Alien degli abissi

Great entertainment here, folks. I had the pleasure to watch the UNCUT Japanese print of this cool Italian "Alien" rip-off. The action sequences are violent and full of automatic weapons. The soldiers are evil in their conquest to stop a man and woman from spilling the secret of nuclear dumping in a volcano. It seems before they can get away, the radiation attracts an evil alien intent on taking over the world. Even tho the alien monster is silly, the movie on a whole is a decent spaghetti-made gory alien monster movie!

Rating: 7/10 because even tho the budget was small, director Antonio Margheriti still manages to catch the attention of the audience and the effects are pretty gory. If you liked this movie, also check out "Cannibal Apacalypse" and "Blood For Dracula" for more shocks!

Antonio Margheriti's filmography is interesting and varied. It featured such well made Italian films as Danse Macabre and Schoolgirl Killer; as well as some trash, such as The Last Hunter, Death Rage and Cannibal Apocalypse. One thing you have to credit the director with, however, is that even when he's making trash; he usually makes it well, and while Alien from the Deep is not exactly a high quality piece of film-making; I do firmly believe that it would have been a lot worse in the hands of a lesser director. The title features the word 'alien' and the film was released not long after James Cameron's Aliens was a big hit; so seeing as this is an Italian film, it should be pretty clear that it's a rip off of the Alien films. Unlike the Alien films (but a bit like the first Predator film), this one takes place out in the jungle. We focus on a big (evil) corporation with an irresponsible approach to waste management; they're pouring it all down a volcano (oh yes), and naturally this leads to trouble in the form of a giant monster.

The film puts it's focus on a couple of people aiming to expose the big corporation's social ills, and this gives it a bit of plot to work with outside of the main monster theme. It has to be said that it can be a little dull at times; but things never ground to a complete halt and Margheriti keeps our interest well enough until the monster appears on screen. Naturally, the monster is saved for as long as possible; but all the scenes featuring it are generally well orchestrated and amusing. Only parts of the monster are shown at first; and it seems to be a sort of scorpion-like contraption...but this leads to disappointment when it's actually revealed towards the end, as it turns out to look more than just a little bit silly (HR Giger has nothing to worry about). The cast is nothing to write home about really; but we do get a pleasant surprise in the form of Charles Napier, who is perfectly cast as the main bad guy. Aside from the monster there's a few interesting ideas, and the monster itself is fun in the way it attacks from underwater and underground. The film is most definitely trash and there's no denying it; but it's also a lot of fun and I can recommend it.

Antonio Margheriti still is one of my favorite Italian directors (thanks to his 70's & 80's films), but the mix he presents us with "Alien From The Deep", he has done before and much better already. "Killer Fish" mixes a heist movie while cashing in on Joe Dante's "Piranha". With "Hunters of the Golden Cobra" he gave us a hero with James Bond allures in a film reminiscent of an Indiana Jones adventure. In a way, "Aliens From The Deep" fits in perfectly with all other blends of Margheriti entertainment. It's not on par with the films it borrows from, but it tries to redeem itself by going over the top a little further.

So what kind of blend does Margheriti present us this time? Obviously, the Italian title "Alien Degli Abissi" (which roughly translates to "Alien Of The Abyss") tries to cash in on James Cameron's 1989 hit "The Abyss". But that's where the comparison ends. Most of the film can be categorized as some type of 'adventure on a tropical island' film. Some military/governmental facility is dumping toxic waste into the earth. Some noble people try to expose this and ultimately stop them. Some action & some shooting. Fair enough.

Now what's with the alien-aspect of this film? Well, we have to wait a good 50 minutes for it to show itself, and it's not really an alien, but some mutant giant monster (basically formed by toxic waste, creating a symbiosis of organic material & scrap metal – I know, that sounds way too smart for a movie of this type) emerging from the bowels of the earth. It somewhat looks like a black giant crab-robot monster of sorts. It just gets thrown into the movie's third act so they could rip off the climax of Cameron's "Aliens". Remember Ripley fighting the mother-alien in that yellow robotic worker-unit? Well, it's here too, only it's some type of bulldozer.

So "Alien Degli Abissi" is just entertaining Margheriti nonsense (featuring yet again fun miniature effects) and nothing more. It's sub-par, as to be expected, but thankfully it's not boring. Oh, and it has Charles Napier running around in it, mainly behind computers. Other than that, he seems to have little else to do.

Good Badness? Yes, fair enough fun & inept action/adventure/monster fodder. 4/10 and 6/10.

`It's gigantic, evil and invincible!' boasts the tagline. Well, this alien dwarfs the original alien in physical size only. Although the film takes place on a tropic island, a few similarities to `Alien' are obvious, down to the fact that the heroine has to stand the last fight with the creature wearing nothing but her white underwear. No, I don't complain about that ;-) Anyway, the huge creature which can move under the ground is quite scary (but only until it stands up and suddenly looks like a cross between a senile robot and a lunatic crab), the characters (including a snake hunter, Greenpeace investigators, a not-yet-mad scientist and an unscrupulous officer trying to `control' the situation) help to develop an interesting storyline, and I cannot agree with reviewers who consider this a simple rip-off. There is a lot more to see, `Alien degli abissi' is not too bad entertainment from an experienced director (voted 6/10).

A cheap and cheezy sci-fi/horror clunker from director Antonio Margheriti, Alien From The Deep joins the select list of titles that have proved so tedious that they have taken me three successive nights to finish. Congratulations, Antonio!

The film stars sexy blonde Marina Giulia Cavalli as Jane, a Greenpeace activist who, along with her cameraman Lee (Robert Marius), sneaks onto a high security island where an unscrupulous corporation has been dumping radioactive waste into the heart of an active volcano, an irresponsible act that results in a stream of pure energy being emitted into space, much to the annoyance of an huge, ugly alien who comes to Earth and smashes stuff with its massive claw.

Judging by the amount of recycling that's going on here, Margheriti has clearly taken his film's ecological theme to heart: the director employs well-worn ideas from James Cameron's Aliens and The Abyss for his lousy script, while his monster looks like it has been constructed from old bits and pieces scavenged from a local junkyard. Antonio isn't wasteful when it comes to excitement or scares either, delivering very little of either, the action being repetitive and uninspired (lots of dreary running around the jungle and skulking around a factory) and the horror element almost non existent. The alien doesn't even make an appearance until about an hour in, and when it does show up, it's a massive disappointment, a poorly-conceived bio-mechanical being that looks like it's being wheeled around on a trolley before eventually rising to its feet where it wobbles uncertainly like a newborn baby deer.

This kind of trash usually tries to compensate for its many inadequacies with some splatter and nudity, but Alien From The Deep fails to satisfy in both departments, with only one decent moment of gore (a diver emerging from the sea with his face melted off) and Cavalli only going so far as stripping to her underwear Ripley-style, except that her vest is baggier and her panties are bigger.

2.5 out of 10, rounded up to 3 for IMDb.