Review #798: 'Contamination' (1980)

Eager to cash in on the faux-sequel success of Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) - which was dubbed Zombi 2 in an attempt to dupe audiences into believing it was the sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), Italian director Luigi Cozzi released Alien Contamination on the back of the success of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). The similarities between Contamination (as it was named in the UK and on the infamous 'video nasty' list) and Flesh Eaters are quite striking - they shared the same production building, they both star Ian McCulloch, and they are both pretty bad.

When a large and apparently empty ship pulls into New York Harbor, obnoxious NYPD lieutenant Tony Aris (Marino Mase) steps in to investigate. Soon enough, a dead, mangled body falls out of a cupboard, and the rest of the crew are discovered in a cramped space, all dead. The ship is transporting a large quantity of strange eggs that, when heated, explode, releasing a deadly fluid which causes anyone it splashes on to explode. The military call in Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), who links the eggs to a recent mission to Mars, where astronaut Hubbard (McCulloch) returned claiming to have seen a nest of alien eggs only to have his claims dismissed by fellow astronaut Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch).

The main problem with Contamination - and there are a lot of them - is that the film is so carelessly put together in an attempt to blend various successful genre tropes of the time, that it neglects to offer any kind of explanation or logic to the alien's plan. The eggs burst, killing anyone near, but don't hatch and therefore increasing the alien population on Earth. In fact, there's only one 'cyclops monster' who overlooks the eggs. Add to the mix an increasingly sagging middle section in which very little happens apart from dull exposition, the film becomes confusing and nonsensical. The exploding bodies offer a little light humour as the actor's bloated mechanism is clearly visible, but this just adds to the air of tragedy, as it tries to desperately cash-in on the success of Alien.


Directed by: Luigi Cozzi
Starring: Louise Marleau, Ian McCulloch, Marino Masé, Siegfried Rauch
Country: Italy/West Germany

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie