Sometimes referred to as Alien 2, this is Luigi Cozzi's unofficial follow-up to Ridley Scott's Alien, which he first named Alien Arrives on Earth (or Alien arriva sulla terra in its original Italian iteration) before he was forced to adopt the even lamer title Contamination. But aside from the basic concept of bursting alien eggs, nothing really binds the two films together. Cozzi's film is actually a fairly decent action caper that owes a lot more to James Bond films than to any sci-fi/horror title. While entertaining, it pales in comparison with the source material.
Where are the face-huggers?
A cargo ship docks in the NY harbor without a living soul on board. Health officials and the police investigate. Strapping on white procedural outfits, they climb aboard and find a decimated crew who appear to have succumbed to chest-bursting agents. Venturing deeper into the vessel, they come to the cargo bay, where stacks upon stacks of boxes are amassed, inside of which are hard, green eggs. The eggs, when heated, as by an adjacent heating duct, start humming weirdly, then burst in a cloud of green spray that immediately infects the people it touches, making their insides burst out in a grotesque explosion of pink entrails.
Eggs filled with acid... or how to remove
two intermediaries at once
Following the messy demise of the crew sent to investigate the derelict ship, one NYC police officer remains unscathed. He is quickly taken into custody by the American government, who send in colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) to question him and learn about the threat from outer space. Thus, we get an obligatory exposition scene in which scientists discuss the nature of the pulsating eggs in front of bewildered officials who struggle to explain their origin. This lasts a while until Holmes suddenly remembers having seen those eggs before, in a drawing made by Mars explorer Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) who returned home shell-shocked after a memorable alien encounter in a martian cavern. As the plot unfolds, the film slowly sheds all resemblance to Alien and starts falling squarely into Bond-esque territory.
It's not long before Hubbard's partner on Mars, Hamilton, is revealed as the megalomaniacal antagonist. Motivated by Darwin's theory of natural selection, he cultivates the eggs in a Columbian coffee plantation, which he also uses to ship the nasty organisms worldwide in an entirely over-the-top showcase of villainy. Of course, this warrants a trip to Columbia for our two protagonists where they come across the usual plethora of gun-totting, chop-sensitive henchmen, treacherous babes and vicious traps. Reuniting with its horror roots only in the very last scene, the film features an alien creature that you might want to stick around and see, as well as a rightfully gooey punishment for dopey Hamilton.
Don't be fooled by the cover art
Contamination is hardly a horror film. Although they are fairly exciting, the horror sequences don't occupy much screen time, being mostly contrived to the final scene wherein the egg-laying "alien cyclops" is revealed. While a far cry from the Giger-inspired alien queen from James Cameron's official sequel to Alien, its design is quite clever. You've got these two pear-shaped globs of flesh linked together around a big, expressionless, yellow eye, with an hypnotic gaze and a toothed intestinal tract to boot. Although it's a bit too stiff, the creature is memorable nonetheless.
As far as the other gore scenes are concerned, the splatter effects are quite effective. Of course, the blood is not the right color and the bursting body parts are not anatomically correct, but the sheer fun of seeing people explode overwhelms those tiny flaws. However, contrarily to what some synopses would have you believe, the narrative is not a simple series of abdomen-bursting scenes. It's more of an action/horror hybrid made to cash in on many different trends in popular cinema. Following the immense success of both Alien and Moonraker during the previous year, Cozzi and crew concocted a cocktail of formulas taken from those two films. Thus we get alien motivations behind the villain's megalomaniacal plan for world domination, exotic locales meant as egg hatcheries, dopey fist fights with guys in contamination suits and a whole bevy of action film gimmicks turned on their heads. And while this makes for a rather implausible storyline, it's all in good fun. Besides, implausible as it may be, it isn't more so than launching Bond into outer space...
A poor man's oo7: Ian McCulloch takes
Bond-esque allures by playing dress-up
Affordable escapism
As in many Italian exploitation films, location shooting is one of the key elements to the film's success. Despite the far-fetched narrative, the filmmakers' willingness to travel gives their work a semblance of credibility rarely attained by studio-made fare. Thus, while you may question the veracity of humming alien eggs, you can't deny that of the Columbian streets and forests featured in the last act. Credibility aside, these exotic locales also give scope to the project, allowing both the characters and the viewers to make the world their playground. Deeply rooted in the spectacular tradition of early cinema, Contamination borrows ideas from many sources to offer its viewers a taste of magic in the guise of instantaneous trips to the far reaches of the imagination. And while limited in technical terms, it isn't in terms of passion, containing an obvious, almost desperate desire to please oozing from every scene.
