... aka: Astaron
... aka: Contamination
... aka: Contamination: Alien on Earth
... aka: Toxic Spawn
Directed by:
"Lewis Coates" (Luigi Cozzi)
A crewless ship from South America called
the "Caribbean Lady" washes into New York Harbor, so it's immediately
quarantined at an isolated area. Because of a strange smell "like something
rotting" emanating from the boat, NYPD's lousiest, Lt. Tony Aris (Marino Masé), calls in Dr. Turner (Carlo Monni) from
the health department to investigate. The men and a few others suit up and board
the ship. They eventually discover a bunch of corpses littered throughout; each a bloody messy as if they exploded from the inside out. After following a
trail of "green gunk" down into the storage area, they see a bunch of
bizarre objects they liken to overgrown vegetables (including pumpkins... what
the f?), a football and "big green eggs" stuffed into a
bunch of crates labeled coffee. One resting near some hot pipes is picked up and
explodes, sending slime all over most of the men, who then steam up and
themselves explode. Aris is the only one who manages to get out of there alive.
He contacts the authorities, the government is called in and he goes through a
thorough decontamination process before the head of the project - Internal
Security Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) - will let him free.
Just what these avocados-on-steroids are doing in New York, where they come from and who sent them
there are three of the major topics immediately on hand... and Stella knows just
where to begin her investigation. Two years earlier, a pair of astronauts - Ian
Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) and Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch) - went to
the polar ice caps of Mars. They ventured into an ice cave, saw similar eggs and
then some kind of glowing alien life form. When they returned to Earth, Ian's
claims were rebutted by his fellow astronaut and he was court-martialed and
stripped of his rank. Since then, Hamilton is believed to have died in a
mysterious plane crash, while Hubbard had a nervous breakdown and has turned
into a miserable, whiskey-soaked drunk. Stella was on the commission that helped
to ruin his life but she's still able to somehow coax him out of retirement and, along
with Lt. Aris, the three fly down to Colombia, where they have 72 hours to get
to the bottom of things and hope to locate the "egg plantation."
"What is it you want to know? How many times a week I screwwww?!"
"If you're always in this condition, it's quite obvious you couldn't get it up even if you used a crane."
It's pretty obvious why this one exists. Someone watched ALIEN (1979),
noted the chest-burster scene was a crowd-pleaser and decided to make an entire
film centered around that concept. This has four or five bloody moments where
chests explode, but the rest of the film is pretty forgettable, dragged out and
much of it is too darkly lit. The English-language dubbing and dialogue are both
terrible. Toward the end we get some slightly interesting stuff involving
possession and actually get to see the Mars extraterrestrial (a one-eyed "Alien
Cyclops" blob with hypnotic abilities that eats people alive) but, again, it's
primarily hidden in the shadows and looks at best like a slightly-updated take on one
of the monsters from a 50s-era Corman movie. We also never really learn how the
alien itself even managed to get on Earth in the first place, nor do we get much
of a motivation. When pressed to give a reasoning for trying to blow people up,
an alien-possessed just spouts "The strongest creature shall crush the
weakest... That is the purpose!" Now that we got that all cleared up,
anyone for some giant squash?
Contamination is among a long list of films made in response to Ridley
Scott's masterpiece. Others include the British productions Inseminoid (1980 aka
Horror Planet) and Xtro (1982), the Italian Alien 2: On Earth
(1980), which faced a 10 million dollar lawsuit from 20th Century Fox (later
thrown out of court) and a long list of American films that included Scared
to Death (1980), Galaxy of Terror (1981), The Intruder Within
(1981; made-for-TV), Forbidden World (1982), Parasite (1982),
Creature (1985 aka Titan Find) and many more. On the Blue
Underground DVD, there's a 17-minute-long interview with the director, who
pretty much confirms what we already suspect: he was asked to make an Alien
copy and delivered just that. He explains that the "low-key" lighting is
intentional to disguise the "defects" in the fx and says the film was originally
called Aliens Arrive on Earth, but he was forced to change it to
Contamination by the producers. Cozzi also claims he wanted Caroline Munro
(star of his previous film Starcrash [1979]) to play the lead role but
the producer wanted someone "ugly and older" for the part and "...in the end, he got his
way." Lord, what a tactless and shitty thing to say!
Most of the NYC scenes (everything but exterior shots) were actually filmed in
Rome. There's a score from Goblin (which I've seen some people praise, though I found it utterly forgettable) and
Gisela Hahn (Jess Franco's DEVIL HUNTER [1980]) and Fulci film
regular Carlo De Mejo are also in the cast. The "Alien" was added to the
title and the cast and credits were Anglicized for the U.S. release by Cannon, who later hired Cozzi to make the
fantasy-adventure Hercules (1983) with Lou Ferrigno (which was nominated
for five Razzie Awards), and the follow-up The Adventures of Hercules II
(1985). The company Lettuce released it on VHS under the title Toxic Spawn.
Cozzi retired from filmmaking in the 90s and now manages Dario Argento's "Profondo
Rosso;" a horror-themed store / museum in Italy.
★★
