Bad Channels Reviews

BAD CHANNELS is yet another slapdash direct-to-video release from Full Moon Entertainment, the Charles Band-headed company devoted to producing a steady flow of grade-B genre product. Considering that the storyline involves terror at a radio station and the cast is headed by former MTV host Martha Quinn, the only surprise here is that she does not play the movie's DJ. That task falls to Paul Hipp as "Dangerous" Dan O'Dare, who likes to indulge in outrageous stunts like playing a 20-hour polka marathon until someone guesses the correct combination on the lock that keeps him chained to his chair. After a long introduction of such pointless hijinx, the film's real plot gets going, involving an alien being with a swollen head that drops to Earth with a robot sidekick and invades the station. Pretty soon there's green slime everywhere, Dan and his engineer Corky (Michael Huddleston) are cringing in the control room and the alien is on the air, using a strange device to scope out cute women who are listening to the station. When it latches onto a likely subject, the creature sends a special transmission just to her, immersing her in a live music performance before zapping her out of her surroundings, shrinking her to a foot high and depositing her in a small glass case. In this manner, it procures a hot-to-trot waitress named Cookie (Charlie Spradling), airhead cheerleader Bunny (Daryl Strauss) and free-spirited nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr). Meanwhile, a TV reporter named Lisa (Quinn) has been trying to get a story on Dan, and is right on the scene when the strange events begin to occur. The beleaguered DJ is reporting on the bizarre goings-on from inside the station, but nobody believes him, assuming it to be a "War of the Worlds"-style prank designed to pull in big ratings. Among the disbelievers are station owner Locknut (Aaron Lustig), local Sheriff Hickman (Victor Rogers) and Lisa's fellow TV personality Flip Humble (Romel Reaux)--that is, until the alien attempts to zap Lisa into its collection and instead captures a nerdy teenage fan. The alien being reverses the process to empty the container for Lisa, and Dan sees the way to foil the alien's plan. Lisa soon becomes the creature's fourth captive, but Dan manages to revert her, Ginger and Cookie back to normal size, and they attack the being with the secret weapon Dan's discovered: household spray cleaner. The alien's head pops off, revealing a screeching plant monster beneath, but the group of humans manage to destroy it, the robot sidekick and the slime that's sealed over the doors. They emerge triumphant--not noticing at first that the miniaturized Bunny is still left behind. BAD CHANNELS plays like a movie that was created around a couple of standing sets: the radio station and the hospital where Ginger works and a man contaminated by the slime is brought for observation. The negligible screenplay, credited to Jackson Barr, seems to have been created as the filmmakers went along, with little narrative drive and a general lack of motivation; it's never explained what the alien intends to do with the women it's shrunk once it takes them home. There's also no explanation of how the music-video fantasies that entrap its victims are created, or why they're necessary, but they do allow director Ted Nicolaou to pad the film's running time to over 80 minutes. The musical sequences themselves are nothing to phone home about, with the exception of the warped and wild performance by Sykotik Sinfoney that entraps Ginger. Their piece not only captures the manic energy the rest of the film lacks, but serves as a commentary on it when the lead singer turns to the camera and screams, "It really sucks!" The cast all struggle against cartoon roles, with Hipp (recent star of Broadway's Buddy, based on the life of early rocker Buddy Holly) as the manic DJ coming off the best; Quinn, on the other hand, looks uncomfortable in a showcase that actually requires her to act. The extraterrestrial being is not especially impressive, clad in black leather with a styrofoam head, and his robotic cohort looks like one of the makeshift contraptions from TV's "Mystery Science Theater 3000"--a venue where this movie would be entirely at home. (Violence, profanity, adult situations.)