When watching Alien Trespass, I knew I should have started to panic when, after the film’s opening 1950s parody newsreel, the world of the film was revealed not in similarly appropriate black and white but devastatingly modern Technicolor, but I withheld my judgments until the end of the film. Oh, what a mistake that was. The artistic choices on the part of the director are simply the beginning of the numerous problems that plague this well-meaning film, downgrading it from ’50s horror parody to what amounts to an unnecessary and relatively poorly executed film.

Director R.W. Goodwin, despite flailing with the film’s technical aspects, does hit a lot of positive notes with the plot. What starts as a quiet night in a small American town turns into something a lot more exciting and otherworldly, as astronomer Ted Lewis (Eric McCormack) witnesses what looks like a shooting star flying across the night sky. When said shooting star crashes into the side of a nearby mountain, however, he rushes to investigate. The shooting star turns out to be the spaceship of an odd alien named Urp, who ends up possessing Ted in an attempt to save the world from a monster which the crash unleashed upon the town.

The plot’s progression is obviously very predictable, but the sheer goofiness of the shenanigans that ensue as the monster wreaks havoc on the small town keeps you laughing and moderately entertained throughout the film’s skimpy runtime. The actors, fortunately, don’t try to take the plot seriously, and it’s obvious that they had a lot of fun making the film. The silly nature of the plot only goes so far, though, as the obviously half-assed technical aspects of the film begin to show through and drag the film’s entertainment value down considerably.

Alien Trespass was obviously a low-budget production, and with that there are obviously limitations that I am certainly willing to acknowledge. However, many of the sets, which were attempted recreations of what would have been available in the 1950s, come across as shoddy, even by the standards of that time period. It is obvious what the director and set designers were going for with their sets with burning rocks and ’50s diners, but it all seems very fake and uninspired, as if the limitations of the 1950s could be an excuse for cutting corners here in 2009.

Nevertheless, I might be giving Alien Trespass a little too much flack. What we have here is a goofy low-budget film with its intentions pushed in the right direction that, unfortunately, are limited by its budget constraints. I could see this film being truly great if it had a bigger budget, mainly in the production department. I rarely say that production values can seriously boost the value of a film, but with Alien Trespass, better sets and a higher budget would have probably yielded something a bit more believable and enjoyable than the final product that we see now. If you are willing to look past its technical shortcomings, however, Alien Trespass is a fun, breezy parody of sorts that feels misguided but is so wrapped up in its own silly source material that it almost feels just right, despite its faults.

Alien Trespass opens in theaters April 3rd.