Customer Reviews

Contamination

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

1979 was a very important year for the Italian film industry. Why? Because two American genre films -- DAWN OF THE DEAD and ALIEN -- spurred a slew of imitators from the land of Folcelli pasta. Although DAWN's rip-offs were countless and have gained cult status (some of them have become minor classics), most Italian ALIEN clones have been discarded like yesterday's trash. Directed by Luigi Cozzi, a sort of poor man's Lucio Fulci, CONTAMINATION was made immediately after the success of the Ridley Scott classic. Cozzi also blessed us with the silly STAR WARS-inspired STARCRASH in 1979.

Like many Italian exploitation films of the early 80s, CONTAMINATION begins on location in New York City. A ship enters a harbor with seemingly everyone dead on board. A group of scientists and police garbed in protective gear discover a bloody mess, as well as a bunch of mysterious eggs that look like lime jello footballs. Getting to close to these eggs could prove deadly, as they spew some goo at you and make your body combust from the chest outwards.

A stereotypical Italian NYC cop (Marino Masé) survives the ordeal and teams up with a female military scientist (Louise Marleau). She calls on a now reclusive, alcoholic former astronaut (Ian McCulloch) who returned from Mars without his companion and with unbelievable stories about deadly alien eggs. Proof has now given his tales some clout, so the three trace the strange cargo back to a coffee company in South America! After more victims explode like overcooked meatballs in a microwave oven, a 50s-style Cyclops alien appears and is basically the force behind this mad plot to take over the earth.

CONTAMINATION was released in the U.S. as "Alien Contamination" and when it came out on video, it was pretty much was ignored in favor of rentals of DR. BUTCHER M.D. and ZOMBIE (both also with Scottish thesp McCulloch). It's basically low-grade, cheap thrills with some nice gore effects (nobody did it better than the Italians, Savini included) and homages to INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and other sci-films. It starts with a bang, ends with a semi-bang, but there's lots of rubbish in the middle. McCulloch is always a hoot to watch and lifts the film above its otherwise mediocre level.

Blue Underground has done a stellar job releasing CONTAMINATION on DVD. The film has dull color schemes and bad lighting to begin with, but this transfer is still excellent. Letterboxed at 1.78:1 with Anamorphic enhancement, it almost looks as though it was made yesterday. The audio is equally impressive, with four separate audio tracks: Mono, Dolby 2.0, Dolby 5.1 EX, and DTS 6.1, so Goblin's pounding score never sounded better.

A few nice extras are included here. "The Alien Arrives on Earth" is a solid video interview with director/co-writer Luigi Cozzi. Say what you will about his talent, but he's an obvious fan of science fiction, and the 50s classics in particular. Cozzi tells us everything you need to know about CONTAMINATION, including little tidbits like how he originally wanted Caroline Munro to play the scientist, but the producer didn't want to cast a beauty queen. "Luigi Cozzi on the Set of Contamination" is an original production short film from 1980 (probably shot in 16mm) that takes us from Cozzi's fantasy-art filled office to the set of the film. Both of these are in Italian with English subtitles. Rounding out the extras are the European theatrical trailer, a photo/still/poster gallery and a graphic novel based on Cozzi's original storyboards. This feature can be opened up on your PC using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software.

This was a very odd and cheesy Italian gore flick, it was a mix of horror and science fiction and it was directed by Luigi Cozzi who now owns the Dario Argento store in Rome called Proffondo Rosso. While Contamination was a decent film I just didn't think it was that good, the first half was very promising as we get to see some impressive gore scenes with the exploding stomachs but then the second half kind of loses steam and becomes slightly boring. The green alien eggs were a knock off from Alien and you could tell that this film was trying to cash in on its success which was typical of Italian horror films at the time, some of these films were of course great cause you can't take them too seriously and they were usually gorier than the original films.

