Contamination

Alternate titles : "Alien Contamination", "Contaminazione", "Alien 2", "Contamination: Alien on Earth", "Contamination: Alien Arriva Sulla Terra", "Astaron Brut des Schreckens", "Toxic Spawn"

Tagline : "You can feel them in your blood!"

Back in the early 1980's there were numerous low budget sci-fi/horror films trying to cash in on the likes of Alien. It was with this in mind Italian director Lewis Coates (aka Luigi Cozzi) came up with the idea that would triple the shock value of Alien's "chestburster" scene, by making a film featuring multiple chest explosions.

The film starts off with the authorities dealing with a runaway cargo ship from South America which is on a collision course with the New York docks. Police board the vessel, only to find the crew in various states of decomposition, their bodies having been blown apart from the inside.

Upon inspecting the cargo hold, they find it to be full of giant alien eggs, which rather resemble giant avocado's. As they go to take a closer look, one of the eggs explodes, showering them with green goo, and causing their stomachs to explode in graphic slow motion (animal offal everywhere).

Agent Stella Homes (Louise Marleau), of some undetermined secret government agency, is brought into investigate. Enlisting the help of the one survivor, a police officer named Tony Aris (Marino Mase) and former astronaut Ian Hubbard (Ian McCollough) who claimed to have seen these eggs before on his last space mission, they track the source of the eggs to a Columbian coffee factory.

There they find the factory is just a cover for a large scale egg production plant, which are being produced in the cellar of the building by a giant alien Octopus named 'The Cyclops', who looks about as convincing as the creature in Ed Wood's "Bride of the Monster". It turns out the Cyclops has plans for conquest, the first step being to wipe out Earth's population. But our intrepid three aren't about to let that happen, even if it does mean sneaking into the factory disguised as potential coffee buyers (yes that's right)....

Thoroughly ridiculous, this ones certainly good for a laugh. I can't believe how anybody could take this film seriously enough to warrant it getting banned back in the early 80's. If you like Italian splatter films, this ones a blast (literally).

Overall Marks : 6/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• The director originally wanted Caroline Monroe, who he'd previously worked with in "Starcrash" for the lead role. But she was unavailable.
• The original US video release by Cannon Pictures entitled "Alien Contamination" had about 11 mins cut out of it, either for time and pacing reasons, or for violence so they could secure an "R" rating.
• For the majority of scenes, the alien "eggs" were in fact painted balloons.
• The Canadian release by 'Saturn Pictures' under the title "Toxic Spawn" was intact in terms of gore, but deleted 2 scenes of dialogue that were also cut from the US version to remove a romantic subplot.
• Although the director denies it, the idea for the film's intro with an abandoned boat heading into the New York harbour was taken directly from "Zombie Flesh Eaters"
• An uncut German DVD was available from Marketing film under the title "Astaron - Brut des Shrekens" (Astaron - Brood of the Frights?), but this was in German Language only.
• Carlo DeMajo who plays agent young also appeared in "City of the Living Dead" and "Emanuelle in Prison".
• Italian B-movie actor Marino Mase, who plays officer Aris, also played John in"Tenebrae". He also went on to have a minor role in "The Godfather 3".
• The film was available on UK video in the early 80's in both an uncut form, and in a cut BBFC approved version which truncated the chest explosion. But this was before the introduction of the video recordings act, and as the cut version had no official standing at the time it was outlawed along with the uncut version. All current UK and US Disc releases are fully uncut.

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