Alien from the Deep

source: Alien from the Deep

Moviecut—Alien from the Deep

I remember owning the 1989 sci-fi horror movie "Alien Degli Abissi" (aka "Alien from the Deep") on VHS back in the day. Though I only recall the movie as being a pretty bad B-movie, then I had to sit down and watch the movie again, as I had the opportunity once more here in 2022. Needless to say that it was not on VHS this time around. Writer Tito Carpi didn't exactly come up with a storyline that was overly impressive. In fact, the storyline and plot in "Alien Degli Abissi" is very generic and mundane. Sure, it was straight forward, and sort of watchable if you enjoy low budget sci-fi horror with dubious effects. The acting in the movie was adequate enough. I mean, you're obviously not going to be in for an evening of Shakespearian theater here. You get what you pay for here, and the actors and actresses did fairly okay taking into consideration the limitations of the script and storyline. I was unfortunate enough to sit through an all English dubbed version, and I have to admit that I absolutely loathe audio dubbing in movies. "Alien Degli Abissi", as a sci-fi horror, should have good special effects to make the movie all the more watchable and enjoyable. Did director Antonio Margheriti have that in this 1989 movie? No. Just plain and simple, no. The creature design was dubious and questionable at best, and it looked very, very fake. It made the alien creature more laughable and ridiculous than it made it scary and otherworldly. This 1989 movie was as bad as I recalled it to be. But hey, I am sure that there is an audience out there for a movie such as "Alien Degli Abissi". The movie's cover was actually the best thing about the entire ordeal. My rating of "Alien Degli Abissi" lands on a three out of ten stars.

An investigative couple, Lee and Jane, go to an island to spy on a chemical corporation and discover they are getting rid of nuclear waste by tipping it into a local volcano, which might be a mite dangerous. He is captured but she escapes and bumps into Bob, who collects snake venom. They are pursued by the company security men. Halfway through the film an alien, presumably, from the deep, turns up with a snapping claw and starts killing everyone. There are explosions and gunfire but its mainly rather hilarious, particularly the English language dubbing in the version I viewed which doesn't make sense from one line of dialogue to the next one. The cast does include Charles Napier but even he can't do much with his part as he is reduced to shouting inane lines all the time. The other characters are mostly irritating. It might all be clearer in the original Italian but the plot doesn't really make much sense. Was the alien a result of the chemical company's nefarious activities or did it just happen to be passing by and stop off for a snack? Who knows?

Oh, how I loved this movie. It is filled to bursting with everything you could want from Margheritti, and then some! Lots of exploding miniatures, plenty of running through the jungle, and a heroine who keeps finding ways to lose her pants. The real charm of the movie is trying to count the myriad other films it is trying to rip off. Obvious nods to ALIENS abound, (flamethrowers,a battle with a towering monster and a big yellow vehicle), with plenty of allusions to the first ALIEN thrown in for good measure (building the weapons, the chamber filled with hanging chains). Amusingly the first hour seems to be a curious mishmash of either THE CHINA SYNDROME or SILKWOOD with, of all things, ROMANCING THE STONE!!!! It is all daffily endearing.

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.

Tirelessly prolific veteran Italian exploitation picture director Antonio Margheriti's cinematic oeuvre is a very mixed bag, running the gamut from delightfully sleazy ("Cannibal Apocalypse") to nice, spooky, dripping with sepulchral atmosphere fright film fun ("The Virgin of Nuremburg," "The Long Hair of Death") to entertainingly goofy sci-fi ("The Wild, Wild Planet," "War Between the Planets") to pleasingly tacky spaghetti Westerns ("The Stranger and the Gunfighter," "Take A Hard Ride") to the unavoidable occasional dud. This sci-fi/horror/conspiracy thriller sadly constitutes as one of Margheriti's dullest and least satisfying features, mainly because it's crucially bereft of the gleefully trashy verve which distinguishes his more enjoyable efforts. In its place there's no sex or nudity, mild profanity, tame violence, an interminably draggy pace, a wearily drawn-out narrative, and tepid action sequences; in short, everything a solid, rewarding little B-movie needs to seriously smoke is noticeably absent here. The blah plot offers a tediously trite'n'tired mishmash of boringly overused clichés, centering on your standard evil corporation illegally dumping radioactive waste into a dangerously volatile volcano located on a remote obscure island. Two wet-nosed bleeding heart liberal limp dishrag Greenpeace workers discover the pernicious goings-on and spend the rest of the film being hunted down in the dense tropical jungle by the usual assortment of greasy company flunkies. Oh yeah -- and there's a lethal, clawed, slime-drooling, steam-expelling extraterrestrial subterranean creature the pair also uncover and do their best to protect from the conglomerate's vile, greedy clutches. Token semi-name rugged, craggy-faced, firm block-of-granite character actor Charles Napier portrays a typically malevolent nasty army colonel on thespic automatic pilot throughout, wearing a fixed scowl on his puffy, roughhewn mug and grumbling all his dialogue in a deep, earthy, barely audible rumble mumble. Napier's given precious little to do that's worth seeing, an unfortunately malady that infects this dismally dreary clunker as a lethargic whole.

...If compared to "Miami Golem","Alien 2 on Earth" and many other fanta-horror flicks from US and Europe.Dawson mixed with a certain success the war cliché with the alien cliché. More and more he threw in some environmentalist morals, as he did in Indio I and II.And all three aren't bad at all.Great shoot-outs,despite they are often useless as "Predator" 's ones.The Alien is not built by the SFX sensation Edoardo Margheriti-Dan Edwards, it we can note it immediately.The creature moves with some sort of stop-motion, so it's a bit strange that he could kill so easily its enemies. The monster, that many lovers of this film have rechristened "Big Claw" -because the remaining claw is its most seen part on this flick-, is the less valuable feature of the movie.Its end in the volcano was a worthy end. Luckily the effects of its venom are ravaging! The explosion are a must.The actors acted decently, especially Pigozzi and Napier. Marina Giulia Cavalli (Actual Italian TV movie and sit-com main actress) offered also a good acting with her great body.I still love you Mari Julia...Oh God what I would have given to see you wrapped into a topless amazon robe or a military outfit. It's entertaining and violent, very violent.It was partially filmed in Latina, inside Recordati industry.But the biggest part of the scenes were naturally filmed in the Philippines that the late,great Anthony Dawson loved so much. See this movie,and taste it. It's so funny! 8 out of 10

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.

I am and have always been a fan of Italian cinema, especially horror. The Italians used to be the masters of it but sadly that ended in the 1990's. This late 80's monster feature tells the story of an evil cooporation dumping nuclear waste into a volcano on a secluded island. It's down to a reporter, her cameraman and a er.....snake expert to bring them down. But of course things aren't that simple, we have to throw into the mix an alien monster creature....thing. Starring the always excellent Charles Napier, this above average monster film is actually well made but suffers on levels you would naturally expect. From the questionable script to the views of the monster being so restricted Alien From The Deep was doomed from the start but manages to remain watchable regardless. Not one of the many Italian masterpieces but a harmless fluff piece for fans of the genre. The Good: Charles Napier SFX are above par The Bad: Some of the script is rather bad Monster doesn't get enough real screentime Things I Learnt From This Movie: In order to strike their foes Snakes can jump 6ft vertically A snake bite to the ankle will cause a wound in the knee