Astaron - Brut des Schreckens

This Luigi Cozzi sci-fi horror movie gained some infamy here in the UK for being one of the films which made the infamous video nasty list, i.e. Films released on home video in the early 80's which were regarded as criminally obscene by the British authorities. Like many others from this list, it's hard to work out exactly how this one made such a notorious list, as while it is gory in places, it's quite far from being ultra-shocking stuff. It would probably be fair to say that this one takes some influence from Alien (1979) with its focus on scary throbbing eggs which explode, it also shows the influence of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) with the idea of alien mind control. A boat drifts into New York harbour with all its crew dead and mutilated. It soon becomes apparent that this was caused by the aforementioned strange eggs. Before long it becomes apparent that they are related to a recent Martian expedition in which one astronaut made odd claims about a cave full of eggs. The authorities get in touch with this now alcoholic ex-astronaut and a small team head to South America in search of the origin of the shipment of deadly eggs.

You wouldn't describe this as a stellar example of Italian horror but, for me, it is a perfectly entertaining one. The story-line, while influenced by other films, is distinctive enough to stand on its own, while the gory effects were executed well enough and kept things interesting. There was some attempt at generating tension with a suspenseful scene in a bathroom where a woman is trapped in the small room with a pulsating egg. While the final scenes with the cyclops were good enough too. Aside from its video nasty status, the film is perhaps best known nowadays for featuring a score from soundtrack legends Goblin. Its maybe not up to the standard of the work they did for Dario Argento but it is still very good nevertheless and adds some class to proceedings. It's hardly an actors film but it was good to see regular of Italian exploitation movies Ian McCulloch (Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)) appear as the bitter astronaut. Overall, you could do worse than check out this bit of sci-fi/ horror hokum.

Italian/German sci-fi horror about large green Martian eggs initially found on a cargo ship drifting apparently unmanned into New York. An unlikely team of three head to a coffee manufacturer in Colombia where they eventually encounter a big alien cyclops. Back in the 1980's Contamination found itself banned as a Video Nasty in Britain, and has been released in cuts of varying length. Thankfully it is now available uncut and it looks great on Blu-ray. The plot is silly, the dialogue is hilariously bad, the Martian cave looks very cheap and the dubbing is often out of sync (not unusual to be fair), but on the other hand there is a lot of gore on show, the pace is good and the movie boasts a Goblin musical score. I love the movie, yes it is trashy but for me it is very entertainingly so. I don't think that I could tire of watching it.

Ian McCulloch shines, as he did in 'Zombie Flesh-eaters', this time as an alcoholic former NASA astronaut who is dismissed as mad when he talks of the threat of an alien invasion from Mars (as is par for the course in these space capers).

If you enjoy lame acting, poorly dubbed voices, cheesy 80's gore effects and an implausible plot, then this is the film for you.

Contamination is my idea of movie heaven. It is a shining example of the dubbed sci-fi/horror, Euro-trash spectaculars that were produced on a massive scale in the 70s and early 1980s before Europe turned its backs on cheap entertainment and focused on making dreary art-house fare. In my opinion, Contamination is a reminder of all that was great about this, now virtually extinct, film-making phenomenon.

Contamination is generally regarded as the embarrassing bastard child of Ridley Scott's "Alien". While the film does shamelessly steal certain elements from Scott's masterpiece, it is by no means a boring copy. The plot is so twisted and demented, not to mention ludicrous and ridiculous, that it transcends its "borrowed" elements and becomes something almost entirely unique and wonderful. For example, whereas Alien takes place on a deserted spacecraft, Contamination begins on a deserted boat, then moves to New York City, makes a detour via Mars and ends up in a Colombian coffee factory!

In addition to the utterly preposterous storyline, the joys of Contamination are manifold. There is the wonderful 80s synth score, some of the most atrocious acting committed to film, side-splitting dialogue, fantastically ancient cutting-edge technology (the science lab is a marvel of 70s/80s set design), fabulous euro-effects (among them glowing, musical alien eggs, exploding rats and better yet, exploding people) and then there is the Cyclops.

I could probably write a novel just on the glorious Cyclops. What a wonder of latex and wire! The film is worth viewing just for this magnificent creature, with its big, glowing eye and vile snout. This kind of craptastic special effect died a painful death with the introduction of CGI, and movies have been all the worse for it.

Forget the pretentious rubbish clogging up IMDb's top 250 and watch this stunning opus instead. I can not recommend this highly enough.

I first heard of this film from a friend of mine. He owns a very old copy of this movie that was not called "Contamination" but called "Alien Contamination". So, he let me borrow this flick one night and I was rather disappointed at first. The gore and exploding stomaches were heavily cut out and the story really isn't worth watching without it. I finally got a copy of this film that is fully uncut and it is much better. Of course the story line is quite simple. A ship is found with some extremely mangled bodies on board and some eggs that look similar to the eggs from the movie "Alien" only much smaller and when picked up they explode causing anyone around to basically explode from the inside. So you can only imagine where the story line is going from here. Great gore effects, "Zombi 2's" Ian McColluch and a good score by "The Goblins" make this a descent Italian horror flick. I enjoyed it and I think most fans of the genre will. And by the way, other than the exploding eggs, this movie is in no way like "Alien". Many people call this movie another "Alien" ripoff, but this movie is not anything like it.