Alien Uprising

The year is whatever. Pick a number. We see a spaceship reaching orbit around the prison planet of Rove 12. On board the spaceship the crew are in stasis. The ship's computer begins to wake the crew up, by rather annoyingly saying "It's time... time to wake up" in a female voice, over and over again. The crew consists of several young, fit female women and some blokes with beards and tattoos, but I didn't really pay much attention to those if I'm honest. We discover that these young men and women are a military unit. The ship's computer, referred to as Fred, reminds the waking crew that there is also a civilian on board. The blond babe in charge of the unit summons the civilian guy to the bridge to speak to her, as she's been told nothing about who he is. The guy says he's a representative of the private contractor that runs the prison. They haven't heard from the prison staff in over a year and apparently there's been some sort of prisoner uprising. The military unit has been sent there to restore order and sort it all out.

It turns out that one of the young women didn't do so well in stasis and she's not expected to survive for very long, so she's kept sedated in the ship's sick bay. The remaining crew and the civilian guy prepare to take a transport down to the prison. Blond babe tells the crew that there are no weapons in the prison, and that each prisoner is implanted with a "pain device" which can be remotely activated by prison staff at any time. We're told that of the 1500 prisoners only 189 are now left. Or at least there were 189 before they lost contact a year ago. Fred tells us after performing a scan of the prison that all the prison staff are dead. Blond babe reminds them that their mission is to secure the prison and provide civilian guy with access to a network node so he can do some computery shit. Civilian guy tells us the prison has an anti-matter reactor, which because of lack of maintenance has now become unstable. (Damn those troublesome anti-matter reactors. Nine volt batteries are far safer, plus they tingle if you stick your tongue on them). One of the babes quite reasonably asks why they can't just let the prison blow up. After all they're just convicts. Civilian guy says that sadly there's a chance the resulting explosion could send shit towards earth.

They land on the planet and enter the prison. They quickly encounter some of the prisoners armed with guns. There's a gunfight and one of the marines is killed and another injured. One of the prisoners is still alive, but only just, so they take him back to see blond babe in charge. She's with civilian guy who is moaning because he can't do any computery shit until the power is turned back on. Blond babe wonders how the prisoners got access to guns. She begins to suspect that civilian guy knows more than he's letting on. Blond babe asks the surviving prisoner where he got the guns. He tells her he found them on the dead bodies. She asks what dead bodies. He says the dead bodies of the soldiers that came before them. He says he didn't mean to shoot at them, he just thought they were... the monster. Ooh. If you're beginning to think this is all sounding a bit Alien-like then hold that thought, it will serve you well.

Finally civilian guy manages to get the power back up. A group of the marines encounter the "monster" and things start going tits up. Blond babe in charge grabs her gun and is about to go help, but the second-in-command brunette babe says no, she's in charge and must "run the show". The two of them then kiss, which is a bit more than a good luck peck on the cheek. Blond babe tells brunette babe to "Be fucking careful" and then brunette babe goes to help the other marines. While blond babe is out of the room civilian guy uses one of the remote things to fry the dying prisoner's brain to make sure he dies a bit quicker.

An old guy prisoner appears in front of the marines with his hands above his head. He says he came to talk, and that the only way they'll survive is if they join forces and work together. The old guy says they must shut the power back down immediately. Civilian guy disagrees and uses the remote thing again on the old guy, but blond babe steps in and takes the remote off him. The old guy shuts the power down and everyone follows him as they try to make their escape. Blond babe says she wants a shot at the monster before they run (why?). We see the monster, or at least its mouth, looking remarkably like the mouth of the alien in Alien. It spits acid at one of the marine babes and she's badly injured. She lasts a while longer but eventually expires.

We learn from old prisoner guy that the monster used to be one of the prisoners. But the prison started using the inmates as guinea pigs for genetic experiments and our alien... sorry, our monster friend was the result. The old guy says that earth isn't in the blast path of the prison planet at all, and that the maintenance for the reactor is completely automated, so in fact it's absolutely fine. Civilian guy is beginning to look more and more suspect at this point. Blond babe orders one of her marines to stay with civilian guy and not to let him out of his sight. Civilian guy says he needs to go for a poo. The marine goes with him and waits outside the cubicle. But civilian guy comes out and bashes him over the head with the bog seat and then escapes.

