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'Alien Trespass' pays tribute to '50s creature features

Published online on Monday, Aug. 10, 2009

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SAN FRANCISCO -- When actress Jenni Baird was cast in "Alien Trespass," the campy science-fiction film being released on DVD Tuesday, she was given homework.

Director R.W. Goodwin told her to go home and watch the original versions of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "War of the Worlds" and "It Came from Outer Space." He wanted Baird to get familiar with the movies that were the inspiration for his salute to the 1950s creature features.

Goodwin's film looks like it was shot in the '50s, when movie monsters were often made of scraps of material and had exposed zippers. The task of the beautiful woman -- fellow scientist, secretary, spouse -- was to scream bloody murder.

Baird's character is different. She plays a waitress who won't back down to any little green men in flying saucers.

"I was told that my character does not exist in the original form," said Baird during a break from meeting with WonderCon conventioneers this year. She's joined fellow actors Eric McCormack and Dan Lauria, plus Goodwin, to drum up interest in the movie at the comic book/movie/TV event.

Goodwin, who grew up in Los Angeles, has seen countless old monster movies. He would take a bus to Inglewood, where a theater played double bills of '50s science-fiction movies: "It was important that we make an original movie and not do a remake. The story idea is an amalgam of a bunch of the real classic '50s movies. Combine that with going back and looking at the films and realizing how funny they are today, I figured if we stuck to our guns and made an authentic '50s movie, it could be charming and scary and fun."

McCormack's biggest adjustment was how he delivered dialogue. These days, it's not unusual for actors to pause, stutter or misspeak. Back in the '50s, everyone delivered flawless lines.

"It is hard to get in that frame of mind that it is not a good take until you have said everything just perfectly and not sound human at all," McCormack says. "I think there are times in this movie where the alien sounds more human than the actual humans."

McCormack worked on "Alien Trespass" just after working on the updated version of "The Andromeda Strain." Before the films he spent eight years starring in the series "Will & Grace."