Alien Contamination

Alien Contamination (aka Contamination) (1982)

The movie opens up with a cargo vessel entering the NYC harbor out of control. It is stopped and brought to the docks, where the police enter to find the entire crew dead. It appears that they simply exploded! The government is called in and discovers that the ship is filled with eggs that spread an alien disease that causes the explosive results. This leads them at an astronaut that claimed to have seen such eggs on a mission to Mars. At the time no one believed him, but now vindicated he helps the government team track down the eggs to their source. This takes them to a South American plantation where they discover an alien who is using the eggs to attack the human race!

As I sit here writing this review and looking at my notes one thing I wrote jumps out at me. “Oh those wacky Italians.” This sums up how I feel about Alien Contamination. The story is simple and straightforward and takes a couple of goofy turns. But it wastes no time in getting to the action and giving the audience some gory shots. I appreciate a movie that knows what it is and delivers the goods. The middle part of the movie does get kind of slow, but then picks up speed for the conclusion. Recently I’ve been disappointed in many of the endings of the films I’ve been watching but Alien Contamination has a very satisfying ending that is a blast. The performances in these movies are always hard to judge. First you have the dubbing, which isn’t very good, that can completely change a performance thru no fault of the original actor. Also lets me honest about the material. This isn’t’ Hamlet and I’ve seen many good actors struggle thru a bad script. That said I don’t see anything wrong or bad about the performances of the cast, just nothing special. But then again what the heck do you want from an Alien rip off from Italy?

The movie starts off with bodies and cool death scenes. The effects aren’t great but they make up for it in quantity. Then we get what I think is the best or at least the most fun effect of the movie, the exploding rat. I mean it is obvious that the needle used to inject the rat is rubber (it bends) but the resulting rodent “popping” is well done and had me cracking up. Speaking of something that is funny the alien at the end of the movie had me laughing at how awesomely cheesy it looked.

So many of these Italian “rip offs” are so badly made that it is tough getting through them. But Alien Contamination manages some laughs and enough gore to keep viewers like myself interested. While not a great movie I still recommend that everyone check it out. Now there is a new DVD out for this movie under it’s other name Contamination. This is supposed to be the uncut version of the movie. What I watched and reviewed here is the version available on several of the budget Mill Creek DVD sets. Personally I can’t imagine any more gore making a difference in how I liked the movie and the low price doesn’t hurt either. For more information check them out at http://www.millcreekent.com/

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer