If you were ever a fan of those '50s and '60s sci-fi flicks whose trademarks were hoky FX, an eerie theremin soundtrack, and a rubber-suited monster, then Alien Trespass should scratch your nostalgia bone.
Them!, It Came from Outer Space, and The Blob (which actually has a role in the movie) all get nods in R.W. Goodwin's retro-homage, which is set in a sleepy canyon town that's thrown into disarray after a spaceship crashes and a one-eyed land squid (the rubber suit) called a Ghota starts turning denizens into puddles of gelatinous goo.
To track the Ghota, an alien space marshal (looking innately like Gort from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still) assumes the body of a square-jawed nerd (Eric McCormack) on his wedding anniversary and teams up with diner waitress Tammy (Jenni Baird). The wry, deadpan humor is spot on, and Goodwin, like Quentin Tarantino with Grindhouse, painstakingly re-creates the genre's era-mired milieu with affection. Even the crafty framing device is an elegiac paean.
