Directed by Albert Pyun
When her archaeologist father disappears on an expedition, Wanda sets out to look for him. What she finds is a secret underground world, where no one believes in life on the surface and where she and her father are taken for spies.
Un'aliena al centro della terra, Wanda, Obcy z Los Angeles, Uma Estranha de Los Angeles, Пришелец из Лос-Анджелеса, Η Εξωγήινη Από το Λος Άντζελες, Flucht aus Atlantis - Alien from L.A., Un'aliena al centro della Terra, Инопланетянка из Лос-Анджелеса, L'Aventure fantastique, 洛城异形, Flucht aus Atlantis, LA에서 온 외계인, 洛城異形
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Watching Alien from L.A. is like going to your local supermarket and buying a three-tier orange, pink and purple butter-cream wedding cake the color of sunsets covered in even-more-purple sugar-orchids with mouths of flame, asking for it with no box, carrying it wobbling on a cakeboard out to the parking lot where rosy-fingered dawn is just beginning to really get going after having her second or third cup of coffee, putting the cake on top of your hood as you climb up to sit next to it gazing out over the parking lot like it is the best parking lot you have ever seen because it totally is and you are just hanging there with your orange-blossom-vanilla-flavored cake with tangerine/passion-fruit…
wanda, the most relatable character in movie history - a nerd who isn't smart, clumsy, terrified of everything but accepts the scientifically impossible with curiosity and wonder, simultaneously whiny/bossy and horribly insecure - travels to an elaborate underground society of dirty weirdos and 500 different colors of light and so much fog for no reason to rescue her damsel-in-distress dad, experiences life from a different perspective in which she is the outsider in a society with way bigger problems than getting dumped, emerges as a confident slightly more intelligent babe with no apparent eyesight problems, and tells her surfer former boyf to get lost so she can ride on a motorcycle with an escaped alien cave dweller....folks...this movie is my dream and i love it and hating wanda is misogyny and an attack on me personally!!
"I feel like a worm broker!"
The story of Wanda a nerd (she wears glasses so you know she's a nerd) from L.A. who goes searching for her lost archaeologist Father who's fallen down a hole under this house in Zamboanga and ended up in the lost city of Atlantis (the clumsy old duffer).
It's Mad Max underground via a Visage/Duran Duran music video that's kindred spirts with the movie Radioactive Dreams with both being directed by Albert Pyun - wouldn't be surprised if he'd used the same sets and judging by his filmography most of his films probably all had the same sets?
"wait is that really your voice?"
Kathy Ireland's accent for some reason goes from cute to annoying at 125mphs not sure if that's her real accent? Well anyway it's still another classic from the great Cannon Films that's fun but Goofy with a capital G.
"lying sack of crap!"
Fair enough.
can't explain how much this movie meant to me as a child even though i didn't see it until i was an adult
Defending Albert Pyun movies, I sometimes feel like Lisa Simpson trying to pitch a jazz artist's performance to a skeptic. "You have to listen to the notes she's NOT playing," she pleads. "Pshh, I could do that at home," he shrugs off. Alien From L.A. is such a shining example of many of the things that Pyun does well (and the varitable notes he's NOT playing, like, as Sydney pointed out in her intro, treating a female lead wayyyyy differently than say a Luc Besson or James Cameron would). It also has a host of the things that drive people up the wall in his movies: odd pacing, uneven performances, and a dramatic flatness that is probably, if I had…
Exactly what I imagine the outside of Wendy's window in Hardware to look like: spacey synths pulsating over Terry Gilliam's eighties dystopia where middle-class work is enslavement, TV monitor wallpaper echoing Big Brother messaging through the cityscape, bright neons seeping through blinds like a noir lite. Its influences are clearly present, but never rehashed, and always feels like a cohesion of unique ideas -- more than I can say about a lot of ozploitation. The reason this is so disregarded is absolutely beyond me for anyone who enjoys science fiction with a punky style and developed world-building, dare I say is equally as realized as Verhoeven's Total Recall or Besson's Fifth Element (hm, an "alien" female enraptured in a foreign…
If you enjoy this review, check out my book RADIOACTIVE DREAMS: THE CINEMA OF ALBERT PYUN. I reviewed every one of Albert Pyun's films and interviewed some of his closest collaborators.
“Please God, can you make something happen in my life? Anything at all? Really?” - Wanda Saknussemm (Kathy Ireland) in ALIEN FROM L.A
ALIEN FROM L.A is famous for one thing and one thing only: Kathy Ireland's voice. The sound that emanates her mouth, in her first-time feature film role after years of being a model, can be equally described as a piercing shriek, the cartoon version of a Valley Girl Twang, and nails on a chalkboard all rolled into one. Albert Pyun deliberately chose her to use that…
Having seen only the MST3K version of this years ago, it was nice to soak in God Pyun's smoky, neon-drenched, hair-metal junkyard-future aesthetic on the immaculate new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-Ray.
Pyun pilfers shamelessly from Blade Runner, Brazil, and 1984, but I'm not complaining. His Atlantis feels like a lot of random visual ideas piled on top of each other rather than a coherent vision, but hey, there's always something fun to look at, and Pyun makes imaginative use of what appear to be disused warehouse or factory sets. I actually find Kathy Ireland quite likeable in this, although I will admit that her squeaky voice gets to be A Bit Much by the 97-minute mark. Hat tip to my colleague Justin Decloux, who almost singlehandedly invented Albert Pyun auteurism. You can buy his essential Pyun book here in Canada and here in the U.S.
Everyone lied to us. This movie is fucking good.
wait actually i rescind my previous statement about hot women playing like theyre hideous loser fuggos. i love it. its good actually
Big confidence from an alien - who walks like a troll, dresses like a worm, and has the voice that gives everyone a headache.
Wanda is a squeaky-voiced nerd whose father has fallen down a bottomless pit in Africa when she goes to search for him she ends up falling down the same hole, which takes her to Atlantis! Where she must navigate this strange lost city and find her father. The most unrealistic thing about this is Kathy Ireland being portrayed as a "nerd" ain't nobody buying that shit. Anyway, this is part Indiana Jones part Journey to the Center of the Earth with a dash of The Fifth Element thrown in. With an array of strange colourful characters and a ludicrous plot, it's impossible not to be entertained by the absurdity of the entire thing.
Keep your eye out for Deep Roy of Oompa Loompa fame who turns up as an underground mob boss.
Albert Pyun teamed up with Cannon to put super model Kathy Ireland in a tonally bizarre, yet surprisingly charming, late 80s sci-fi comedy that feels like Cherry 2000 transplanted to the underground society in Demolition Man. Its vision is bigger than its budget but Pyun's fingerprints are all over it and it could be easy to mistake its sincerity for naiveté - probably the most outwardly feminist thing that Pyun and/or Cannon ever did tbh.
