A Bad Case of the Groovy

I’m not sure how much I’ll be posting in the next few days. I’m having some personal problems with family that I have to deal with.
But writing does make me feel better and I thought I’d watch a movie to take my mind off of things. That’s how I ended up watching The Alpha Incident, one of the movies from that fifty chilling movie set that I bought.
This was a movie that made me grateful for my experience watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was made by Bill Rebane, the talent behind Giant Spider Invasion and Monster-a-Go-Go. That’s when I realized I was in for some deep hurting.
The movie is set in some alternate universe of the 70′s where the Viking probe brought back some kind of pathogen.
For reasons that aren’t explained the government decides to move some of the samples to Denver. Isn’t that the city they went to in The Stand? Zomg, everything’s coming together! Wait, no it isn’t.
In order for the government to keep a low profile, they decided to send the samples by train instead of by usual unmarked helicopters. That’s when we meet the best character in the entire movie.

This is what Michael Moore is up to…
Hank! He looks like he would smell really bad and I couldn’t understand a third of what he said but he was still the funniest, most interesting person in the movie.

I knew this movie hated me when it gave me the finger.
That’s Sorrenson’s hand, the guy assigned to guard the samples. Clearly he does a terrible job and Hank ends up exposed. I never want to write the words “Hank exposed” ever again.
When the train goes to switch engines at Moose Point, Hank ends up exposing (Ahhhh! What did I just write!?) everyone in the office. Jenny, the secretary. Jack, Charles Manson look-alike. Charley, old-timer and George Plimpton look-alike. And Sorrenson.
That’s when the story turns into a terse thriller about the effects of fear and isolation…oh, who am I kidding. It becomes a boring, meandering plotless story that made me actually fall asleep. I woke up at about 8 am all sprawled out with my notebook with the dvd still on.
The movie wasn’t a total waste. It ended up with this wtf moment at 1:24.

So the pathogen compells the infected to wedge fake eyeballs over their eyes?
And the movie ended on a still shot of Sorrenson clutching himself and all I could think of was the famous MST3K line;

Diarrhea is like a storm raging inside.
Yes, THAT is the shot they ended the movie with and the credits rolled over that. That’s the thought that the filmmakers wanted us to leave with.
Overall, I’d still rather have watched Giant Spider Invasion. At least that had a Volkswagon dressed as a spider and Alan Hale Jr. This movie just had lots of shots through microscopes of slides–not even correctly mounted, btw, it looked like mostly shots of air bubbles–and noodly 70′s synth music.