Alien From L.A. (1988) - What actually happens?

Do you ever watch a film and really want to enjoy it a lot more than you actually did?  In 'Alien From L.A.' I'm certain there's a good movie in there somewhere, but it seems to not know what to do with its own idea.  It's about a geeky teenage girl from L.A. who, while looking for her missing scientist-father, falls through the Earth's core into the sub-terrainian world of 'Atlantis.' Yes, the plot is a little far-fetched, but this was the eighties and there were many a tale from that era which you had to suspend your disbelief to truly get the most out of.

Now, I don't know whether I'm being unfair on the version of the film I watched (it was on a streaming service and therefore not a 'bought' copy such as DVD or Blu-ray), but there was something really wrong with the sound.  The dialogue was really hard to hear while the soundtrack blared out, obscuring what few words I could actually make out.

If that wasn't bad enough, the main character has an annoying voice.  And, no, I'm not just being cruel to the actress (who's actually a model in real life!) who plays her - it's part of the story and many characters remark on it.  And they're not wrong.  It's the vocal version of 'nails on a chalkboard.'

But it's not all bad.  The sets and the costumes found within the mysterious underground world are pretty well done, plus the direction and shots make the most of the sets and give off a nicely dystopian environment.

And so our squeaky protagonist must find her father and avoid the authorities who are looking for the titular 'alien' among their population.  And she sort of does that, meandering from one close encounter with those trying to stop her to the next.  Rinse and repeat.

Therefore, not an awful not a lot happens and that's the film's biggest crime.  What could have been a nice, cheesy eighties family adventure becomes little more than a slog with some nice sets (and a badly-mixed audio track).

It's not terrible-terrible, certainly just about watchable, but it's just a shame that it probably should have been more of a cult classic than it actually was.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights