It’s probably at your local video store. You’ve probably looked at the cover 100 times. And every single time you just passed by. But if you’re a fan of cheese, then don’t you dare ignore it again.



RETURN OF THE ALIEN: THE DEADLY SPAWN is about as low tech as you can get. Full of pointless gore and puppet-like monsters, this is definitely not for the hard thinkers. The movie is about an alien that sets up shop in a family’s basement. The spawn starts to multiply and grow and occasionally gobble down anyone foolish enough to enter the basement. Soon they are big enough to leave the nest and find new meals. Can the local slow thinkers find a way to battle the spawn? And how can they deal with the spawn that have grown to gigantic size?

Featuring some of the worst editing and acting ever, this film is still a BLAST. The gallons of off-color blood, the blind spawn that look like evil sock puppets, the ease with which people’s heads come off all make for sweet campy fun. One of the best scenes is when the mother of the house decides to have a fancy little tea party and the spawn start to come up through the floor. There is another scene where a kid is trapped in the basement and trying to remain perfectly quiet since the spawn are blind. While in the basement he gets to watch them skin a corpse and lick the bones clean, it’s the grossest part of the film but also one of the most fun.

If you’ve never had the ‘pleasure’ of a really bad B-movie then this is a great place to start. There are visible boom mics, actors will run between rooms and amazingly switch clothes, stock footage made during the day will be spliced into a scene that takes place at night, and yet it never gets really boring. This is also a great place to do MST3K if you enjoy talking during the film. Just be sure not to watch this film alone, get a crowd and be prepared to laugh at it, not with it. Every once in a while I feel like watching something stupid (I own a lot of Pauly Shore and Ernest movies) and when the stupid film needs an extra gory kick, ROTA: TDS works just great. Now don’t mistake my praise as a suggestion for everybody to go out and rent it (it’s not for everybody) or even that the movie is 4 star good (it’s certainly not) but I did find it was 4 star fun. Try it if you dare.