46: Alien Agenda: Under the Skin (1997, Kevin J. Lindenmuth/Tom Vollman/Ron Ford/Michael Legge)

Owned version: Same 2002 DVD released by Navarre Home Entertainment that its sister anthology Endangered Species was on.

Acquired: October 18th, 2016 from Amazon.

Seen before?: No.

I took less than half a page of notes for Alien Agenda: Under the Skin. By contrast, I nearly filled a whole page for Endangered Species, a film which I reviewed by basically saying, "This all kinda sucks except for the Tim Ritter segment, which has SO MANY GOOFY THINGS IN IT, YOU GUYS." One of my notes reads, "theme song is some Toad the Wet Sprocket-sounding stuff with the refrain, 'Close your eyes and remember the good times / We'll all be dead soon.'" Another reads simply, "mmm, brain salad."

I mention this as a way to say, what the hell is there to say about this movie other than this is barely a movie? If it isn't as bad as the last time I saw Lindenmuth and Vollman team up (Addicted to Murder: Blood Lust), it's not for lack of trying. Vollman's piece is a half-assed crime thriller that burns its first ten minutes on a stubbly, sunglasses-wearing alien supersoldier pursuing, catching and ultimately de-limbing some putz who was late on his gambling debt. This has no bearing on anything - the supersoldier gets pushed to the periphery after this and the newly one-armed schmo disappears entirely - as Vollman instead reveals that his main plot is actually about some other guy, a low-level functionary in a crime family and how he gets caught between the cops, his higher-ups and a new syndicate that is, y'know, aliens in disguise. I cannot fathom the paucity of imagination it takes to be told to write a featurette about an alien invasion and your big idea is, "What if I tried to remake King of New York but in thirty minutes?" If you don't want to make an alien-invasion film, don't sign up for the alien-invasion anthology, chief.

Lindemnuth's, meanwhile, starts with the abduction of a biologist and then turns into... something. There's aliens in disguise and doubles and a chupacabra? As often happens with his films, it feels like Lindenmuth had an idea and didn't develop it very well. Or, maybe it's a case of him having a few ideas - this segment plays in halts and hiccups, like it might actually be several scraps of unfinished shorts precariously pasted together into an inexplicable shape. The sole highlight in this section is a series of abductee interviews, similar to the interviews that opened Endangered Species, but where Ford's broad caricatures (glimpsed briefly here as well, somewhere within the crazy-quilt second half) serve only to grate, these interviews play surprisingly well. The actors declaiming the dialogue are credible, and the way the stories slowly develop is satisfying. These bits were directed by Legge, an under-the radar mainstay of cheapo cinema with a corny yet ingratiatingly morbid sense of humor, and the modest, off-kilter sensibilities these stories display (one involving a man with one arm, another involving an alien with a yen for fast food) make them a refreshing oasis in a desert of inspiration. It doesn't provide the relief that Tim Ritter's segment of Endangered Species does, but we take whatever we can get around here.

45: Alien Agenda: Endangered Species (1998, Ron Ford/Kevin J. Lindenmuth/Gabriel Campisi/Tim Ritter)

Owned version: The 2002 DVD released by Navarre Home Entertainment featuring both this and 1997's Alien Agenda: Under the Skin. (There's a third film, 1996's Alien Agenda: Out of the Darkness that for whatever reason has been abandoned as VHS-exclusive.)

Acquired: October 18th, 2016 from Amazon.

Seen before?: Once on October 3rd, 2016 from a VHS I'd picked up previously. (My response was this Letterboxd capsule.) Never from this disc.

Upon a second look, this dismissiveness of that capsule seems, for the most part, appropriate. Ford's contribution, a series of interviews with various folks about the possibility of alien abductions, is negligible, mostly an excuse to open the film with some light shtick (e.g. the skeptical buffoon who pronounces "marijuana" like Mr. Mackey). Lindenmuth's first segment builds a deep conspiracy centered around two warring factions of aliens (the Shape Shifters, who want to coexist with humanity, and the Greys, who want to destroy humanity) and yet somehow comes out the other end as a banal relationship drama, with newscaster Debbie Rochon convinced her boyfriend Joe Zaso is cheating on her. (Zaso is, of course, actually an alien, which should be obvious just by looking at the dude. A unique look, that one.) Campisi's film is an endless series of scenes where its protagonist runs, drives or walks places, occasionally eluding two lumpy guys in black suits, though it does end with some pretty nifty stop-motion animation - essentially a pair of pint-sized ED-209s, but with laser guns that look like dicks. (It also looks significantly cheaper than the rest of the film, having been shot in 1992.) And Lindenmuth pops in to give us a closing segment that doubles, triples and quadruples down on the conspiracy angle to the point where no sense can be made out of the remains (though it has one great joke about the origin of the Greys). So, yeah, all in all, minimum effort. I was right.

........except for the part where I was completely wrong about Ritter's segment. Accrding to the closing credits, it's titled "Ransom," but fuck that - this is Florida Man: The Movie. See doughy Man of Action (and FL zero-budget legend) Joel Wynkoop shank a masked man holding a bazooka! See Wynkoop wander around the abandoned ruins of South Florida (played by some really shabby, run-down part of South Florida, so props to the location manager there) and have morose flashbacks to happier days! See the grafitti that screams WANNA PLAY TRUTH OR DARE? See the cannibal children chowing down on their own dad! See the bit that leads to the actual credit "SPECIAL APPEARANCE by: NATASHA the snake!" (The exclamation point is part of the credit, natch.) See Wynkoop almost drink worms! See the masked man return for a kung-fu battle! See Wynkoop get abducted by a Man in Black who fondles a silver mannequin, eats mystery meat from the neck of a severed head and threatens Wynkoop with the Meltdown Chamber! See the Man in Black tell Wynkoop, "I could have plucked your eyeballs out," right before chomping down on an eyeball! See Wynkoop sneer and snarl and kickbox and just generally do his thing! See the incredible bit where he's attacked by an alligator!

No, really, check this shit out, I can't do it justice:

What else is there to say? Amid the self-seriousness and poorly-mapped conspiracy nonsense, Ritter's overblown macho silliness is so, so welcome. The rest of the film can shrivel and blow away - "Ransom" justifies the myriad other sins this thing has. Sometimes, all you need is a little fun.