disgusting, overrated, pointless

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I saw "Manos, the Hands of Fate" and lived to tell the mediocre tale; I also saw daylight the other-side of "The Lucifer Project" and "Doomsday Weapon", and so I reckon I know a stinker when I smell one, but I can say with confidence, that "The Alpha Incident" is not the proverbial turkey it's often branded. Bill Rebane's reputation precedes him, but occasionally he does get it right, so credit where it's due, "Alpha" is a moody, atmospheric and suspenseful if somewhat talky thriller about a Martian virus that has potentially infected a small group of mostly bystanders at a remote railway station, forcing them into quarantine under the watchful eye of Government bio-chemist Stafford Morgan, himself also in containment maintaining contact with the outside world via telephone as he awaits news of a much-anticipated antidote.While it's limited in action, it's not as benign as some other reviews might suggest, with a clever plot twist significantly ratcheting up the tension as the desperate group learn they must not fall asleep, lest a fate worse than death awaits. The performances from Morgan, Goff and Newell in particular are actually very watchable, not over-wrought and certainly not amateur fodder. Star-billed Meeker might be the biggest name on-hand as the meek railroad pen-pusher, but Morgan is clearly the lead and his reliable presence underlines why he was such a prolific actor in the 1970's and 1980's. There's plenty of sympathy for each of the characters (which are mostly clichés), none moreso than Newell's small-town nubile "Jenny", watching her potential evaporate under the prying scrutiny of small-town rednecks looking for tail to taint. Rebane-regular Paul Bentzen and dependable supporting actor John Alderman play the scientists desperately trying to develop an antidote before our stricken survivors submit to eternal slumber, with the prospect of failure looming large as the tone becomes more sombre....While not entirely absent here, Rebane's hard-earned reputation as a plodding film-maker, substituting reams of dialogue for the action a micro-budget can't afford, his narrative is relatively taut and the tension and pathos he builds, quite effective. And if you do persist, you will be rewarded with some cheap (but effective) special effects that won't soon be forgotten - a little bonus material for those who persevere. It's not a great movie, but it's a lot better than its reputation implies and well worth watching.

A virus from space is released accidentally while in transit on a train. It results in a group of people in a remote train depot being subject to quarantine and left isolated, while the scientists try to work on a cure.The Alpha Incident is a paranoid sci-fi film in the same vein as The Andromeda Strain, with elements of George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead and The Crazies thrown in for good measure. It isn't a patch on either of those films although it's fairly decent, all things considered. It's admittedly quite badly paced, however, with a little too much talk to pad things out. Still, the set-up is good enough and the overall cynical 70's sci-fi vibe works for me. There's only one occasion when we see the effects of the virus on a human and it's actually surprisingly decent – they could really have done with using this a little more. The effect is basically the brain expanding and breaking out of the cranium of the unfortunate victim. This is the horrible death that the infected people are trying to avoid. For some reason this nasty scenario only kicks in when the victims fall asleep, so for most of the film the story seems to be about people trying to stay awake – a symptom that I'm sure some viewers of this movie will experience too funnily enough.But, for me, this isn't a bad effort overall. It's definitely one of director Bill Rebane's best. He operated in the Z-Grade side of the cinematic spectrum for sure but his films have an honest earnestness that is easy to get behind. And this is a relatively thoughtful narrative for Bill's standards. However, its cheap limitations are never truly averted, and it doesn't develop the space virus thread of the story as well as you hope and the film ends up being essentially about people in a room popping amphetamines. But, you know what, I kind of like this one anyway.

When I say I really related to this film, I mean by I felt how the characters did about 50 min in, bored. I was utterly pulling my brains out, just like the one, ONE gore scene in the whole film. Watching it reminded me of "George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead" upon reaming other people's responses to the film I see it is a common noticeable. Unlike most films depicting a group of people stuck in a room together there is no developing plot. There is little action/twists in the story. None of the characters appealed to me since they all seemed to have the intelligence of 10 year olds. The Story is simple a man decides to take a look at some crates he has no business looking into but does so, getting his dumb ass infected. Once the owner of the boxes finds out he quarantines himself and 4 other people possibly infected. Although he is the only guard the other members have many chances to escape, it's so not realistic it can't even work in this style of film. I was only entertained for a couple scenes in the film, one in particular is the death scene of a character from the virus. At first it's disappointing but then escalates to a great gore scene. Still this doesn't make up for all the other errors in the film. 2/10

You have to admire the chutzpah of a film whose opening line is "This just doesn't make any sense!" and which then spends the next 94 minutes living up to it.The basic story idea isn't that bad though assembled from a kit of parts derived from other, better movies (but so are many high budget movies, there's no shame in that): A dangerous alien organism is bought back to Earth as part of the Space programme (The Andromeda Strain), it is transported across country by rail and gets loose contaminating the local population (The Crazies), the biochemist with a gun who has been accompanying the train keeps everyone inside the station, shooting anyone who tries to leave (The Petrified Forest). The organism only becomes active when the infected person falls asleep (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), our hero survives the boredom of being trapped with a bunch of tedious people for three days but is shot dead by the clean-up team (Night of the Living Dead).Much better films have been made out of much worse ideas. What drags this film down into the realms of sheer boredom is the length of time we spend with the people in the depot. They just aren't very interesting and the more they rabbit on about not a lot, the less and less we care whether the bunch of scientists feverishly peering down microscopes and talking pseudo scientific boll0cks to one another (in what looks suspiciously like a High School science lab) come up with a counter-agent or not. Or indeed, whether the bad actor representing the Military are going to do anything other than unleash The National Guard (or rather one shot each of a Jeep, one truck containing one guy, and what looks like a stock shot of a couple of tanks). The inter-cutting of these three strands of the story is very odd too, most of the running time is spent trying to stay awake watching the five people in the station stay awake, occasionally the biochemist gets phone calls from the Military type who, in turn, phones the scientists - though we never see them actually talking to him; they only talk to one another. The scientists, once they have done a heroic (and not that badly done) amount of exposition in the first few minutes, contribute nothing to the development of the story. we cut away to them from time to time as they tell each other that nothing makes sense but that's about it. They don't advance the plot, they don't hold out any false hope, they're not even very good actors. Nothing.There is some very odd framing in this movie, some weird inept close ups and arms suddenly appearing from the sides of the screen to throw things to other characters. Weird pointless inserts (turtle, gun on bench etc. ) and lots of long nothing shots, shots of people doing nothing not reacting to the other characters, not thinking, not observing, just doing nothing. There are other blank moments too like one moment for example when everyone clears the frame and the camera holds on the empty door in the background for way too long before cutting to where everyone cleared the screen to get to. No need to hold on the door, it wasn't symbolic, we weren't expecting anyone to arrive, it was just an inept cut that gave the audience enough time to think 'why am I looking at this door?' another one was the shot where Charlie arrives at work and sits down. I had time to think: 'Sit down, just sit down - where's the top of his head for Christ's sake, what's he fiddling with up there? (we never find out) Just sit down! Sit! Hurray! he sat down - oh great, now he's going to do paperwork...'The music and sound editing is clunky too, vast pointless silences and other weirdnesses like one point where the phone rings in an adjoining room our hero opens the door to go answer it and the phone rings again - only more quietly, there are all sorts of weird SF-ish biddly bong noises that suddenly crop up all over the soundtrack for no apparent reason other than to remind you this is supposed to be an SF film. They get very annoying very quickly.