This desire to please stems from a certain candid entrepreneurship that eventually comes to define the film. This is expressed in the filmmaker's unbridled faith in its ability to transcend budget constraints and rival with A-list productions of the time. Obviously, this is wishful thinking, but it also proves their commitment to their work. Unfortunately, in trying to ascertain big-budget airs, the film ends up trading originality for sure values, wasting the narrative freedom commonly associated with lower budget films in order to widen its scope in according to the dictates of Hollywoodian filmmaking. Thus, even though it tends to over-blow some elements, everything in the film is obviously derivative of other, better films. While this may (and should) put off some more adventurous viewers who were sold this film as an occult rarity, it will certainly please casual genre fans who aren't too hung up on looks and simply wish to have a good time. Because despite some dated narrative twists and gaping plot holes, Contamination never forgets its primary mandate, which is to entertain. While a bit slow-paced and uneventful, it features enough bewildering imagery to make it a marginal success fueled not by talent or vision, but by a passionate love for cinema that transpires in every attempt to make the film appear as a legitimate Hollywood outing. That said, Contamination is a glorified DIY film. Its relevance derives not from genre savvy but from the mechanics of film magic, which it lays bare and use as its primary hook.
Despite humble objectives, the film still surpasses many genre crossovers by managing to keep its eclectic influences in check and allowing them to interpenetrate in meaningful ways. By downplaying the horrific elements in the narrative and using them to fashion the traumatic background of both the protagonist and antagonist, the film brings a highly-welcome sense of other-wordly tragedy to an otherwise generic fratricidal struggle. It also helps justify the nervous breakdown suffered by the two men. As for the alien eggs, they make for very interesting, eye-catching "death devices" that redefine the sense of impending doom present in standard actioners. If you think about it, the world is already full of megalomaniacal villains. Just think Gaddafi, Tony Hayward, Kim Jung Il... But whereas these guys use money and military power to ascertain their dominance, Contamination's Hamilton has quite an ace up his sleeve: an acid-filled-eggs-laying alien beastie brought back from Mars. This is worlds away from even the most far-fetched contraptions devised by Ian Fleming. And although Hamilton is obviously inspired by Hugo Drax, and his Nazi-inspired theories about racial superiority, Hamilton distinguishes himself with the help of other genre staples, including a faint hint of ESP and a certain madness derived from a strange encounter of the third kind. Thanks to Cozzi's film, we realize that, while they may seem detrimental to any "realistic" stance, horror elements can actually strengthen action scenarios by imbuing sordid motivations and means to otherwise standard bad guys. While this may not be a unique discovery, it makes Contamination much more interesting than many, more literal, cash-ins of its ilk.
One of the film's most enduring images: a cavern
entrance shaped like a toothy maw welcomes its
visitors into madness
Given the minuscule budget Cozzi had to work with, the special effects and action sequences are quite impressive. They include plane crashes, machine gun battles, crackling bonfires of space eggs and aliens munching on humans. Truly, there is some really crafty filmmaking at work here. In the visual effects department anyways. It's just a shame that the screenwriters did not have the same pretensions as their artisan counterparts...
The uneven, eclectic cast (the four main roles are secured by actors from four different countries, each with a different mother tongue) make the most of their lines, but given the circumstances, everything that comes out of their mouth turns to camp. Besides, no amount of characterization can make you forget that they portray basic archetypes mostly devoid of interest. This is an obvious drawback of mimicry, a process which sustains the film and greatly limits it at the same time. You see, by taking cues from bigger, better films with A-list casts and stellar production values, Contamination eventually crumbles under the weight of these other films. Willingly derivative, it never manages to surpass any entity from which it derives and, entertaining as it may be, it will never become a reference point.
The advantages and shortcomings of commensalism
If it is fair to say that Contamination feeds off Bond films and Alien, it is also fair to say that these latter films greatly limit the radiance of Cozzi's film. In using motifs from such monuments of pop culture, the Italian director gives his film pleasant features that will necessary force comparison. And obviously, comparison doesn't play in Contamination's favor. Comparison actually prevents the film from securing any form of self-standing status within film history, condemning it to being described as a "hack", a "rip-off", or a "cash-in". Fortunately, and this is its only saving grace, it is made by crafty, passionate people with a childish, but overwhelming love for popular cinema. Thus, my advice for you is this: there's no need to hunt the film, but if you come across it in an otherwise uninteresting video store, don't hesitate. That said, any open-minded genre fan should enjoy this film.
2,5/5 A crafty, entertaining B film that's a bit too derivative for its own good.