Contamination has some pretty bad acting and stars Ian McCulloch who also stared in Zombie 2 and Dr. Butcher M.D. so hes pretty well known among Italian horror fans and the direction from Luigi Cozzi was rather low-key with some scenes looking abit too dark, the pacing was a bit uneven despite having a great opening sequence which had some great suspense and the film also has a weak plot but if your a gore hound then you won't mind since there were plenty of great gore scenes, the exploding stomachs were quite impressive and they even have a scene done in slow motion in case you missed it.

The story's about two astronauts returning to Earth from Mars carrying with them some deadly bacterial eggs the size of footballs which have the lethal potential to destroy the Earth's entire population. When a ship along with its slaughtered crew (their bodies seem to be ripped open from the inside) arrives in New York city a government task force must discover a way to stop the alien invasion before it's lethal containment causes all the city's residents to explode. The film also involves some coffee plantations in South America that has been hiding these eggs for other purposes and Ian McCulloch's character and a female scientist along with a New York city cop are on the trail, oh yeah and theres one laughable alien that appears towards the last half of the film. Contamination was a very trashy gore flick that I enjoyed to a certain level so if your an Italian horror fan then you'll probably like this as well, Blue Underground did a reasonably good job with the transfer and provided the disc with some great special features like interviews with the director and behind the scenes along with a picture gallery.

A search of a supposedly deserted ship uncovers a gruesome mystery. The crew is dead, literlly torn apart by some unknown force, and the ship's cargo is not coffee, but groaning, glowing eggs that make people explode whenever contact with the slimy green filling is made. Writer/director 'Lewis Coates' (aka Luigi Cozzi) crafts an incomprehensible story of alien invasion (or simple destruction, the exact goal is never made clear) in this most famous (or infamous) Italian cash-in on Alien. In the to be expected excellent supplements (the disc is from Blue Underground, so special things are almost a matter of routine) Cozzi comes across as a real classic sci-fi geek. Too bad that love didn't infuse his script or direction. While the movie is entertaining, it is mostly for the wrong reasons, and Cozzi fumbles chances for suspense during key moments in the film (i.e. having the female lead trapped in a bathroom with an alien egg) by dragging the scenes out until they become ludicrous. Nonetheless, fans of this long gone era of movie making (late seventies/early eighties low budget schlock cinema) will find something to enjoy in the movie. I did.

Its a 4 for the fun gore and overhuge exploding chests and cheese dubbing.

Knock off a point for Cozzi's comment in the extras how he wanted a young hot actress and TPTB wanted an 'old' ugly' woman as Colonel/scientist.

Graphic novel is neat/slightly different storyline details.

Nits; NY cap in helicopter scene, chick? slapping scene?
Do Italians just have this stereotype of New York/American males calling women chick? Men get respect by slapping women? You can slap a superior officer (or anyone) and that's OK. You can make yourself a NY officer by placing a piece of tape with "NY" written with a Sharpie on a mil. cap.

At least they weren't drinking beer on the job. Another Italian flavored cheesy fun had the scientists drinking beer all day long while searching for a sea creature. Huh?

The graphic novel has them saying F*UCK alot. I almost never say that word at my job :). Another stereotype of Americans to the Italians? An occasional subject verb disagreement, sugar shipment switches to coffee at the end, and the B love interest is Hubbard the astronaut. And yes, the Colonel/scientist is drawn younger/hotter than the actress in the film.

A strange, unmanned Caribbean ship approaches a New York harbor and is quarantined. Upon investigation, members of the crew are found "ripped apart" to various degrees, one of whom evidently appeared to have exploded like a small bomb was inside his chest. They also find a huge shipment of coffee bean boxes filled with over-sized avocado-like egg things that are bioluminescent, pulsating, somewhat translucent and covered in green ooze. These eggs should clearly come with a warning label indicating that handling them results in their detonation, spraying you with acid, and somehow causing your chest to explode. These "eggs" turn out to be more than just eggs and--dun, dun, duuuuuuuun--of alien origin.

Our investigators discover a warehouse full of them in the Bronx. They connect the dots to an international conspiracy which includes NASA and the Colombian coffee industry. This may sound exciting, but after the first 20 minutes (which were delightfully gore-tastic) this movie really slows down to a disinteresting pace where scenes devoid of action are needlessly dragged out. Clearly this flick was made to prey on sci-fi fans left hungry for more since the release of Alien, which also had chest-burst-inducing, extraterrestrial, acidic, slimy eggs. What a co-inky-dink, right?

The concepts are conveyed poorly and the three portions of the movie (the first 20 minutes, the next hour, and the last 20 minutes) each included a new plot element which linked poorly, if at all, to the others. The makers of this atrocious flick clearly had no idea what they were doing and forced out this movie with all the grace of passing a kidney stone.

Don't watch this unless you stop it after they investigate the ship in the very beginning.

Those horrid aliens are up to no good, as they plot to conquer our planet once more! This time it's green, pulsating eggs that explode in a gooey acid spray! This causes people to burst like ketchup-filled piñatas! Of course, there are eeevil humans helping the aliens to carry out their plot. This leads us to a south american coffee plantation, and the final conflict! Ian McCulloch (Zombie) is not bad as the aging Mars astronaut who must face his worst fears in order to help stop the alien onslaught. Yes, this is another clone of the movie ALIENS, right down to the egg-burning-with-the-flame-throwers scene, but hey, ALIENS itself lifted that scene from the egg-burning in THEM! Anyway, ALIEN CONTAMINATION has just enough going for it to make it enjoyable...

I don't know about you, but I always get a kick out of these Italian knock-offs of successful American science fiction films. In this case, it's Alien (The Director's Cut)that serves as the major inspiration, although one can't help but draw a similarity here and there with the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well. Naturally, Contamination (or Alien Contamination, as it was called in the USA) doesn't even begin to compare with Aliens, but it is worth viewing - if you're a fan of the genre, at least. I think it's safe to say that those who care nothing about low-budget science fiction and horror films will not enjoy this film at all, and those without the stomach for gore should also stay away. The film basically has just one gory effect, but it's a pretty good one and is used on a number of occasions. Gorehounds like me, of course, will revel in the "he done blowed up real good" moments.

Contamination opens with a cargo ship barreling into New York Harbor, its crew unwilling or unable to respond to radio calls. Once authorities corral the thing and pull it in, the mystery of the missing crew is solved - they're all very dead, their bodies seemingly ripped open from the inside. Of the three men sent in to explore the ship, only local cop Tony Aris (Marino Mase) comes back out alive. Having found a bunch of strange egg-like things in the ship's hold, the other two made the mistake of picking one up - quickly demonstrating to Aris the awful, immediate, and painful way in which everyone on board the ship must surely have died. That's more than enough reason for the government to quarantine the entire area and send in Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) to figure out what the heck is going on.

Tests soon reveal the deadly acidic nature of the "eggs," as well as the fact that they are not terrestrial in origin. So where did they come from? As it so happens, Commander Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) had described finding the same sorts of objects in a Martian cave he explored on a recent manned mission to the Red Planet. No one believed him, though - until now. He reluctantly joins Holmes and Aris as they follow the deadly cargo's trail back to a coffee warehouse in Colombia, where all things are revealed.

Not surprisingly, Contamination has its share of weaknesses. Special effects, apart from your general lab design details, aren't among them. Sure, the dark-ish nature of the print sometimes makes it hard to fully enjoy the sight of people exploding from the inside out, but writer/director Luigi Cozzi's commitment to quality gore is obvious. The storyline, though, is rather weak, the acting is not of the highest caliber, and you have to slog through several sections of painfully boring exposition on your way to the end.

I should also mention the fact that there are basically two versions of this film. Unfortunately, I was only able to find the American version (released as Alien Contamination), which has a run time of some 84 minutes. The original film runs a full 95 minutes, so you'll definitely want to pick up that full-length version if at all possible. Why would they cut a full ten minutes out of this film, you ask? It almost surely stems from the fact that the UK's infamous Video Recordings Act originally led to Contamination being branded a "video nasty," effectively banning it at the time. (It has since been released in the UK with a 15 certificate.) Apparently, slow-motion shots of characters exploding were just too extreme for the mother hens clucking over the British Isles.

Contamination (Luigi Cozzi, 1980)

Not even that great bastion of bad acting, Ian McCulloch (Zombie), can save this schlockfest from B-movie auteur Luigi Cozzi. McCulloch, who doesn't actually show up until halfway through the film despite being one of the main characters, plays Ian Hubbard, a retired astronaut who was part of a Mars mission during which his partner was killed and, everyone seems to assume, he went utterly mad. Skipping back to the opening half of the film, the things Hubbard reported having seen on Mars--strange green eggs deadly to humans--have found their way to Earth, and are uncovered during a raid on a smugglers' ship. Tony (Marino Mase), the only surviving member of the police squad who raided the ship, teams up with Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), a military scientist who also recruits Hubbard, and the three of them are off to stop the evil alien conspiracy!

Umm, yeah, something like that. It's an Italian gore flick, the plot isn't important. The pace is. The gore is. The effects are. Unfortunately, Cozzi manages to blow the pace at every conceivable turn, the gore isn't around nearly enough, and the effects, especially in the Evil Mastermind(tm), are unintentionally hilarious. This is probably a good one to watch at a party while very drunk, but if you're looking to expand your gore-film horizons, this one should be pretty low on your list. * ½

Once you've made the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Thing" and "Aliens" comparisons -- you know, the whole song and dance where aliens enslave the human race popular during the Cold War paranoia craze -- there's really little else to stick around for ... unless you get a charge out of Giallo-inspired, slo-mo, car-crash-intense pneumatic gore, here represented by abdomens exploding in rich, ruby fury, entrails outstretched and flapping like party whistles. There's a heaping helping of these blowouts, fueled by alien eggs that spurt killer puke-colored fluid when heated (or whenever it's convenient), sprinkled throughout this b-minus level sci-fi soaper. There's even a climax featuring "The Cyclops," an oozing alien who's a cross between Medusa, Audrey II and Aloysius Snuffleupagus and had a cameo years later on an episode of "Power Rangers" in which it spoke with a Brooklyn dialect, if I remember correctly. However, if you have ears or, god forbid, you can read subtitles, you're in a for a world of pain: director Luigi Cozzi, whose next venture was "Hercules," is no better at piecing together a script than a pimply, "TRL" Tivo-ing, Wii-drenched teen is at making a latte at Starsucks.

Never mind that the actors all look like they need a good scrubbing; I actually felt like I was watching a dubbed movie because the mannerisms didn't match the words, and these skill-deficient oafs alternate between comatose and manic episodes, with little in between and ill-conceived utterances like "Help! Let me out! There's an egg!" "What killed those men certainly wasn't coffee" and "You couldn't get it up, even if you had a crane" make the brain reel and seem more like poor translations from Italian than comic relief. Even the impetus for humanity's demise, the alien eggs smuggled back to Earth by an astronaut who becomes a puppet of the Martians, isn't sufficiently explained. We know that the astronaut-symbiote who faked his own death re-emerges two years after the expedition to plant the eggs in New York's sewers. How the eggs will go from the sewers to conquer the populace Cozzi never even attempts to explain. But wait, let me back up because the female colonel, who a police lieutenant goes from calling "sir" to trying to get in the sack at the most inopportune times, assures the viewing audience that these aren't eggs, but a virus, then quickly contradicts herself by saying the opposite. And for all the care with which the eggs are handled at first, complete with high-tech hamster-cage incubation boxes and toxin-deflecting rainslickers, this same colonel, sans any protective garb, gets close enough to a batch of "eggs" that she could spoon herself out a sample. Which she should have because a later scene where someone tries to kill her by locking her in a bathroom with an egg combines the worst murder attempt with the worst bid for self-preservation (just cover the damn thing with a towel!) ever captured on film.

"Contamination" is one of those low budget Italian science fiction potboilers that provide countless hours of fun. There's something deeply nostalgic about these films for me; I spent whole evenings watching this pap on cable television back in the mid 1980s. There was nothing like coming home in the summer, ordering a pizza, and spending all night with these delicacies. I guess things haven't changed too much since I am still watching them thanks to the DVD revolution. That these movies look and sound better now than they did when they first came out is one of those technological marvels that stagger the mind. Thanks go to Bill Lustig and the folks at Blue Underground for taking the time to release "Contamination" with a plethora of extras coupled with a great audio and video presentation. If you have never sampled the wonders of Italian schlock films, this is a great place to start. "Contamination," in case you haven't guessed, is a shameless rip off of Ridley Scott's classic science fiction gorefest "Alien." But don't expect to see Sigourney Weaver or John Hurt appear anywhere near this cheesy little number.

Eggs. "Contamination" deals primarily with eggs. An abandoned ship sails into New York harbor loaded with weird, pulsating pods the size of basketballs. When the authorities attempt to investigate this strange ship, a bunch of people die horribly when the eggs blow up and spray them with a viscous goo. The hapless souls coated with explosive yolk simply don't keel over and die in a nice, peaceful manner, though. Nope, they explode in ultra slow motion, with their chests and throats opening up with a bang. Obviously, the origins of these objects represent a significant threat to the human race, so the government quickly gets involved in the whole affair. Scientists quickly learn the pods are not of this world, a discovery that brings up a recollection of a disastrous trip to Mars some years before. In an effort to discover what the heck is going on, the government agents, headed up by sexy Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), track down an astronaut who survived the ill-fated mission. With an annoying New York cop in tow, Holmes must work fast if she is to save humanity from a fate with decidedly alien implications. Yay!

The emotionally destroyed astronaut, Commander Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch of "Zombie" fame), just cannot bring himself to cast his mind back to that horrible time on the red planet. Eventually he does, of course, and in the process recalls a cave filled with millions of pulsating pods and a light as bright as the sun. What does it all mean? Not much at first. Then we discover that some lunk head Hubbard knows only too well managed to bring back the pods, and something else much more dangerous, to earth. The exploding eggs are the central linchpin in a plot to conquer the world. It is up to the psychologically unbalanced Hubbard, the mouthy cop, and Colonel Holmes to thwart this dastardly deed before people start blowing up on a regular basis. Their mission takes them around the world in search of a coffee magnate who smuggles the eggs in wooden boxes filled with beans. All the while, Hubbard's flashbacks about the mysterious cave on Mars reveal more and more clues about what is occurring here on planet earth. Can our heroes stop this nefarious plot before it gets underway? Can Hubbard overcome his difficulties and save the world? Will that cop ever shut up? These questions, and many more unimportant ones, will find resolution by the end of "Contamination."

The movie isn't a masterwork of cinema, even for an entry in the low budget Italian horror-science fiction genre, but it does have its moments. Ian McCulloch is always fun to watch in these types of movies, and he does a good job in the role of the horrified Hubbard. The rest of the cast, well, let's just say the word "forgettable" applies on more than one occasion. At least the gore keeps you on your toes; director Luigi Cozzi wisely spaces out the gruesome death scenes throughout the film, which greatly helps the pacing in an otherwise slow film. Moreover, the effects, from the grue to the pulsating eggs, are well done considering the ultra low budget. Throw in some scenic shots from different locales along with a pounding score from Goblin, and you have the makings of an entertaining little shocker. And let's face it; we all could use more exploding torsos and melting heads to help us get through the day. "Contamination" gives us all of that and not much more. Cozzi is no Sergio Leone, but he doesn't need to be when making a zero cost science fiction puker.

The extras included on the disc are as good as they are surprising for such an obscure film. You get trailers, of course, but you also get so much more. Blue Underground got Cozzi to do an interview about the film, an interview that sheds light on many aspects of the film. With all of the framed 1950's movie posters on the wall behind the director during the interview, it is obvious he likes classic science fiction films. Indeed, Cozzi emphasizes his love for old science fiction and how the genre inspired him to lens "Contamination." Add in a grainy looking featurette made during the filming of the movie and some poster stills, and you have yourself a very nice DVD worth purchasing. Give Cozzi's film a shot if you like your sci-fi gooey and cheap. If not, you can always rent "Alien" again.