Prepare to have your mind...contaminated!

Alien Contamination was one of the 72 “video nasties” at the heart of a censorship struggle in the UK during the early 80s. I've seen a couple of these movies, so I was excited to delve into another. Disappointment sets in pretty quickly here.

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The movie opens with an assault of bad dialogue. The terribleness of the sound quality is greatly enhanced by recording the actors through respirators donned to keep them safe from a strange smell coming from a cargo ship. Upon inspection, the crew is missing!

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They find some dudes covered in blood and conclude they exploded(?)! I might have made a similar decision if the lighting had been better. Our crack team of investigators quickly conclude that no bacteria or virus could cause these deaths, and then scramble to prepare for an epidemic. An explosion epidemic? I'm not sure what that would mean, but I guess people would be asked to stay inside. There would probably be a ban on all carbonated beverages, just to be safe. I can also imagine the government issuing some kind of anti-explosion containment girdle to everyone, just to corral the forthcoming mess during this catastrophe.

As you might have guessed, our team soon finds crates of giant avocados (possibly alien eggs) that quickly explode. Naturally, once the goo from the eggs gets on you, you explode as well. That's how these things usually work, in my experience.

We meet a high-ranking female military officer who quickly takes control to start calling the shots. First order: freeze the entire cargo ship. Heat seems to, I don't know, accelerate the eggs? Surely freezing them is the answer. Back in the lab, we learn that these aren't eggs, but masses of bacteria. After using the bacteria to explode a lab rat (for fun?) our heroes immediately intuit that whoever was intended to receive the shipment planned to introduce the bacteria into the sewers. This is obvious, conclusion has no bearing on the rest of the movie.

When they find a warehouse full of eggs, they destroy them with fire. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's usually best to avoid thinking during these movies, lest you become agitated and miss the movie explanation for what's going on. One character comments on how using fire to kill the eggs makes no sense, but he is dismissed with a “I'm only doing my job” containment, which we are left to ponder. All containment protocols are initially heavily enforced and then carelessly discarded almost immediately. The capriciousness is blamed on the woman in charge, who is oddly never in uniform, despite her rank, unless heavy eye makeup counts as a uniform.

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It turns out these eggs are nothing new, since they were seen on a mission to Mars from two years ago. I can see why the space agency wouldn't have followed up on such a monumental finding. Science is hard, and maintaining even the most basic level of curiosity about the world around you is a lot of work. Besides, there's no way the eggs would possess an astronaut and use his body as a puppet to further their race, right? Right?

The film slows to a crawl as we travel to South America, where the eggs originated. One highlight is an “attack” by an egg, which apparently just make sad trombone noises without being threatening in any measurable way. Since the only danger they pose is getting the exploding goo onto you, it seems they could easily be neutralized by covering them with a towel or something. Instead, our heroine has a screaming fit, lightly pounding at the door for quite some time, filmed in a way to pathetically evoke the “Here's Johnny!” scene from The Shining.

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When the movie wakes up, we quickly learn that the eggs are being farmed under the direction of The Cyclops. This large, slimy alien has some telepathic powers (I guess), a few mouths, and a hunger for human flesh. It might be a cousin of Jabba the Hut, though we don't get to learn much about it before it is killed and then spontaneously combusts. And no, it does not explode like every single other thing in the movie, but instead catches on fire. Why not?

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The overall alien plan is never quite clear, so I'm not sure who won in the end. It doesn't matter, really, and this Italian knockoff of Alien is just another in the long chain of imitations that fail spectacularly. It did succeed at presenting lots of uncomfortably tight head shots that linger for far too long, and propagating weird sexual tension that did nothing to develop characters or further the plot. Go watch Galaxy of Terror, The Blob, or even Critters if you are looking for good-bad horrorstuff, and leave this one for the deep freeze. Or fire. Whatever.