Contamination - Alien arriva sulla Terra

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.

Luigi Cozzi's "Contamination" is a typical Italian "Alien" clone.The film itself is not bad,because it offers some cheap thrills with plenty of nasty gore.Ian McCulloch("Zombi 2","Zombi Holocaust")is quite memorable as a former astronaut,who returned from Mars.Like many Italian exploitation films made in the early 80's,the film begins on location in New York City.A bunch of mysterious eggs is discovered along with some mutilated bodies on a deserted ship.Getting too close to these eggs could be very deadly,because they spew some goo at you and make your body explode."Contamination" is a fun little film loaded with enough gore and violence to satisfy fans of Italian splatter.It's sometimes too talky and dull,but the beginning is great as is the ending.So if you're a fan of Italian low-budget exploitation give this one a look.Grab some beer and get ready for some thrills,chills and blood spills!

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.

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.

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.