Alien from L.A. (1985)

How bad is it? It's dull and silly, with a memorably bad acting performance.
Should you see it? The MST3K version, maybe.

I decided to watch a bunch of Albert Pyun's films and forgot that I'd seen this one already.

The first third of this film has Kathy Ireland complaining that guys don't pay attention to her, and I think it's supposed to be a joke, as she was a swimsuit model, but it doesn't play off that way. First of all, I always thought she sort of looked like Ted Kennedy in a wig. The fact that she does the whole film in a high baby doll voice (not too terribly different from her real voice) makes her annoying; that voice also appears to be the extent of her acting ability. Add an uninteresting personality to that and I can see her being ignored.

This is supposed to be an action film, but the action doesn't start for a long time and that lead-in time isn't well used to develop the main character. Once it starts, it keeps rolling in an episodic way, but by then the viewer's just waiting for it to end.

Ireland's character's father is supposed to have died and then she gets re-united with him, but the emotional content is missing from that. Also, the title has nothing to do with the film, as there is no alien, just some ancient civilization mumbo jumbo. There's not much else to recommend, but it (amazingly) turns out to be one of Pyun's better films.