Alien Trespass (PG) ★★★

Review Date: April 8th, 2009

WHAT IT'S ABOUT?

Set in 1957 and designed to be mistaken for the corny B-monster movies of the era, Alien Trespass focuses on a group of characters who encounter an alien named Urp whose spaceship has crash-landed in the Mojave Desert, inadvertently setting loose another creature on board: the terrifying Ghota, a monster bent on destroying everything in its path including Earth. In order to defeat him, Urp takes over the body of a local astronomer and bands together with small-town citizens to save civilization as we have come to know it.

WHO'S IN IT?

A game cast tries to make us believe in this hokum from a more innocent time — and mostly succeed. All with a straight face, Will & Grace's Eric McCormack plays the pipe-smoking Dr. Ted Lewis, the astronomer whose body has morphed into that of the visiting alien, Urp. Making her motion-picture debut as a waitress who shows great courage in the face of this monstrous crisis, Jenni Baird is sweet and convincing. As the skeptical police chief and his officer, Dan Lauria and Robert Patrick (The Unit) are right out of the kind of bad B-movie Alien Trespass is trying to clone. Lewis' wife Lana is played by Jody Thompson, channeling any number of '40s or '50s buxomy film starlets who populated these pre-feminist roles.

WHAT'S GOOD?

Director/producer R. W. Goodwin is a veteran of TV's The X-Files and exhibits a real fondness for the far less sophisticated brand that started the sci-fi genre in the first place. It's no Airplane!-style spoof but gets laughs in such a good natured way that this nifty homage could have been released in 1957, and no one would have ever known the difference.

WHAT'S BAD?

Unless you're really into '50s movies like It Came From Outer Space and Invaders From Mars, this sly but very tame takeoff will probably have you headed for the lobby well before the end credits.

NETFLIX OR MULTIPLEX?

You won't have long to wait for this thing to land on DVD shelves so a better bet is to hold off and rent it with a couple of the real B-movies that inspired it. What better triple-feature matinee could there be?

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.