Contamination

source: Contamination

When i first heard of this movie in fangoria magazine,i thought it was going to be good.instead its a crappy alien rip off.the only thing i liked about this movie was the soundtrack by the goblins(i love their music)anyway its really bad sci fi directed by Luigi cozzi(star crash) exploding alien eggs,a giant one eyed martian.cheaply executed gore effects.this movie is really bad.i think the directer should've replaced his name with Alan smithee.this needs to be put in a collection of really bad awful movies along with the mighty gorga and carnosaur. if you look in some dollar stores you can find this DVD as a double feature with the equally inept;the brain machine,which sadly is a better movie.alien contamination is a wasted of your time,i give this one out of 10.

Contamination is godawful. The characters a joke and everything cheesy and ridiculous.

A crewless ship that's supposedly carrying coffee sails into New York, but when a police officer and some scientists board the ship they discover the gruesome bodies of the crew and plenty of boxes filled with large green eggs. Which explode when the egg warms up and anyone who gets in contact with the substance that shoots out of the egg, explodes as well. So now the government gets involved and the surviving officer, a colonel and an astronaut discover that these eggs may be linked with the disastrous mission to Mars. The more they look into it they discover a conspiracy that threatens the world and leads them to a coffee plantation in Columbia. Coming straight off the back of the success of "Alien" is an ultra-gooey and clunky delight of a low-budgeted Italian knock-off. And there's no shame about it stealing ideas, but it still does delivers it's own variation to the premise with a modest quota of adventurous aspects and developments that occur on earth. There's even a touch of James Bond about it in the villain and motivation side of things. Actually, the film probably leans more towards that later statement than a fully blooded Sci-fi caper. The ticking time bomb of a story is pretty much pure hokum and there's very little in the way of sense, but it's the dominating grotesque visuals and the intense gallery of cheap thrills that certainly makes this outing lively. That especially goes to the powerhouse opening half involving the first encounter of the very bright green / yellow eggs that go kaboom. A dour note would be that it got a bit too talky in spots with its thick and rather stretch out script, which constantly repeats itself. There's even a shortage of real action, but what made it a little easy to swallow was the sharp sense of irony that found it's way into the dialogues and when it does go for it's gory schlock - it does so in an over-the-top and bravura manner that you couldn't help but find it fun. The cult band Goblin lends a helping hand by providing an out-of-this-world soundtrack that pump along very strongly. While, its budget restraints might show - like the tacky looking alien, but technically it mostly comes off with decently gross make-up effects, eerie sound effects and smoothly displayed photography. The direction by Luigi Cozzi is rather low-key, but he stages some really suspenseful and boot-kicking moments. But the pacing can be quite uneven with some predictable developments. The juicy performances by Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau and Marino Masé are less than desirable, but they don't overtly hurt the film with their simple and quite daggy characters. "Contamination" is mostly a bloody, mindless fare that equals a fine if quite nasty romp.

Contamination is my idea of movie heaven. It is a shining example of the dubbed sci-fi/horror, Euro-trash spectaculars that were produced on a massive scale in the 70s and early 1980s before Europe turned its backs on cheap entertainment and focused on making dreary art-house fare. In my opinion, Contamination is a reminder of all that was great about this, now virtually extinct, film-making phenomenon. Contamination is generally regarded as the embarrassing bastard child of Ridley Scott's "Alien". While the film does shamelessly steal certain elements from Scott's masterpiece, it is by no means a boring copy. The plot is so twisted and demented, not to mention ludicrous and ridiculous, that it transcends its "borrowed" elements and becomes something almost entirely unique and wonderful. For example, whereas Alien takes place on a deserted spacecraft, Contamination begins on a deserted boat, then moves to New York City, makes a detour via Mars and ends up in a Colombian coffee factory! In addition to the utterly preposterous storyline, the joys of Contamination are manifold. There is the wonderful 80s synth score, some of the most atrocious acting committed to film, side-splitting dialogue, fantastically ancient cutting-edge technology (the science lab is a marvel of 70s/80s set design), fabulous euro-effects (among them glowing, musical alien eggs, exploding rats and better yet, exploding people) and then there is the Cyclops. I could probably write a novel just on the glorious Cyclops. What a wonder of latex and wire! The film is worth viewing just for this magnificent creature, with its big, glowing eye and vile snout. This kind of craptastic special effect died a painful death with the introduction of CGI, and movies have been all the worse for it. Forget the pretentious rubbish clogging up IMDb's top 250 and watch this stunning opus instead. I can not recommend this highly enough.

