THE ALIEN DEAD (1980) * ½

Fred Olen Ray’s second effort as a director (his first full-length feature) is a sluggish southern-fried zombie flick.  As much as I enjoy his cut-rate actioners, Skinamax movies, and cult classics like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, I have to admit that his early, low budget, regional horror films are a chore to sit through.  While The Alien Dead isn’t quite as bad as Ray’s next one, Scalps, it’s pretty rough going at times. 

People wind up dead in a swamp.  The local law enforcement chalk it up to gators (or possibly a giant possum).  Turns out, there’s a bunch of zombies running around putting the bite on everyone.  You see, a meteor fell out of the sky, landed on some pot-smoking teens who were partying it up in a houseboat, and turned them into zombies.  You know.  That old story.

The Alien Dead apparently started life as a loose remake of Attack of the Giant Leeches (which explains characters with in-joke names like “Corman”, “Gordon”, and “Kowalski”).  Ray soon realized giant leeches were too expensive, so he opted to make the monsters traditional zombies instead.  As bad as much of this is, I have to give Ray credit.  Ever the trailblazer, he was making low budget Romero knockoffs long before they were chic.  (The gore scenes are okay too.)  Also, Ray was doing the in-joke character name thing before it was a cliché, so there’s that.  He even throws in a long, completely gratuitous nude scene of a coed skinny-dipping.  These types of sequences would go on to become a staple of his later work.

Overall, The Alien Dead feels less like a Living Dead rip-off, and more like Ray’s riff on a William Grefe flick, what with the swamp setting, the constant country music, poor sound, and amateurish performances.  Speaking of performances, the only “star” in the cast is the former Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe as the sheriff.  He looks too old to be a sheriff (he was seventy-two at the time) and flubs his lines, but he’s no worse than the terrible no-names in the cast. 

While there’s an occasional bright spot, the long dialogue scenes that go nowhere ultimately sink it.  The opening scene featuring a bickering married couple on a boat in particular will have you scrambling for the remote.  If you do manage to stick with it, you’ll get to see a decent scene where a guy gets eaten in half.  Ultimately, The Alien Dead deserves to be stuck in the swamp.

AKA:  It Fell from the Sky.  AKA:  Swamp of the Blood Leeches.