Alien From LA (1988) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1988)

Coincidence, it seems, even plays a part in the schlock movies I watch.  The other week I saw Albert Pyun's Alien From LA (1988) on one of those dodgy Roku channels I frequent.  Not a film I was familiar with, but some research revealed that it had an interesting production history and a quasi-sequel released the same year.  Then, lo and behold, what should turn up on Talking Pictures TV, of all places, a week later, but said sequel: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1988).  I say 'sequel' but, in reality, the latter film went into production first - in 1986 in fact - and originally had no connection to Alien From LA.  Cannon Films, the producer of both movies, however, were apparently deeply unhappy with the rough cut of Journey delivered to them by director Rusty Lemonrade and approached B-movie veteran Pyun to salvage it with reshoots and re-editing.  For his part, Pyun wanted to get his similarly themed Alien From LA into production and persuaded Cannon to finance it on the basis that once it was completed, he'd attempt the salvage job on Journey to the Centre of the Earth.  The latter subsequently emerged as a direct-to-video sequel of sorts to Alien From LA.  Having seen the two films in quick succession, it has to be said that Alien From LA is, unsurprisingly, the better film, being the product of a single creative force's vision, rather than an awkward mash up of two different directors' differing approaches to similar material.

Alien From LA follows shy, awkward and introverted California girl Wanda Saknussemm (Kathy Ireland) - dumped by her boyfriend pre-credits because he finds her hair, glasses, squeaky voice and he fact that she never wants to go anywhere, irritating - in her quest to find her absentee father who has disappeared while on an expedition in Africa.  He's been exploring ancient tunnels in an attempt to prove his theory that the legendary city of Atlantis was, in fact, an alien spaceship which sank into the centre of the earth.  Overcoming her insecurities about travelling, Wanda inevitably follows in his footsteps and finds herself in Atlantis, portrayed as some kind of cyberpunk-styled subterranean realm, apparently modelled on the look of Blade Runner.  She finds that, as part of a power struggle between different factions in the government, the citizens of Atlantis are in the grip of paranoia about being infiltrated by 'aliens' from the mythical surface world.  Wanda, eventually identified as a real 'alien' finds herself as a pawn in the power struggle before finding her father and trying to escape.  Bearing in mind its low budget (around a million dollars), Alien From LA is a surprisingly decent looking film, with good production design and some nice looking (and well shot) South African locations.  It moves along at a decent pace and has, for a low-budget fantasy movie, a reasonably witty script that actually yields some amusing lines.  As befits the highly stylised look of the Atlantis sets and costumes, the performances of the actors playing the Atlanteans are also somewhat stylised and somewhat stagey.  Of course, a lot of the film's success lies with the character of Wanda who starts out somewhat irritating but, thanks to the character's scripting and first-time actor Ireland's playing, grows into a likeable and sympathetic character as the plot progresses.

There are some intriguing aspects to Alien From LA which suggest that it might, originally, have been intended to present its story in a different light.  Several of the cast double up, playing multiple roles: Wanda's aunt, who runs the diner she works at, also plays a bar owner in Atlantis, while the actor playing Triton, one of the senior Atlanteans is also the mailman who delivers the letter telling Wanda that her father is missing, presumed dead, while her father's colleague in Africa is portrayed by the same actor who plays an Atlantean scientist. This apparent allusion to The Wizard of Oz (1939)  is emphasised after Wanda escapes from Atlantis, with a cut to her waking up, back at her aunt's, and saying 'I had this strange dream..', before her father walks in and the camera cuts to the capsule they returned to the surface in, which had surfaced in her aunt's house.  These details raise the question of whether Wanda's adventure was originally intended to be presented as an Oz-like dream, but the producers subsequently changed their minds to present it all as real, (thereby leaving open the possibility of a sequel).  Then again, it is equally likely that these allusions were simply intended as an homage, or a stylistic flourish.  Of course, the use of actors in multiple roles could simply have been a budgetary decision - it is notable that one actor plays two Atlantean characters, but no surface character.

