I seem to be on some kind of bad luck streak with movies lately, or good depending on where on the map your viewing tastes land i guess. I decided that instead of just letting all the VHS tapes I’ve acquired over the last 6 months or so (roughly 300, purchased mostly from a local video rental store looking to get rid of old stock) languish on my shelves and in the coffin I use to store them (so goth) that I needed to watch as many as I can to justify my investment. Then along came the Gore Guys and it gave me even more reason to dig into those shelves, in search of monster based horror movies on which I could write reviews and generally poke fun at. As I mentioned previously in my Scarecrows review, I suffer from a weakness for really cheesy looking covers, so when I pulled the Biohazard tape out and saw the gloriously bad rubber suit alien monster adorning the slip case, I knew I had a winner. I did a little bit of research, before i popped the tape into the VCR,and discovered that this one was on the rarer side as far as old VHS go. We aren’t talking Black Devil Doll From Hell rare mind you, but harder to find none the less. Now that I am safely on the other side of viewing this movie, I fully understand why this tape is not so common: not many people have bad enough taste to want to add this to their collection. With that in mind, lets dive into this review head first. (Note: Since I don’t want anyone to have to subject themselves to the awfulness that is this movie, I’m going to give a play by play of sorts of all the key points, mostly so you can understand the pain I had to go through to write this review.)

The movie opens up in typical 80’s fashion, with a snazzy Casio theme song that should serve as a warning to any one without a strong stomach for bad cinema. I, being one of strong stomach and short of taste, took this of course as a good sign and settled in to be offended by bad storytelling and even worse acting. This movie doesn’t disappoint on either of those fronts, nor does it skimp on the bad costumes or random nudity for nudities’ sake. As the credits crawled by I realized that this movie was written, directed and produced by the same guy, meaning that there was no one around tell him no when he had a less than good idea. (This was a great sign I assured myself) The plot centers around a military project involving amplified psychic powers being used to power a matter transfer device to bring items through a dimensional rift into our world….Got all that? How could that possibly get messy and confusing? Anyways, the experiment is a success and the psychic (who was cast not for her acting talent but for her ample assets that come into play later) manages to bring through what appears to be a box or sarcophagus of sorts. Deeming the experiment a complete success, the assembled military officials order their men to toss this box in the back of a jeep and drive it to the nearby towns military base for further inspection. Because the secret lab away from civilization wouldn’t be the best place to investigate this potentially dangerous alien artifact right? Predictably, the creature contained within this box escapes, kills a soldier by scratching his face and takes off into the desert. Now, you’d think that this would kick the military into high gear in an attempt to corral the creature but no, they order the main character to round it up and then then they take off to do much more important things, presumably drinking.

What follows is about 60s minutes of the worst alien hunting I’ve ever borne witness to in movie form. For one, instead of tracking it during the day, the guy they put in charge (who is channeling some serious A-Team vibes with his brown leather bomber jacket and baseball cap combo) decides that the best plan of action is to wait until 11 PM to even think about starting to hunt this thing down. The creature is probably just off enjoying the local sights anyways, how much damage can it possibly do in half a days time? With so much time on their hands, our main characters do what anyone would do if they witnessed the escape of an inter dimensional alien into the local eco-system – they get their freak on! This is where the actress (generous term) playing the psychic really shines as once she takes her shirt off you sort of can try and forget how ridiculous the plot of this movie is. However, the boob-a-thon doesn’t last long before they get interrupted by a phone call from another member of the military convey however. Apparently when the alien creature escaped, it left behind a container of sorts which GI Joe promptly swiped because fuck protocol. It turns out this canister has been growing consistently in size since he got it home so he decided to phone A-Team and the psychic to see if they knew what to do about it. They rush over to discover that it’s not growing, but in fact opening. Luckily for them, it waits until they all get their faces in real close to the canister (did I mention it’s spewing some form of gas at this point? Better stick my head in this alien gas cloud!) before releasing the snake-like alien being inside, which promptly attacks GI Joe and bites him on the neck.

Things start to get really muddled at this point and the movie starts montaging all these shorter scenes of characters we’ve never seen before and care even less about than the main characters. From what I can recall, there’s a scene with some bums who wax poetic about wine, a married couple who decide that you don’t need to bother taking your clothes off to have sexy time in a tub full of water (?!) but best (and I guess the only one that really moves this sad attempt at a story forward) a older couple driving down the road in a farm truck fighting. The female half of this happy couple spends about 3 minutes (which feel like 30) screeching at her husband in a nails-on-a-chalkboard shrill voice about how he’s a drunk and a loser before he finally shuts her up by hitting the alien creature as it crosses the road. He gets out of the truck to investigate (and likely to escape her badgering) realizes what he’s hit and tosses it into the back of the truck to try and make a quick buck off it. Once he gets it home, he tosses the beast into the basement and puts on what I assume is his sunday best, but he just ends up looking like Don Cherry , and calls the newspaper as well as the local sheriff. The sheriff shows up first, heads down to the basement to find it empty and then promptly accuses the man of telling drunk ass stories for attention. Confused, the man in the ugly as sin suit heads down into the basement where he is quickly slaughtered by the alien who then makes a hasty getaway into the night.

Our main characters roll up, minutes too late to be of any help, and form a posse of sorts with the sheriff which consists of the A-Team reject look-a-like, the psychic woman and a ‘Nam vet who also happens to be A-Teams rival. I have to say, out of everyone, the vet is the only one with enough of a brain to show up with a weapon with enough stopping power to actually be effective in an alien/creature hunt scenario. Not that it really helps as less than 5 minutes later he gets fucked up by what I assume is an alien hatchling which is, as is most of this movie, never discussed in even a minimum of detail. A-Team picks up the vets’ gun and proceeds with what he should have done hours ago and continues to hunt down the alien creature. He finally corners it further into the basement/warehouse/I’m-not-really-sure-where-they-are and shoots it square in the chest, launching it into a fuse box, which electrocutes and kills it. The psychic woman then comes out of the darkness, her acting even more wooden than usual and I’m pretty sure A-Team thought he was going to get some victory titties at this point, but no. She reveals to him that she was in control of the alien this whole time and it was a warrior from her peoples planet (wait, I thought they were from another dimension? Fuck it whatever). As she spouts this revelation she undoes her top, exposing her only assets and then unceremoniously rips those off as well, revealing her true alien form which looks suspiciously like a Goomba from the live action Mario Brothers movie. Cue end credits.

Like I said at the start of this review, this movie is rare for a reason. If you do stumble upon it in the wilds and can stand have your senses offended by non-sensical storytelling and horrid costumes (you can plainly see the seams in the costume anytime the monster is on screen), pick it up. Anyone else, avoid this like the plague and go watch something from ScyFy or The Asylum;Biohazard makes their effects work Oscar worthy and their acting out of this world.

-Scotty Floronic (@drunkgraveyard)