Alien - O Monstro Assassino

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.

Being a child of the fifties, I grew up watching drek like this. The only difference I could see between this movie and something made in the fifties was the color.

I'm not sure who Luigi Cozzi is, but I am sure that he must be related to Ed Wood.

This movie was made in 1980, long after the special effects of "Plan 9 from Outer Space" should have been deep-sixed. The plot is very thin, the dialogue is embarrassing and the ending is both bad and predictable.

Having said all that, I had a great time watching it - it was on the El Rey channel which has become one of my guilty pleasure favorites. It's 90 minutes I will never get back but that's OK.

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.

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!

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.