Fugitive Alien (1986)
Article 6071 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11/3/2022
Directed by Minoru Kanaya, and Kiyosumi Kuzakawa
Featuring Tatsuya Azuma, Miyuki Tanagawa, Jo Shishido
Country: USA / Japan
What it is: TV episodes converted into a movie

A turncoat alien invader joins a crew of space adventurers.

I first became familiar with this one through the MST3K versions, which is a confusing muddle which may be due to the large chunks of story that were omitted. The complete version here is better, but still has its problems due to the fact that the basic story is uninteresting and that it ends abruptly with very little resolved. It’s another case of a TV series being converted into a couple of movies,, the second of which (STAR FORCE: ALIEN FUGITIVE 2) completes the story arc. The original series was SUTAURUFU, but I can’t find much information on this Japanese TV series from 1976. From what I see here, it was a forgettable action series. I found this one to be pretty dull.