ALIENS VS. TITANIC. So bad it’s a must watch science fiction

Aliens vs. Titanic is one of those low-budget adventures that has no complexes. Who said you need money to show a collision between a spaceship and an asteroid? Who said computer special effects have to be expensive to appear credible? Probably everyone, and even cardboard vehicles pasted into the frames of Starcrash look better than CGI of a quality that makes Sharknado seem only slightly inferior to The Force Awakens. However, just like the story of tornado-thrown sharks, Aliens vs. Titanic can amuse in its hopelessness, and moreover, it is not backed by profit-hungry studio executives, but by enthusiasts.

The film was made in great pain, and its first trailer could be seen years ago. How was this time spent? It’s hard to tell after the screening, but I dare to suspect that it took as long as a basic course in digital image processing and shooting photos every few weeks when the cast happened to have a free weekend. However, behind all this undertaking is a man who has proven time and again that he can stand his ground – Robert Steven Rhine, the publisher of Girls & Corpses magazine. Let him explain the name himself: “Well, if you’re like me, you like two things – beautiful women and rotting bodies.” From the combination of love for Playboy and Night of the Living Dead, Aliens vs. Titanic was also created, and although Mr. Rhine’s ideals do not quite match mine, I appreciate his eroto-kitschy sense of humor in the spirit of Andy Sidaris productions (including Picasso Trigger or Lethal Ladies: Return to Savage Beach) and early Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers or Bad Girls from Mars).

Horror elements are primarily present in the aesthetics here, which Kazik Staszewski describes best: “It’s so dirty and ugly that the eyes, eyes, eyes burst.” Aliens look even uglier than the xenomorph in Alien: Covenant, and scenes played in interplanetary space do not measure up to Mr. Inkspot in space. However, the Titan1c disaster – because contrary to the title, there is no “vs” here, the ship is destroyed in the first few minutes – will be remembered in history as one of the worst scenes in the history of special effects. There is no romantic relationship, sacrifice, or, let alone, acting on the scale of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio; there is a vulgar joke about “primitive people” for whom absolutely everything is associated with sex and a pretextual plot hiding the true intentions of the creators – the desire to show naked bodies.

But do not give up hope, Aliens vs. Titanic is not a galactic American Pie, and despite its stunningly bad execution, it provides the kind of entertainment we sometimes need after a hard day’s work. Sometimes it amuses with references to pop culture (such as shouting, “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” after finding the corpse of one of the passengers), other times it is almost a porno-parody of Mantis from the second part of Guardians of the Galaxy, which, after touching a castaway, experiences… a vision, and in yet other moments, it caters to playful sensations with good old gore interspersed with terrible computer effects and a rubber creature barely holding a mask on its back.

It is not enough to be a Sunday viewer of class Z cinema to find merits in such a tacky production, but extremists of “bad” films dated to the second decade of the 21st century should be satisfied. Aliens vs. Titanic is seemingly another undertaking on the scale of The Asylum studio or the SyFy channel, but instead of causing embarrassment, it evokes laughter. I still don’t know how to evaluate films with such extremely different characteristics, so I opt for a safe middle ground and recommend it primarily to those who have a weakness for Sharknado or Piranha 3DD.