Obviously, Pyun thought that the subsequent reconstruction job on Journey to the Centre of the Earth presented an opportunity to refashion the film into a sequel to his own film, via extensive re-shoots.  Unfortunately, Cannon were interested only in meeting their contractual obligations to deliver a film of that title to distributors at minimal cost - bearing in mind that one of their issues with the original rough cut was that it would have required extensive and expensive special effects to complete, it is hardly surprising that they wanted to spend as little as possible on the project.  The completed film gives the impression that Pyun was given a few days to shoot some sequences on the Atlantis sets with a minimal cast and whatever performers from the first film were available.  This was then tacked onto a severely re-edited version of the first part of Lemonrade's film.  The collision of styles and tone is, not surprisingly, jarring.  Lemonrade has claimed hat, despite having sole director's credit, only the first eight minutes of the completed film are as he intended - which seems to have been to make a youth-orientated, modern day adventure film loosely based on the Jules Verne novel.  His footage, both the opening and the re-edited sequences, actually succeeds, in the main, in achieving this.  His version of the plot involves an English nanny, Crystina (Nicola Cowper) sent to Hawaii to look after a failing rock star's dog, being drawn into two teenaged brothers' plans to explore some caves near an erupting volcano.  What survives of this in the finished film are a series of sequences of the trio falling into an abyss and wandering around a series of caverns and tunnels as they try to find a way back to the surface.  There are also a pair of dream sequences which appear to use footage from later in his version of the film featuring some man-in-a-suit monsters and a brief appearance by comedian Emo Phillips, playing a character who, presumably, played a significant role in the latter part of the movie, but in the finished version is never seen again.

The switch to Pyun's footage is abrupt, heralded by Crystina and the younger of the brothers, Bryan, falling through the floor of the cavern and finding themselves in Atlantis.  Presumably, they were the only two cast members that could be recalled for the new shoot - the older brother's absence is explained by the insertion of another sequence from later in the original cut, showing him being discovered by a group of rescuers, including his parents and six year old sister (who had earlier been sent back from the caves by her brothers to get help).  Not that the other two seem to notice that he's gone as they never mention him again.  We now lurch into a new narrative whereby the existence of Wanda and the surface world is being officially denied by the authorities, while the villainness of the first film, General Rykov, plans to deceive the ruler of Atlantis into invading the surface world by convincing him that surface dwelling 'aliens' are now arriving in Atlantis in force.  Except, of course, that there are no actual 'alien' invaders - Rykov is instead trying to mould several agents into duplicates of Wanda (as the Atlanteans assume that all surface dwellers are like her).  Consequently, the arrival of Crystina provides her with a real 'alien' to aide her plot.  Bryan, however, comes to the rescue - just as Crystina is beginning to convince some of her captors pf the virtues of the surface world and its people  - utilising the fact that the Atlanteans are susceptible to high-pitched loud noises.  At which point it simply ends - the frame freezes on Rykov covering her ears and grimacing in pain before we cut to a sequence of Bryan apparently back at home on the surface, watching a TV broadcast in which Triton, from the first film, announces the commencement of diplomatic relations between the two worlds, heralding a new era of mutual co-operation.  Wanda briefly appears (in what looks like an out-take from the first film) and we learn that Crystina has married Lt Tola and they are returning to the surface as emissaries of Atlantis.  We then have a song from that rock star with the dog (remember him), which plays over a montage of scenes from the film.  At which point, having presumably reached an acceptable running time, the credits roll.

There is no doubt that Journey to the Centre of the Earth is something of a car crash.  It isn't that either of its two components are particularly bad - on the contrary, both sets of footage are actually very professional-looking, with decent production values.  The cave sets of Lemonrade's film are excellent, while Pyun's Atlantis sets are as interesting and impressively designed as before - the problem is that they just don't both belong in the same film. The change in style - not just of sets and costumes, but also lighting, camerawork, dialogue and overall direction - is just too radical.  To be fair, the remaining cast from the first film manage the transition reasonably well.  Nicola Cowper, while playing a very different character to Ireland's Wanda, is nonetheless a likeable heroine, who carries the film through its radical change in direction part way through.  But so many plot threads are left hanging by the transition from one movie to another - how exactly did the rescuers find the older brother, who made the arrows carved into the rock that the trio follow, for instance.  These things are abruptly forgotten about as we suddenly move into a different storyline.  The frustrating thing is that there are two halfway decent films evident in the released version.  What we see of Lemonrade's film certainly seems to be laying the foundations for an enjoyable fantasy film aimed at younger viewers, while Pyun's footage has the makings of an entertaining sequel to Alien From LA. But neither is allowed to build on its foundations and develop into a proper story in its own right.  Not surprisingly, neither director was happy with the resultant film, with Pyun keeping his name off of the credits and Lemonrade publicly disowning the finished product.  You can't help but feel that Cannon would have been better off letting Lemonrade complete his film as he originally intended and stumping up the cash to allow Pyun to make a proper sequel to his film.  But, as ever, they were too cheap and short-sighted to do either.