Imagine Alien. Now imagine Alien if the creature were designed not by H.R. Giger, but In-N-Out Burger. That’s Spaceship Terror. No one claims it is good for you, but if you’re in the mood for it, damn, does it hit the spot! (And it’s just as messy — maybe it should have been titled Star Gores.)

Written, directed, produced, edited and everythinged by rookie filmmaker Harry Tchinski, Spaceship Terror opens with half a dozen peeps going on a trip in what will be their least favorite rocket ship, because the craft crashes on a nearby desolate planet. Seeking medical attention for the injured lone male, the ladies come upon a large vessel whose moniker is stenciled in capital red letters. Asks one of the women rhetorically, “Who’d name their spaceship Terror?”

Answer: Capt. Terror (Jay Wesley Cochran, The Catechism Cataclysm), an obese psychopath with a tube up his nose, a retractable harpoon gun in his hands and a pink-pantied Asian girl (Emma Lee Nguyen, Teenage Kung Fu Cottontails) trapped in his lair for the last two years. She fills in the new arrivals: “You’re on a death ship! You’re all going to die!”

Elaborating after that fine “how do you do,” she explains that Capt. Terror likes to play hide-and-seek for keeps, with his guests forced to trudge winding, booby-trapped hallways while being pursued by him, his itchy trigger finger and/or his rapey other parts. However, Cap plays fair, giving a count-of-50 head start and, per each death, another piece of the code needed to unlock Terror’s escape pod. With such a twisted game, Capt. Terror is not unlike Saw’s villainous Jigsaw, minus the moral compass, Ivy League diction and the ability to turn down Winchell’s crullers.

Spaceship Terror knows exactly who it wants its audience to be and caters accordingly. (Capt. Terror must be right in sync, cranking the ship’s heat to 120˚ F so the ladies have to strip to sweat-damp skivvies.) With outrageous gore sequences that seek to disgust as they delight — the double de-ankling, the mammary trauma, et al. — the no-budget epic is not for the easily offended. Perhaps I’m the only sick bastard to detect a touch of black comedy in the proceedings, but the flick makes no apologies for the grindhouse cesspool in which it wades.

The acting would leave something to be desired, if performances were a concern. They are not; vehicles like Spaceship Terror are about creative kills, and Capt. Terror, an imposing figure who would be right at home in a Rob Zombie film, delivers. With excellent makeup effects (CGI effects, much less so) and nasty fun, the outer-space slasher is a scrappy work Tchinski can be proud of — not possessive-name-above-the-title proud, but proud nonetheless. (It’s a little early to brand oneself à la John Carpenter.) If Tchinski bows at the big-box VHS heyday as I suspect, further travels of Capt. Terror in the near and exploitable future would not be out of the question. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.