To those familiar with the psychotronic rumblings of New York City’s funkier movie houses, the late Albert Pyun needs no introduction. The low-budget genre director, fascinated by all things unreal and fantastic, was notorious for shoehorning any number of technologies and fighting styles into his films, many of which were influenced by the contemporaneous action cinema of Hong Kong. Pyun cut his teeth in the 1980s and ’90s with such classics as Cyborg (1989), Captain America (1990), and Nemesis (1992), a streak of high-energy movies—with little regard for plot or character development—maintained well into his years-long battle with multiple sclerosis and dementia, which took his life in 2022 at the age of 69.
Unsurprisingly, Pyun’s hyperdrive cinema has some tells: expository opening narration; dystopic urban sprawls; and a key or code that, in the wrong hands, can destroy the world. It is partially due to the absence of these trademarks that Alien from L.A. (1988) stands apart from the director’s more typical fare. Hailed by the critic Joe Bob Briggs as “a pretty decent film,” Alien from L.A. tells the story of Wanda (supermodel Kathy Ireland), a nerdy Californian down on her luck. Her boyfriend has broken up with her and her explorer father has just disappeared searching for the long-lost city of Atlantis. To collect her dad’s will, Wanda travels to “Deepest Africa,” where she unwittingly traces her father’s footsteps into the earth’s core.
While Alien from L.A. exhibits many of its director’s beloved trademarks—a strong female antagonist; themes of public disorder and anarchy; a city that can only be described as a cyberpunk mosh pit; and several not-so-spectacular fight sequences—it is the film’s reflexivity that sets it apart from Pyun’s canon. Opposing the self-seriousness of Jean-Claude Van Damme or Olivier Gruner, Ireland’s unconvincing performance as a klutz-out-of-water endears her character to the audience. Further, Wanda’s insufferable dub—high-pitched squeals, an effect criticized even within the film—operates as a knowing jab at the industry’s shallow interest in little other than a pretty face.
Pyun’s self-conscious humor also comes through in Alien from L.A.’s persistent intertextuality. The film’s references to titles like Indiana Jones (1981) and The Wizard of Oz (1939)—the Wanda/Dorothy parallels are all too apparent—indicate a director aware of his own reputation as a shlock auteur. This cognizance of budget, audience, and style allows Pyun to play with his image and lean into the cliché of derivative B-movie hack. As such, Alien from L.A. boasts a campy maximalism, a confidence undervalued by its eventual send-up on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film, like its director, remains proud to be weird.
Alien from L.A. screens tonight, June 28, on 35mm at Nitehawk Prospect Park.
