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Monster Scum Marathon – Day 17: Zarkorr! The Invader (1996)

Written by: Digger

Is it Full Moon Studios time again? Already? Yep. This is another film from the not-so-proud direct to DVD tradition. But I have to warn everybody, this one makes Subspecies look like an Oscar winner. While the box art shows Zarkorr the invader, a giant dragon-like monster that shoots lasers from his eyes and wrecks cities for kicks, we rarely ever get to see it in the film. A giant monster wrecking stuff is not in and of itself a bad premise for a movie, but we soon move on to introduce this film’s worst element, the plot. Earth has been chosen by a collection of intelligent alien races, which we never actually see, to undergo a test. The aliens release a massive, planet crushing monster, Zarkorr, and contact one representative of the human race that they choose based on being the most average human specimen they can find. That average human is Tommy Ward (Rhys Pugh) a postal worker who likes to watch old cartoons that are probably in the public domain. The aliens pick a bizarre method of contacting Tommy using a mental projection that he sees as a tiny teenage girl. She tells Tommy that no weapon on Earth can harm Zarkorr and he must find a way to defeat the monster, or all life on the planet will be destroyed. Obviously, the alien conglomerate that devised this test is composed entirely of huge douche bags, as even if Tommy is manages to solve this test, Earth will have already suffered many casualties and millions of dollars in property damage.

Tommy, being the quintessential average-joe, has no idea how to fight or defeat this creature. On the local news, he sees an interview with Doctor Stephanie Martin (De’Prise Grossman) an expert in cryptozoology. How one can be an expert in an unofficial field largely considered to be pseudoscience is anybody’s guess. Tommy drives down to the T.V. station and tries to tell Dr. Martin about the monster being a test that the aliens told him he needs to defeat to save the world, and when she refuses to help him, Tommy kidnaps her at gun point. Tommy barricades himself in the women’s bathroom with the doctor, who still refuses to answer his questions, and the police show up to defuse the situation. When Tommy explains the alien test and how he must defeat Zarkorr, one of the officers, George (Mark Hamilton) actually believes his story makes perfect sense and turns his gun on the other officer to aid Tommy in his mission. As you can see, the writing for this film is a completely convoluted nightmare that writer Benjamin Carr probably hammered out in one drug-fueled weekend. The plot occupies this strange paradoxical state of being completely convoluted and hard to follow, but at the same time is so thin and contrived that it might as well not exist at all. The only thing the plot does is waste time between the scenes of Zarkorr trashing model cities, and while that is fun to see, it does not justify the 80 minutes you will throw away watching this thing.

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