This moderately amusing "Alien" cash-in, taking place on Earth, is ultimately too plodding for its own good, too short on action and too heavy on dialogue. Some genre fans may grow tired of the exposition, and regret the fact that there's just not enough good creature stuff. There IS a creature at the end, but it's largely of the endearingly silly variety. There is some delicious gross out material here, namely lots of chests exploding in slow motion. And of course there's always the spectacle of eternally cool Ian McCulloch turning into bad ass hero once again. But there just isn't a lot here to really recommend this one - that is, of course, unless you're a hopeless addict of the science-fiction and horror genres. A massive ship mysteriously cruises into New York Harbour (this opening is highly reminiscent of "Zombi 2", which also featured McCulloch), and authorities discover that its cargo hold is full of disgusting green egg-like objects. Upon further investigation, they find that there's also a warehouse in NYC housing the things. Soon, a government agent, Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), an NYC police detective, Tony Aris (Marino Mase), and a traumatized former astronaut, Ian Hubbard (Mr. McCulloch) travel to South America to investigate the ships' origins. "Contamination" does have some entertainment to offer die hards, but overall one would be advised to simply revisit "Alien". (I've been told that another Italian knock off from this period, "Alien 2: On Earth", is more fun than "Contamination".) One misses that deep space atmosphere a good deal. That said, it's still a hoot to check out these effects and these performances. Also starring are Siegfried Rauch as the astronaut Hamilton, Gisela Hahn as his associate Perla de la Cruz, Carlo De Mejo as Agent Young, and Carlo Monni as the ill-fated Dr. Turner. One point of interest is a typically nice score by the great prog rockers Goblin. Watchable enough but never really inspired. Five out of 10.

Good, gooey, undemanding entertainment, directed by Luigi Cozzi ("The Killer Must Kill Again") and more than obviously inspired by the huge success of Ridley Scott's blockbuster "Alien". The most memorable sequence in that particular Sci-Fi classic involved one of the spaceship crew-member's chest exploding on-screen. If you were thrilled by that scene, and if you're a Sci-Fi / horror fan I can't imagine you weren't, you will absolutely LOVE "Contamination", as Cozzi revolves his whole film on the given of nasty chest implosions. A gigantic cargo ship arrives in the New York harbor, but there isn't a crew member in sight. It's quickly discovered what happened to them, as a research team stumbles upon hundreds of big green eggs that explode when temperatures increase, and cause to implode anyone standing near them. The eggs are clearly extraterrestrial, but they're transported in coffee cases, so a female military major starts an investigation to find out who's shipping these alien murder devices to all corners of the world. "Contamination" has quite an intense and suspenseful opening, but then it rapidly becomes the gory and unscrupulous video-nasty it's reputed to be. The dialogues and acting performances aren't very impressive, but the gore is delicious and leaving very little to the imagination. Plus, the make-up effects are actually quite convincing and professional, not nearly as cheesy as in most other and often non-Italian "Alien" rip-offs. The ending is marvelous, as we get to see the Martian monster that breeds the murderous eggs and, I assure you, it's bigger and uglier than the average earth-chicken. Oh, another great Goblin score, too!

Being a child of the fifties, I grew up watching drek like this. The only difference I could see between this movie and something made in the fifties was the color. I'm not sure who Luigi Cozzi is, but I am sure that he must be related to Ed Wood. This movie was made in 1980, long after the special effects of "Plan 9 from Outer Space" should have been deep-sixed. The plot is very thin, the dialogue is embarrassing and the ending is both bad and predictable. Having said all that, I had a great time watching it - it was on the El Rey channel which has become one of my guilty pleasure favorites. It's 90 minutes I will never get back but that's OK.

Ian McCulloch shines, as he did in 'Zombie Flesh-eaters', this time as an alcoholic former NASA astronaut who is dismissed as mad when he talks of the threat of an alien invasion from Mars (as is par for the course in these space capers). If you enjoy lame acting, poorly dubbed voices, cheesy 80's gore effects and an implausible plot, then this is the film for you.

This film is a really silly movie. It's NOT an Alien rip-off, the only thing common to Contamination and the Alien franchise are alien eggs. Any other comparison fails completely. The movie is badly acted, badly scripted, badly directed, even the sound is not in sync with the actor lips (of which some may be speaking Italian) and nothing makes any sense. But it's partially entertaining just the same. If you don't try to take an 80's horror movie seriously, you always end up admiring the effort. Bottom line: a film that is more entertaining than it should be, I rate it 3 because it's so bad it is worth watching. The best scene: the cave mouth on Mars. Hilarious!