ALIEN AUTOPSY
Director: Johnny Campbell Stars: Declan Donnelly, Ant McPartlin, Bill Pullman, Harry Dean Stanton
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
If you are besotted by UFOs, Aliens and believe firmly in Roswell, don’t see this film – unless you are eager to bypass the evidence and construct a conspiracy theory about what the American government did and didn’t do there and what they want and don’t want us to know.
Not being a UFO addict, I missed the alien autopsy film of 1995, purporting to be the lost film of an autopsy of one of the Roswell aliens. Apparently it was shown to mass audiences all around the world. Now the true (“true”) story is revealed. A local London barrow conman who specialised in pirated tapes and his friend who worked as an accountant in a biscuit factory, sought out memorabilia of celebrities life Elvis, bought them and re-sold them. When they get their hands on the Roswell footage, they find it is corroded and faded. What else can they do but stage their own amateur moviemaking with family, friends and neighbours and pass it off as the real thing. A huge hit. Now they tell their story.
“They” are Ant and Dec, popular entertainers on British television, two interchangeable 30-somethings (well, one is tall and the other isn’t) who have a mass UK following. Whether they have a career in movies is an open question.
It is all lightly amusing, although Bill Pullman and Harry Dean Stanton look as if they are taking the project far more seriously than the locals.