Old prisoner guy tells blond babe that civilian guy is really here to collect all the data about the monster because the company he works for want to replicate it. The recently bog-seated marine comes around and goes to apologise to blond babe for screwing up. Blond babe and old prisoner guy conclude that the best thing to do is just blow the whole planet to shit. Blond babe tells the ship's computer not to let anyone back on board without voice authorisation. Old prisoner guy says that he and blond babe can take care of the reactor. Blond babe tells brunette babe to get everyone else back to the ship, and that if they see civilian guy they can either cuff him or shoot him, she doesn't care which. In the meantime civilian guy has got back to the transport and managed to override the security and get on board. He begins preparing for launch. Blond babe gets to the transport but can't get in because civilian guy has changed the access code. The ship's computer is powerless to ignore civilian guy's instructions, however it does wake up the dying woman in sick bay from earlier and she comes to the bridge and knocks civilian guy out with a wrench. Then she finally dies.

Back on board the transport, blond babe learns that the monster took brunette babe. Blond babe decides to go back for her alone. She tells the others that they should launch in 25 minutes whether she's back or not. And that they can do what they like with civilian guy. Blond babe encounters the monster and manages to stuff a grenade in its gob and blow its head off. She then finds brunette babe alive. Alive but naked, because of reasons. As she finds her we see the prison's computer showing a wire-frame animation of the creature, its head slowly being reconstructed (wire-frame animation is cheap compared to special effects). Blond babe gets brunette babe back to the transport. In the meantime they've dumped civilian guy outside somewhere. Civilian guy gets chomped by the re-animated monster and the transport successfully takes off to rejoin with the ship. We see the ship fly off, leaving an exploding planet behind it.

Blond babe and old prisoner guy go to visit brunette babe in sick bay. Old prisoner guy says she's been lucky because she wasn't bitten. He asks blond babe what will happen to him. She says she doesn't know. She says they "Know too much" and that if they go back to earth they'll probably all end up "disappearing". So they both conclude that they should head for another planet somewhere. So they're all put back into stasis. Then we get the "It's time... time to wake up" thing bloody all over again. Blond babe and old prisoner guy go to visit brunette babe. They both have a look of horror on their faces. Old prisoner guy says "Now we know why she wasn't bitten" and we see that brunette babe has a huge belly and is very much "with monster". Although sadly we're deprived of seeing said monster bursting out of her insides. Aww dammit. The end.

You know a film is shite when it takes you 10 minutes of googling to find out what it's even called. I found this little gem on YouTube under the title "Alien Movie" which is about as nondescript and generic a name as you can get. At the opening of the film the words "Pandora Machine" appear on the screen. So I initially thought that was the name of the film. And sure enough there was indeed a film released in 2004 called Pandora Machine. The description on IMDb for this film says "Space Marines attempting to recapture escaped convicts must join forces against monstrous aliens" so that seemed to fit fairly well. However upon googling images for this film they bore absolutely no resemblance to the film I had just watched. A bit more googling and I discovered that Pandora Machine is actually the name of a production company. The same production company involved in the making of the film of the same name. Confused yet? Pandora Machine (the production company) also produced a film in 2008 called "Alien Uprising" and this is in fact the name of the film I had just watched. However Alien Uprising should not be confused with a 2012 film called "U.F.O." which changed its name to Alien Uprising in 2013. After all that my brain hurt. This film reviewing shit's hard.

What I think I'm trying to say here is that this film isn't very good. It's a blatant Alien rip-off and a pretty poor one at that. Not even the sexy marine babes could save this film, although maybe they do help a little. If you're going to make an Alien rip-off then you need to make a bloody good one, otherwise what's the point? It's been done before. And way better. In this film there's a lot of running around dark generic corridors with guns drawn while swearing profusely. And when I say dark corridors I mean dark. This film is so dimly lit you have a job to see what's going on half the time. Maybe the dim lighting was supposed to help disguise the low-budget?

With regards to acting, well the cast aren't exactly asked to do much to be honest. Running around and swearing doesn't really call for the full gamut of human emotions to be displayed. The special effects (what there are of them) are okay I suppose, but nothing outstanding. I would say they look about as good as those from a film from the early 90's. The exception being the effects for the guns firing. They were just awful. Star Wars did it better in 1977. Another problem is the last 15 minutes of the film. It's just 15 minutes where nothing happens. In that time they successfully dock with their ship, go into stasis and arrive at a new planet. And that takes 15 minutes? A lot of that time is spent with the unbelievably repetitive "Time to go to sleep" and "Time to wake up" from the ship's computer. It just wasn't necessary. There are lots of other things I could pick at, like for example the fact that the film is called "Alien Uprising" even though there's no alien in it. But I won't. Oh, I just did. Oh well.

The IMDb rating for this film is 3 out of 10. I think that's probably just about right. This film is nothing new and it does nothing new. It's got nothing to offer, not even for the most avid sci-fi fan. Watch Alien instead, it's a far superior film in every way. Plus you get to see a young Sigourney Weaver running around in her pants. What's not to like?