Don Dohler Double Feature – The Alien Factor and Fiend

The Alien Factor (1978) is so archetypal of 70s ultra-low-budget sci-fi/horror that it almost seems like a SCTV parody of the genre. Loaded with awkward blocking and long snatches of blandly delivered expositional dialogue, its strength is in its simple charms: a few good ideas, some amusing characters, and enough money-shot visuals to inspire 100 great screen captures. These folks clearly worked hard on the monsters—one of which has anatomically built-in platform heels—and in general, your entertainment will come from the earnest and colorful visual effects and primitive, in-camera and stop-motion techniques. Make no mistake, The Alien Factor is eyeball-pleasin'; the title sequence alone should be canonized as some kind of holy representation of 70s goodness. If I seem to disparage The Alien Factor, it's only because Dohler's next feature goes straight to the heart of my aesthetic nerve centre. 

Everything that The Alien Factor may lack in sophistication is more than made up for by director Don Dohler's next movie, Fiend (aka Deadly Neighbor, 1980), a genuinely creepy, witty and highly original living-dead scenario. In the film, a mysterious alien force, an ethereal red-glowing flying thing, for reasons unknown to us, reanimates (or possesses) a buried corpse, and the combo adds up to one nasty character, an intense sadist named Mr. Longfellow. The trajectory is quite unpredictable, as our zombie pal takes over an empty house, opens a music school (!), and generally irritates his neighbors (whose somewhat banal interactions also provide their own amusing little subplot, especially as the length of the wife's hair keeps changing from scene to scene.) And oh yes, there's Longfellow's murder/sustenance rituals, which also consist of shouting and stabbing at photographs of his victims (and a lot of black candles.)

After Alien Factor, Dohler must have learned a lot about shot framing, suspenseful editing, and economy of dialogue, such that Fiend is elevated from being merely a visually charming, colorful oddity like its predecessor, to being an aggressively weird and disquieting horror tale. I'd also be remiss not to mention that both of these films feature a melodic, burbling synthesizer score (The Alien Factor by Kenneth Walker; Fiend by Paul Woznicki), so well done and so evocative of the time as to give me a super-warm fuzzy. See the My Castle of Quiet blog for a downloadable cinelogue audio excerpt from Fiend.

It's obvious that despite challenges of budget, Dohler and his crew worked hard to try and make good, entertaining movies, and, at least with Fiend, came pretty close to some metaphysical horror fan's ideal. Dohler is something of a legend, especially in his native Baltimore, and now I see why. Many thanks to James for the loan of the two-in-one DVD (released 2005), and for insisting that we give these bent pictures an eyeball.

Another Don Dohler film, Galaxy Invader, can be viewed or downloaded for free here via archive.org. There's also a well-reviewed and relatively new Dohler documentary, released on DVD earlier this year.

Comments

[doomsday fartshadow]

while looking at amazon, i wondered- what of alien factor 2? as good? same director? guess i can imdb it, just wanted your opinion on it too.

[WmMBerger]

I haven't seen Alien Factor 2 - yet. I'm a relatively new Dohler convert!

[DJ ManRich]

As a teen, I used to read the Seventies incarnation of Famous Monsters of Filmland. I remember Alien Factor getting a lengthy, loving write-up, with lots of production information and more special effects pictures and behind-the-scenes shots that a real publicist would've feasibly allowed, considering that it hadn't come out yet.
How did movies like this get distributed before the home video era?

[doomsday fartshadow]

phew, i saw a trailer for alien factor 2...it was made in 2001, and the effects are still 1970's quality but not in an endearing way. I vaguely remember fiend as one of the many horribad flicks my mom would bring homeand i'd get to watch back in the days when b horros still came in the overly large porno-style boxes and every convenience store had video rental. so i still may have to watch that one again.

as for alien factor 2, it looks like Dohler lost whatever it was he had learned in fiend.

[WmMBerger]

I LOVE those big old VHS clamshells...I have a great Mad Doctor of Blood Island—I should scan it!

[doomsday fartshadow]

yeah -the big black plastic clamshells that secured the tape inside like it was a precious chocolate or handgun were pretty funny- but i also meant the big cardboard boxes-
oversized, that had a plastic vaccuform compartment inside for the tape. it seemed like even when standard movies were finally doing just a tape-sized cardboard sleeve, that porn, horror and bad sci-fi boxes were still oversized. perhaps to capitalize on fitting as much attention-getting graphics on the box? and is it me or were they already all sun-faded by the time a store started carrying them? perhaps there were only a handful of these bad tapes across the country and they each did a little time on the shelf by the window from store to store..lol

[WmMBerger]

>>i also meant the big cardboard boxes- <<

Oh yeah! I have one of those for The Beast aka Equinox.

[Andrew]

The Cinematic Titanic gang (i.e., many of the old MST3K people) have been riffing on ALIEN FACTOR on their recent live theater tour. It's a very worthy candidate.

[Listener bkd]

Turns out the guy responsible for the special effects and the title sequence is no slouch:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267495/

And as for that title sequence? He goes on to do the title sequences for:
Terminator
Terminator 2
The Abyss
Alien Nation
Cast a Deadly Spell
Dune (2000)
Children of Dune (2003)
(and whatever the flaws in the following movies, I'm sure their title sequences are Simply Awesome)
Critters
Def-Con 4
Galaxy of Terror
and a bunch of others.

[Mike H]

I am a huge fan of Don Dohlers films. Great reviews! And I'm happy to them them posted, out of the blue, of WFMUs blog!

Fiend is my favorite Dohler movie.

[Mark L]

I think the documentary isn't all that good - there's far too little about his inventive, fun, earlier films, and way too much about his last films, where he clearly wasn't enjoying himself and was purely doing it for the money. It was quite sad.

[Sicko666]

Fiend was Don Dohlers best film! I love the surreal atmosphere very original.