Not of This Earth

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Roger Corman has always been a filmmaker eager to find new ways to stretch a dollar, and in the 1980s he began to realize he didn't always have to come up with a fresh idea when he had a big stack of old properties that could easily be remade. One of Corman's earlier efforts in retreading his old pictures was 1988's "Not Of This Earth", which follows the same story as one of his double-bill quickies from the 1950s but puts a very different spin on the material. Corman's original 1957 "Not Of This Earth" was one of the best of his low-budget sci-fi projects, but Jim Wynorski's 1988 remake opts to play the story for laughs, and lays the camp and wink-and-nudge humor on a bit too thick for its own comfort. Wynorski's "Not Of This Earth" doesn't seem to know if it's set in the 1950s or the '80s, with many of the characters driving vintage cars and wearing retro outfits while the city surrounding them exists in another era, and most of the abundant undraped women in the movie are at least briefly draped in the finest of mid-80s sleaze wear. The jokes in the screenplay by Wynorski and R.J. Robertson are thuddingly obvious and generate as many groans as laughs, while the narrative seems less the point than the occasional bursts of low-budget special effects (sometimes rescued from other films from Corman's library) and the presence of various bimbos displaying their surgically enhanced talents. Most of the cast overplays, particularly Lenny Juliano's Jeremy, who seemingly begs for a punch in the mouth. The movie's most positive attribute turns out to be -- who knew? -- Traci Lords, who made her mainstream debut with this picture after ending her career in hardcore porn in a hail of scandal. If Lords isn't a great actress in this picture, she's at least charismatic, has significantly better comic timing than most of the cast, and has the looks and charm of a movie star (a cut-rate movie star, but a star nonetheless) in a movie full of folks struggling to made the D List. At a time when it seemed questionable if Traci Lords had any future after her days as the tabloid media's shock story of the month faded away, "Not Of This Earth" showed she had the pluck and the skills to carry a picture, and if this particular vehicle isn't much of a burden, in this company she looks like a winner. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

• Personnel Chopping Mall

  

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• Director Jim Wynorski

  

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• Genre Horror

  

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