BIOHAZARD (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Back when I watched this blah low-budget mess, I found myself thinking, "why should I spend any more time thinking about this dreck when director/co-writer Fred Olen Ray spent the absolute minimum amount of effort slapping it together?"

While Ray's best work is lively junk like HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS, he's best known for tossing a bunch of minor name actors into one constricted setting for about seventy minutes, where they run around and ad lib until Ray has enough footage to bring things to a crashing halt. And that's all BIOHAZARD is, an extremely minor ALIEN knockoff, whose only distinction is that its rubber-suited monster-menace was played by the director's five-year-old child.

The script, to what extent one can call it that, involves a scientific installation devoted to using a FLY-like teleport-beam to beam in whatever object the beam contacts. Supposedly the beam is somehow guided by a hired psychic named Lisa (Angelique Pettyjohn of the TREK episode GAMESTERS OF TRISKELION). The pint-size monster manifests and begins killing people, mostly in darkness to camouflage the creature's unimposing dimensions.

Finally the killer is destroyed, but then there's a really ridiculous Big Reveal: Lisa the Psychic is actually of the mini-killer's race and was testing her people's ability to invade. So how did she get to Earth without the help of the teleport-beam, and why don't her people just invade the usual old way? Again, I'm sure Ray gave the matter no thought. For the few viewers like me, who like to  pin down who's the focal icon of any given film, this at least means that the main character is Lisa the Psychic, not the risible mini-alien.

I certainly don't envy any of the younger actors who were allowed to just whip up their own silly dialogue. But the blame for all their goofs falls squarely on a Guy Called Ray.