Bad Channels (1992)



Directed by Ted Nicolaou


"The Martha Quinn should have stuck to being a VJ movie"

The movie opens with a night scene at Pahoota Power and Light. A man checking out the place sees a transformer blow and goes in further to investigate. This of course leads to him finding a thick fungus type vine stuck on the transformer, and by the look on his face, it belongs to something quite horrifying.

Next in the plot, we have the new revamped Dan O'Dare (Paul Hipp) at the radio station Super 66, who is up to his campy promotion to get listeners to the station like never before. Lisa Cummings (Martha Quinn), the reporter from TV's CWN, is there to interview O'Dare and cover his story with the new station. In the mist of an argument (and a lot of sexual tension) between the two, Lisa see's a UFO. She forgets about O'Dare and drives off in a whim to cover the UFO story instead. While she is chasing the UFO sightings, the radio station she left behind gets invaded by the Alien. This rock-headed alien and his robot companion get comfortable inside the station, and set up some funky fungus type get-up with the swtichboards. O'Dare still broadcasts his show by stating everything he is witnessing. He calls for help, but all listeners take it as a joke.

Not only do we have Dan O'Dare, and Lisa, but we also get to know a few women listeners of the station as well. We have Cookie who works at the local diner, Bunny who is in the high school band somehow, despite not fitting the protocol at all, and Ginger the nurse. Why do we care about them? It's because the alien has an eye for them and has a reason why he picked the place he did to reside in. We find out that everything the alien set up inside the station is to capture these women and keep them as pets. Somehow, by listening to songs played by Super 66, each one of these girls start to hallucinate and dance around. They end up disappearing when the song is about to end, shrink down and reappear inside a sealed glass jar that is set up at the radio station.



All in all, the day gets saved by Dan O'Dare himself and the alien goes back into his UFO and flies away. All girls get brought back, except for Bunny for some reason. Then again, that story is another tale to tell by Dollman vs Demonic Toys.

I rather enjoyed this movie. It also reflects music of its time rather well during the hallucination scenes. Not only that, but the rest of the music is also by Blue Oyster Cult. That is almost as odd as Devo doing the music for Slaughterhouse Rock.




RATING:

2 eye screams out of 4

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