Contamination

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.

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.

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.

Well this was another movie that tried to pass itself off as Alien 2 long with Ciro Ippolito's Alien 2 - On Earth. The problem with doing this is that one immediately draws a comparison with Alien which had a much bigger budget and therefore is always going to look a lot better.

Luigi Cozzi's stab at Alien isn't too bad, although he himself has stated that his is a better movie than Ippolito's film although I don't agree - sure the effects are slightly better, but there is only one effect in the entire movie - the chest exploding (or popping) that is repeated about a billion times in super-slow-motion. Alien 2 - On Earth was much more fun.

Anyway the narrative begins as an exact copy of Zombie Flesh Eaters with the appearance of an abandoned boat floating into New York Harbour. Even the dialogue is copied from that film - "The skipper of that boat must be a real turkey!". Not only do the Italians rip-off Hollywood movies, they rip each other off as well.

Predictably the police who investigate the boat stumble across the dead crew, who fall out of cupboards and look as if they have been ripped open from the inside! They then discover some strange egg like shapes, "Maybe they're avocados!" enthuses one policeman. However when they try to pick one up it explodes, showering the police in sticky goo. The goo leads to immediate imflammation of the belly and "pop!" they're guts fly out all over the place. Not a bad effect although if you look closely at one of the victims, he has suddenly become a foot wider (to make room for all those animal entrails).

The police captain escapes and helps Commander Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) in the hunt to discover the origin of the eggs.

They visit Hubbard (Ian McCulloch), who was part of an expedition to Mars some years previous who was declared crazy after talking about seeing thousands of eggs there. Now living in alcoholic squalor he moans at Lt. Holmes before telling his story. Cue flashback of the expedition to a Martian cave and a terrible attempt at recreating the exact scene in Alien. The acting in this bit is truly atrocious as McCulloch delivers his lines "I looked at Hamilton - and he was, his eyes, he was beginning to....Hamilton.....HAMILTON!" Followed by a Daa Daaa DAAAAAAAA on the soundtrack. Truly the funniest part of the movie using that same useless Goblin soundtrack that for some reason everyone raves about - why? It's terrible!

Well it's not great and nowhere near as fun as "Alien 2 - On Earth" but it's better than the average trash movie. Starts well and finishes okay but it sags very badly in the middle which does make you want to nod off.

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.