Fred Olen Ray, director of over 150 movies, currently pays the bills making trashy Hallmark-style Christmas movies. While this might seem like an undignified way for such a prolific film-maker to round out his career, I should remind you that there's never been anything dignified about Fred's movies: they've always been trash.

Biohazard, Ray's fifth movie, is a low-budget piece of Earth-bound sci-fi schlock of the type that clogged the lower shelves of video rental shops in the '80s: badly written, poorly acted, with unconvincing special effects, and only really good for a few unintentional giggles if the latest Arnie or Stallone film wasn't available.

The Alien-inspired premise for Biohazard sees a U.S. military scientist using the psychic abilities of his assistant Lisa (Angelique Pettyjohn) to pull objects from other dimensions. The experiment goes awry, however, when Lisa's latest inter-dimensional acquisition turns out to be an extremely vicious creature. What makes this film particularly funny is that the monster is played by the director's five-year-old son Christopher in a crappy rubber costume, meaning that it's about three-and-a-half feet tall and not in the slightest bit scary.

As the diminutive alien runs around the desert killing everyone it meets (which at least results in some cheap and cheerful gore), heroic military man Mitchell Carter (William Fair) and Lisa try to track it down, pausing only for a quick fumble on Lisa's couch (which allows Pettyjohn to free her impressive puppies). Olen Ray pads out his film with assorted characters whose only purpose is to be killed, including several hobos, the town drunk and his wife, and a guy called Roger (Richard Hench), whose busty blonde wife Jenny (Loren Crabtree) just so happens to be taking a bath. Unfortunately, there's quite a lot of filler in the form of dull conversation as well.

Like the films of fellow trashmeister Jim Wynorski, Biohazard isn't intended to be any kind of masterpiece - which is good, 'cos it's not, as evidenced by a very silly ending that shows that Ray had no idea how to wrap things up in a satisfactory manner. Still, the sight of Pettyjohn tearing open her breasts and head to reveal that she is a monster is wonderfully wacky, and the end-credits out-takes are quite fun.

"Biohazard" is a jarringly tedious grade z "horror" movie with no horror and very little movie. At barely over an hour long it's tempting to call it mercifully brief, but no movie this bad could be short enough. It makes one hour feel like five.

Calling it an "Alien" rip off is being too kind. I guess that's what "inspired" it, or at least made the filmmakers think there'd be easy money in a zero budget retread. Really, the only thing it has in common with its source material is the look of the baby alien thing, which is glimpsed once or twice.

It was funny seeing the "psychic medium" the army has gotten for their top secret experiment that has something to do with the plot. She looks like every other b-movie actress, so you know she's only there to take her clothes off, which she does in a surprisingly brief scene in which her bra is too small and reveals her nipples.

There's some other, typical clichéd horror garbage like people who are about to have sex getting killed and people stalking the monster deciding to split up.

The blooper real at the end of the movie is easily the highlight. It's the only time you see anything like life in this remarkably dull, tedious movie.

I couldn't believe some of the horrible dialog coming out of people's mouths, and the end reel of bloopers attached to body of the film was a real hoot. And we get titty shots of Angelique Pettyjohn (sort of) and Loren Crabtree to boot.

A teleportation device activated by psychic Angelique Pettyjohn brings an alien container to an underground lab out in the desert. According to director Fred Olen Ray, they were leftover sets from the Klaus Kinski film, ANDROID which gives the film an increased value beyond how cheap it looks.

Inside the container is a midget alien (played by Ray's son) who starts clawing people to death. It was pretty funny watching this little 'creature' in a black reptile suit with what looks like large beetle shells attached to it, running around in the dark. We even get to see the little thing stamp and tear at a poster of ET, which I thought was hilarious.

And then there's what looks like a snake that also comes out of the container that gets hammered to death by William Fair, after the mini creature chews into Frank McDonald's neck in the kitchen. A low budget take on ALIEN, I suppose...

The whole thing ends abruptly, looking like they ran out of film at the end before the blooper reel comes in with the end credits. Talk about a lack of funding...

Fred Olen Ray also mentions in the director's commentary that they also weren't sure if Aldo Ray would make through the shooting and remember his lines. He barely did.

Low budget cheese sneeze. It's fun to watch, I'll grant ya that.

4 out of 10