Alien Hunter *** (2003, James Spader, John Lynch, Janine Eser, Roy Dotrice, Keir Dullea) – Classic Movie Review 13,222

Director Ron Kraus’s involving 2003 American-Bulgarian science-fiction thriller film Alien Hunter stars James Spader, John Lynch, Janine Eser, Roy Dotrice, and Keir Dullea. 

Director Ron Kraus’s 2003 American-Bulgarian science-fiction thriller film Alien Hunter stars James Spader, John Lynch, Janine Eser, Roy Dotrice, and Keir Dullea.

US government cryptologist Julian Rome (James Spader), a former employee of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program, is called in when a NASA-funded Antarctica botanical research team finds a scary object several metres beneath the Earth, sending out radio signals. Flying in through a snow storm, Spader is led to the unidentified object still encased in a melting block of ice, and builds a decoder that cracks a mathematical code giving what turns out to be an alien warning.

Alien Hunter is a slow-moving but still involving, suspenseful and lightly enjoyable sci-fi thriller, with a plot that gleefully borrows from all over the place (especially the Roswell story, The Thing and The Abyss), a very good alien (Velimir Velev), a neat production, handsome photography by Darko Suvak, and pretty fair special effects supervised by Willie Botha and visual effects supervised by Simeon Asenov.

Spader’s intense, credible performance and an effective ending with CGI effects that took six months, help to make up for some dull patches. John Lynch is irritating as the baddie Dr Michael Straub, but both Roy Dotrice (top scientist Dr John Bachman) and Keir Dullea (government honcho Secretary Bayer) are useful presences.

The black and white footage shown to Julian Rome comes from The Thing from Another World (1951) and was also used in the remake, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982),

The cast are James Spader as Julian Rome, Janine Eser as Dr Kate Brecher, John Lynch as Dr Michael Straub, Nikolay Binev as Dr Alexi Gierach, Leslie Stefanson as Nyla Olson, Aimee Graham as Shelly Klein, Stuart Charno as Abell, Carl Lewis as Grisham, Svetla Vasileva as Dacia Petrov, Anthony Crivello as Pilot, Kaloian Vodenicharov as Co-Pilot, George Stanchev as Airman, Rufus Dorsey as Navigator, Roy Dotrice as Dr John Bachman, Woody Schultz as Sam, Joel Polis as Copeland, Keir Dullea as Secretary Bayer, Bert Emmett as Gordon Osler, Marianne Stanicheva as Reporter, Dobrin Dosev as Captain Sokolov, Atanas Atanasov as Executive Officer Volkov, Hristo Shopov as Navigator Petrenko, Harry Anichkin as Army General, and Velimir Velev as Alien.

Alien Hunter is directed by Ron Krauss, runs 92 minutes, is made by Millennium Films, Sandstorm Films and Nu Image, is distributed by Columbia TriStar Home Video, is written by J S Cardone, based on a story by Boaz Davidson and J S Cardone, is shot by Darko Suvak, is produced by J S Cardone (executive producer), Danny Dimbort (executive producer), Avi Lerner (executive producer), Trevor Short (executive producer), Boaz Davidson, David Yost and Carol Kottenbrook, is scored by Tim Jones, and is designed by William Ladd Skinner, with special effects by Willie Botha (special effects supervisor) and Simeon Asenov (visual effects supervisor).

Release date: July 19, 2003.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,222

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