There are a couple of really hot human beings in Amanda and the Alien. They model an array of ’90s mall fashions. Or they do when they’re wearing clothes.
Those are the main selling points in this 1995 made-for-cable sci-fi comedy. One can only assume it was aimed at goodhearted, massively stoned teenagers. The film is set in California, where a couple of—you guessed it—aliens are being held in a government facility run by blustering Feds. In their natural form, the aliens look kind of like manta rays. But that’s ok, because they also eat people, and, in so doing, steal their bodies. Some of those bodies are super sexy.
One of the aliens escapes the facility with Connie Flores’ (Alex Meneses) bombshell physique. Where does it/she head off to with her newfound freedom? A leftist café in San Francisco, of course. And that’s where our alien meets Amanda (Nicole Eggert), a spunky young lady who lives with her parents. You may remember Eggert as Summer Quinn from “Baywatch,” seasons three and four. She is actually quite charming as Amanda, who instantly befriends the alien, offers to help her hide from the government and takes her home.
Cue a PG-13 shower masturbation scene that, like a lot of the would-be slimy nonsense in Amanda and the Alien, comes off sweetly naïve. Scenes that are shameless visual homages to breasts get tempered by dialogue about “Star Trek”’s Prime Directive.
Our alien is getting hungry, and she only eats people. So Amanda sets her up with dirtbag Charlie (Michael Bendetti: “Baywatch”, one episode), who is also a regular Adonis. By the time Charlie arrives, the alien has consumed a bunch of paprika, which is a really powerful extraterrestrial aphrodisiac. So there’s more sex. Then, once the alien takes over Charlie’s body, Amanda’s heterosexual stars align, and a good portion of the rest of the film is paprika and heavy petting.
“I always thought that when I fell in love, it would be with a musician or an artist or someone really politically active. Not an alien that lives on human flesh,” Amanda ruminates on the road between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The couple is on their way to the Hollywood Sign—our alien’s rendezvous point with his ship. He’s got to tell his people that intelligent human life is not acceptable as a food source. That’s the power of love.
The film slows down when agents bust the couple at a motel. Just before they ruin the fun, though, the two indulge in a totally pointless scene, ordering room service from a nerdy cowboy: strawberries, champagne and chicken paprika, which they eat off each other.
Alas, for practical reasons, the alien soon has to morph into some less attractive, federal bodies. Amanda keeps on professing love for her out-of-this-world beau, but there is a conspicuous lack of sex from here on out, and not much eye candy. (Alright, in a nontraditional way Lieutenant Vint and Colonel Rosencrans are kind of handsome.) Amanda and the Alien’s campiness is now pure fare for 14-year-old boys.
Or maybe the film has just taken on a more serious political mission. If so, it’s of the libertarian persuasion. There’s a diner scene, for instance, where all the good American townsfolk pull their guns out on some nosy government officials. The couple, meanwhile, hitches a ride with a gargantuan trucker. He’s had hard luck with love, but winds up being their salvation: the culminating action boils down to Truck v. the Government.
Everything turns out fine and the alien gets to go home. There are a couple of postscript scenes, including a moderately self-aware, if completely out of place, reality television sequence in which Amanda tries to explain why she was sleeping with an alien, only to find herself totally misrepresented by the mainstream media. That’s ok, because she’s also found inner peace. The ending shot frames her as she paints a picture of the tranquil plasma tubes that constitute the landscape of her alien’s planet. It’s an image he telepathically communicated to her—something to remember him by. Memorable, Amanda and the Alien is not. Maybe a few more attractive humans would have done it.
Did I mention Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s wrote the soundtrack?
The post From the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Amanda and the Alien appeared first on Spectrum Culture.