm…


The ensuing hour is non-stop fun (if not a tad light on action). This imagining of the lost city of Atlantis is pure Pyun magic (sure, maybe he stole bits and pieces from Gilliam and others, but it’s best not to get lost in the weeds of influence vs. theft). The lighting and set design are all fantastic, as are the array of weirdo characters who populate this world…


Like Deep Roy (who played all the Oompa-Loompas in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as Mambino, The Boss of Bosses…


And at the climax of all this wonderfully lit, smoky goodness, there’s an oddly poignant moment as some of the side characters ruminate on giving up vs. leaving things unfinished…


This almost feels like a mantra for Albert Pyun’s entire career: forced to compromise and concede time and time again, he never gave up. Even when the films clearly fall short, they’re still undeniably his. And this is one instance where the parts do add up to the sum of the finished product.

*the only other film I recall seeing her in was the 1991 football spoof Necessary Roughness, which 12-year-old me thought was a brilliant film.

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Alien from L.A. is a 1988 science fiction film directed by Albert Pyun and starring Kathy Ireland as a young woman who visits the underground civilization of Atlantis. The film was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. This film is loosely based on Jules Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth with some minor allusions to The Wizard of Oz. It was released on February 26, 1988.