PopHorror Let's Get Scared
“We’re kind of in a decadent era of horror because almost every filmmaker, certainly in the United States, that’s working in horror today, is always trying to express a debt to a prior generation,” said the world’s greatest and only drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs, in an interview with Dread Central. “…which I don’t like at all.”
It was only fair to open with a quote from the man who spent more time watching the direct-to-video Corman-grade knockoffs of the 1980s than anyone did actually making them. They are the closest cinematic cousin to Crossbreed, and that doesn’t make it any easier to talk about.
Directed and co-written by Brandon Slagle (Escape From Ensenada 2017, House of Manson 2014), Crossbreed is the kind of movie whose synopsis should start with, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one…”
The President of the United States (Vivica A. Fox: Independence Day 1996) and the Secretary of Defense (Daniel Baldwin: Death Kiss 2018) enlist an ex-military recluse, Boss (Stink Fisher: The Longest Yard 2005), and his old team to recover a stolen science project for the U-S of A. Boss wants nothing to do with the job, but the government has his back to the wall. Soon enough, the precious cargo – an extraterrestrial on ice – gets loose and starts picking everybody off as the quip-happy mercenaries catch a whiff of conspiracy.
The DNA is equal parts Escape From New York and Aliens. Every other name belongs to a patron saint of 1980s action. Timecop is discussed with surprising authority for the year 2060.
Crossbreed is such a dedicated throwback, I was worried my VCR might eat it.
Trouble is, as it pays tribute to the greatest hits of ‘80s genre, it begs comparison, and that’s a lose-lose game. At best, you’ll nod knowingly at what the plot borrows from Predator. At worst, you’ll turn it off and watch Predator.
Which is a shame, because Crossbreed has its charms. The mercenaries are given precious little to keep their personalities from running together, especially with names like Slaughterhouse and Four-Eyes, but the actors make the most of it. Degenerate (Jason McNeil: House of Manson 2014), the parrot-haired spawn of every men-on-a-mission movie’s resident pervert, provides a welcome bit of attitude to the often stone-faced proceedings, at least when he’s not drowning in innuendo.
Like a lot of modern VOD releases, the biggest heads on the poster have the least screen time, but unlike them, the biggest heads are actually engaged with the material. Vivica A. Fox deserves a second-term as a movie president. Daniel Baldwin turns what could’ve been a central-casting bureaucrat into someone you’d wish they’d cut back to more often. Vernon Wells, legendary foe to Road Warrior and Arnold Schwarzenegger alike, shows up briefly enough to make you miss Vernon Wells.
While clearly a naval ship or submarine, the later sets deliver on the makeshift ingenuity of Crossbreed’s forebears. The lighting is gleefully unmotivated and primary – Why is that half of the maintenance hallway red? Because it is and it looks neat. That answer also applies to welcome abundance of stage fog. The props, like the spidery visors stuck to everyone’s temples and an arsenal of spray-painted Nerf guns, bring a model-kit charisma to a movie that can’t help but fight it with CGI cityscapes that embarrass their interiors and over-edited action.
But then there’s the alien.
Crossbreed gives it away in the trailer and the poster, but it’s not hard to see why. The being, as played by a mesmerizingly mute Devanny Pinn (Lilith 2018), looks more like a fallen angel than a lost lifeform. It’s effective, practical and shown sparingly. In a movie of used parts, the alien is refreshingly original… that is, until it tears its skin off in a gooey display of special effects and evolves into a much more conventional monster.
The direct-to-video runners-up of the 1980s had similarly threadbare budgets. They had less resources than the greats they were borrowing from, which often did not have all the resources in the world themselves. On a good day, the result was deranged imagination, going harder, weirder and gorier than their legally dubious inspirations. They could never be what they were copying, so they became something else by sheer force of will.
Crossbreed is not what it’s copying. It can’t be. It never wanders far enough afield to become something else, either, but the best parts are when it loosens up and gets close.
On a recent episode of Trailers From Hell’s podcast, The Movies That Made Me, Joe Bob Briggs talked again about the glut of low-budget ‘80s throwbacks he was seeing at film festivals. After hearing the usual excuses about no money and less time, he noticed a pattern.
“The problems are the things that don’t cost any money.”
If the throwbacks he saw were anything like Crossbreed, it’s hard to disagree.
