ALIEN FURY (2000)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*                                                                                                                          This worthless TV-movie, combining dull talking-head scenes and very basic action scenes, is almost a complete waste of time. The script by writer-director Rob Hedden, best known for the tolerable FRIDAY THE 13TH: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, concocts a bland, who-knows-who's-lying mystery about alien invasion. The head of a UFO defense initiative (Dale Midkiff) apparently fakes the existence of an alien invasion to keep his unit from having its funding cut off. A cop (Dondre T. Whitfield) investigating a murder (that everyone forgets about fairly quickly) exposes the hoax. But wait, there really are aliens among the humans. Most of them look and act just like humans, except that they need to breathe nitrogen, and they use inhalers for that purpose. They're supposedly peaceful, merely observing humans, except that they have a hulking female enforcer named Ava (Chyna) who goes full Terminator on anyone who threatens their secrets. Oh, and Midkiff's character is also an alien. Or is it his wife Grace Phillips? I can't imagine anyone caring.                                                                                                                                                                    Both the humans and the aliens are very negligible presences here, but I suppose the mystery of what the aliens really are is the central narrative concern, such as it is. Though Chyna was not a good actress, unlike the other performers she seemed to be giving the role her all. At the conclusion she gets the drop on the cop, but he manages to talk her into fighting him one-on-one, and when she nearly kicks his ass, he cheats and stuns her with a taser. Ava's mission makes no sense, but I could argue that since she's the only alien character the audience gets to know a little bit, she's the de facto star of the show, the way Exeter represents his race in THIS ISLAND EARTH. In 2000 Chyna still had her steroid-induced musculature, but she remains covered up throughout the tedious tale. The only reason I know that she hadn't quit steroids at that time is that in the same year Chyna guested on an episode of a cable TV show called PACIFIC BLUE (otherwise known as "Baywatch on Bikes"). Mediocre as that program was in general, the showrunners did put Chyna's muscles on full display and exploited her wrestling-fame by putting her character through at least four well-done (for TV) fights. Whatever significance Chyna's career might have, that PACIFIC BLUE episode is a better marker of that significance than this limp-wristed telefilm.