Video Nasty: Contamination

How bad do you have to be to get banned by an entire country like England? Blood? Good start. Boobs? Those definitely help. How about aliens, exploding chests and astronauts? Yeah, that will do it. Like today's film...

Contamination

The story begins with a deserted tanker ship floating into the New York harbor. Oh my god, Dracula is here! No, it turns out the ship is...empty. Upon further examination, it is filled with dead bodies with missing mid-sections and weird egg things. Something may be out of the ordinary.

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When they get to the bottom, they discover one of the alien Cadbury eggs by a steam pipe and go to investigate. It sprays goo over three men and they begin to gyrate. All of a sudden, the front of their chests explode outwards! Damn!

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The lone survivor is taken into government custody and questioned repeatedly. For some reason, they doubt his story. He is questioned by a stern woman who does not particularly care for him. Meanwhile, they test the remains of an egg and discover that it is from...outer space! This inspires them to re-think the testimony of an astronaut who claimed to have seen similar eggs whilst on Mars. He has gone into hiding, however, and his comrade is dead.

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Eventually, he is found and is quite a bit disgruntled. Reluctantly, he agrees to help them after quite a bit of convincing. Their search brings them to South America, where the company whose name was on the boxes in the ship. A government worker, a cop and an astronaut cross international borders and go on an espionage mission- bad punch-line setup or Italian movie plot?

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The plot gets really crazy from here-on out. You see, the other astronaut is really alive and running a fruit company in the country. It is all a pretense to get the alien eggs all over the world and to allow them to take over the world. One of the big scenes involves the woman being locked in the bathroom with an egg ready to burst. After really, really ratcheting up the dramatic tension, the astronaut saves the day at the last minute. A good scene and a show of how foreign cinema believes in more unique pacing.

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The movie continues to get crazier. Two of the group go on a tour of the factory, but get caught. Our astronaut friend has to go undercover and infiltrate the factory. Fortunately, the factory workers wear Hazmat suits and carry AK-47s. The movie builds and builds up to the alien menace, which is...a giant Cyclops alien. Holy crap! Unfortunately, the thing can barely move and numerous camera changes have to cover for this. Eventually good triumphs and evil is thwarted. Well, except for a couple of eggs that are still in N.Y.C. Wait for the sequel...which never came.

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Is this movie good? Fairly. It is a unique mix of science-fiction, horror and pulp action. The acting is not bad, albeit oddly-dubbed. This film is a lost classic of sorts and deserves more attention than it gets. The confusion lies in the numerous release titles for the film, including Alien Contamination, Toxic Spawn and the original title Alien Comes to Earth. The DVD has a bunch of neat features, including an interview with the director Luigi Cozzi, who talks about how every film he has made has turned into a science-fiction one (i.e. Sinbad of the Seven Seas). Why? He just liked the genre and there was little call for it during the 70s. There- you just learned something.

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What's next? How about the worst movie monster of all time? Stay tuned...