Contamination

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.

This film has good ideas, some good gory visuals; however, it is extremely slow after a fast start that it makes the film less enjoyable than it should have been. This film is obviously trying to capitalize on Alien, but does so in a very roundabout way. We do not get an Alien on the attack in a spaceship; no, instead we get an alien life form on earth, one that we will not see until the very end! Instead, it is all conspiracies and lunch plans as the film stops focusing on the action after the first 15 minutes as it seemingly tries to lull you to sleep after it begins with a bang!

The story has a ship that is essentially a runaway as the crew is nowhere to be seen. A group of people explore the ship and find the crew has been killed in most gruesome fashion and a bit confusing fashion as we learn that they were killed by alien eggs exploding and spreading goo over its victims. However, how did goo get on the captain hiding in a closet or to anyone not near the eggs? Soon a cop and a scientist track down the place where the cargo was to go and find more eggs and then they track down an astronaut who has seen this things on Mars and then they make dinner plans and we get to watch a woman beat on a bathroom door for five minutes leaving one to question why a bathroom door would lock from the outside as an egg takes forever to explode! Soon they must battle the people responsible, but not really the alien because the poor thing is stationary...

This film has promise and could have been good with more exploding effects and action. After the factory the film becomes almost a chore to watch, even when the alien is revealed as we have to watch people slowly walk through the jungle and stumble towards the alien! The alien actually looks pretty gruesome though, so kudos to the visual effects department as they did a good job on both it and the exploding bodies. The people responsible for the plot, not a very good job at all.

So, you get a somewhat entertaining film to watch if only it did not get so slow. I watched this thing again after watching as a kid so long ago and I was like 'awesome' after the first bit, but then it becomes a chore to watch as my eyelids got heavy watching the padding in this thing. Italians can make some entertaining films that are basically ripped off American films, but they seem to have a harder time with alien films as Alien 2: Alien on Earth also has the problem of being slow, but at least it picks up in the end. This one, not so much, though it was fun watching the alien eat a guy!

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.

This moderately amusing "Alien" cash-in, taking place on Earth, is ultimately too plodding for its own good, too short on action and too heavy on dialogue. Some genre fans may grow tired of the exposition, and regret the fact that there's just not enough good creature stuff. There IS a creature at the end, but it's largely of the endearingly silly variety. There is some delicious gross out material here, namely lots of chests exploding in slow motion. And of course there's always the spectacle of eternally cool Ian McCulloch turning into bad ass hero once again. But there just isn't a lot here to really recommend this one - that is, of course, unless you're a hopeless addict of the science-fiction and horror genres.

A massive ship mysteriously cruises into New York Harbour (this opening is highly reminiscent of "Zombi 2", which also featured McCulloch), and authorities discover that its cargo hold is full of disgusting green egg-like objects. Upon further investigation, they find that there's also a warehouse in NYC housing the things. Soon, a government agent, Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), an NYC police detective, Tony Aris (Marino Mase), and a traumatized former astronaut, Ian Hubbard (Mr. McCulloch) travel to South America to investigate the ships' origins.

"Contamination" does have some entertainment to offer die hards, but overall one would be advised to simply revisit "Alien". (I've been told that another Italian knock off from this period, "Alien 2: On Earth", is more fun than "Contamination".) One misses that deep space atmosphere a good deal. That said, it's still a hoot to check out these effects and these performances. Also starring are Siegfried Rauch as the astronaut Hamilton, Gisela Hahn as his associate Perla de la Cruz, Carlo De Mejo as Agent Young, and Carlo Monni as the ill-fated Dr. Turner. One point of interest is a typically nice score by the great prog rockers Goblin.

Watchable enough but never really inspired.

Five out of 10.

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.