Bad Channels
Bad Channels
| 25 June 1992 (USA)
Bad Channels Trailers

An alien determined to capture human females takes over a radio station to do it.

Reviews
Palaest recommended
YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
darksyde-63508 This one isnt one of their best. For a Full Moon Productions movie, this one starts out extremely slow, almost like they were trying to play it straight for once, but it just doesn't work. Now, none of the actors in ANY movie from this production company are ever going to win Oscars, but the acting in this is worse than usual, and the special effects are pretty bad. Basically a prelude to the "Doll man" movies, its easy to see why there wasn't a million sequels to this, like most of the franchises in the Full Moon catalog. Skip this one and stick with Full Moons "classic" franchises such as "Killjoy", "Evil Bong" , and "Gingerdead Man"
MartianOctocretr5 I saw the movie at a video rental, and thought the title was intriguing. It looked like a cheap-o flick, but how bad could a movie called "Bad Channels" be? Well, the title is a hint.I guess it's supposed to be some alien creature's rock-and-roll fantasy of overpowering women with '80's rock. (I guess you could call it rock....the bands were no-name bands that couldn't hold down a gig in their own garage, they stunk that bad.) Anyway, there's a rock station out in the desert somewhere, that gets assigned a frequency of 666 (AM or FM-I don't know, and if you see this movie, you really won't care, either). Apparently, the DJ's voice on this station, plus the lousy music he plays; seduces women, shrinks them to doll size, and transports them to bottles on an alien's nearby space craft. I guess he likes short women? The alien's ship has phallic symbols--for humor or sinister symbolism; who knows? It's a lousy movie, the kind that you suspect of being a joke because it's so incredibly stupid. The fight scene at the end between a human and the alien is pretty funny, though. Most of the film can be laughed at, in fact, if you're in the right mood. But it barely warrants a 3, even on a so-bad-it's-funny basis.
Ian This is by far, one of the silliest movies I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. I mean, it was so asinine I just *had* to rent it on three separate occasions to prove to different groups of friends that such a monstrosity could be made! It was released in 1992, but feels more like it was made in 1982!The `hero' is the `bad boy' or radio, Dangerous Dan O'Dare. Dan treats his listeners to publicity stunt after publicity stunt, with the odd 80's glam rock song thrown in for good measure. An alien lands in what appears to a giant novelty light-up yo-yo and proceeds to take over the radio station which just happens to have a nation-wide broadcasting range on frequency 66.6.The alien uses the radio signals and the sound of Dan's voice to target young women listening to the station, and capture them in little glass tubes. However, before the women are transported, they hallucinate that they're in music videos which take place in the locations they're at. There's nothing funnier than seeing some rockers straight out of the 80's appear in a diner and try to give a convincing performance.Naturally, a movie of this calibre is full of holes. Dan figures out pretty early on that his voice was being used to target the women, but instead of shutting up, he goes on and on describing the aliens and telling people not to listen, which, of course, they ignore and keep on doing.I laughed at the cliché small-town cop who must have been paid a set amount each time he discredited the alien's existence. The entire town he's patrolling says they saw an alien, and several of the women were reported having vanished into thin air. But this cop chalks it up to them all being drunk or something. Even when he sees the alien first hand he gives the `sarcastic cop' routine, and tells everyone to move along.The `music videos' are all terrible, covering all sorts of the least favourable genres. Glam rockers invade the diner, a grunge band causes a ditzy cheerleader to seductively gyrate during band practice, and the crème de la crème, Psychotik Sinfony performs a clown metal piece in the hospital, causing a nun to mosh and play bass guitar.Back in the operating room, the doctor is operating on a patient who earlier was infected by the alien fungus. When the nurse suddenly disappears, the patient bolts up in amazement. Which begs two questions; what kind of doctor lets his nurse listen to Dan O'Dare while he's performing delicate surgery, and why the hell didn't he use any anaesthetic on the patient!?The climax is about the least exciting thing in the whole movie. Dan accidentally discovers that fungicide hurts the alien, and the radio station just happens to have a whole box of it! Dan frees the women by randomly playing with the alien's controls and the alien splits open revealing a weird Venus-flytrap-like monster within. Together, Dan and the women they stand around within arm's reach of the alien and spray it with fungicide in the least dramatic way possible. Dan tries to liven things up by shouting `die you rat ba**ard' a few times, but it has no effect.The reason for the alien capturing the women is never explained, nor does anyone ever consider looking for the space ship that landed only about a mile away. If the radio station was broadcasting nation-wide, why were the only people being abducted from the surrounding town? And how did the alien infect the guy at the beginning before it had even landed?I could go on for ages, but it'd simply be easier if you were to go out and rent it yourself. You'd at least expect the movie's description on the box sleeve to at least attempt to make it sound like a scary sci-fi horror feature, instead touts it as a `hilarious rock and roll adventure of sci-fi comedy'. You know something's wrong when even the box sleeve doesn't take it seriously.
Foggy-7 Well, you certainly won't expect Citizen Kane renting this movie, but it's mildly entertaining. Martha Quinn really needed to have a better agent, given this and other career killers, but her chemistry with Paul Hipp (Dangerous Dan O'Dare) is enjoyable. The goal of the rest of movie is one thing pure and simply: titillation, and it doesn't accomplish that. The rock video visions, which I'm sure were intended to give a rock-n-roll edge to the movie, simply detracted.