Italian cinema of the 70s and 80s was great - although to be fair, the Italian cinema of today could also be great, but I don't think I've seen any so we'll focus on the decades I know. It was great because it was almost always shot on a low budget, on a limited timeframe, in a language not all of the cast could even speak, and it was probably ripping off - sorry, taking inspiration from - a big-budget American film that had come out in the previous year or so. It's the kind of thing that you think just shouldn't work, and while often it doesn't, when it does it can be either a hidden masterpiece or an unintentional comedy. I'll leave you to guess which of the three categories Contamination falls into.
A cargo ship enters the New York harbour without any radio contact between the crew and the authorities. A small team boards the ship and finds it apparently deserted at first - until they find the crew all dead and horribly mutilated. They also find the ship's cargo, which is allegedly boxes of coffee from South America, but in reality is dozens upon dozens of strange green egg-like objects, which grow and pulse when they get warm. One of these eggs bursts, showering most of the team with goo that promptly makes their torsos explode. Colonel Stella Holmes arrives to take charge of the situation, along with the sole survivor of the team investigating the ship, a police officer called Arris. They determine that the eggs are of alien origin and must have come from Mars - something they had been warned about by one of the astronauts from the last manned mission to Mars who saw something there he couldn't explain, but was laughed out of the service upon his return and treated as crazy. After recruiting the understandably still-bitter Commander Hubbard, the trio head to South America to investigate the place where the "coffee" came from and try to get to the truth of where the eggs came from and what they're being used for...
There are no prizes for guessing which blockbuster movie Contamination is taking its inspiration from. Director Luigi Cozzi was told by his producer to make an Italian version of Ridley Scott's Alien, but because of a much smaller budget it came out like this - set on Earth and with considerably less extravagant set dressing (although they do manage a couple of scenes of a Martian cave that looks like a huge mouth and gullet). It's clear that most of the budget went on the effects to make the alien eggs, which are suitably slimy and unpleasant-looking, and on the torso explosions of the victims of the egg goo. Those scenes are also presented in slow-motion, as if seeing someone's chest explode outward and spread viscera is somehow worse when viewed at half speed, but they are cleverly shot, especially in the way that everyone who dies this way is wearing bulky or baggy clothing, the better to hide the equipment used (and in a couple of cases reuse the same footage because several people are wearing identical white jumpsuits). However, these gory deaths only happen at the beginning and very end of the film, leaving the rest of the movie feeling like it could almost be a crime drama about drug smuggling - ironic when you realise that it was these gory scenes that got the film classed as one of the DPP's video nasties and banned in the UK for some years.
There is one other good effect in the film, and that's the giant Martian cyclops overseeing the whole egg operation. Again, he's suitably slimy and alien-looking to be effectively gross, and in fact wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Invaders From Mars. The only problem is that he wasn't able to move because of mechanical problems, and so just sits there luring victims very slowly to him with a single flashlight eye, before killing them with a "Give Uncle Scrotor a hug!" move.
I have to assume that the low budget also meant that some of the script had to be cut out, as there are some pretty big plot holes to be had in this movie. How did the crew of the cargo ship all die, when there were no traces of the eggs around them and they were all found in the mess hall, far away from the cargo bay? If heat triggers the eggs to "hatch", why destroy them with flamethrowers as Colonel Holmes orders in one scene? And if the villain of the piece has a psychic connection to all the eggs and feels pain when each one is destroyed, then how come his brains didn't just leak out of his head when the warehouse full of eggs gets torched by the afore-mentioned flamethrowers? Ah, but it's spaghetti splatter - such things aren't supposed to be pondered. Instead just sit back and enjoy the cheese. And if you can't do that, enjoy the Goblin score instead.
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