Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29506 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-04-06
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Original recording remastered
• Original language: English

From Amazon.com
Director Luigi Cozzi's science fiction thriller, which borrows wholesale from Alien for its loopy plot, is a gleefully cheesy gorefest that should please horror fans with a fondness for the lowbrow. Long-suffering Eurocult Ian McCulloch (Zombie) stars as an astronaut who joins an investigation into the appearance of extraterrestrial eggs on a ghost ship in New York's harbor. Their search uncovers an Earth-based conspiracy to cultivate the eggs for world domination. Despite the abundant gore and lunk-headed script, Contamination has an endearingly naive tone that suggests '50s-era B science fiction (of which Cozzi is a fan); as such, one can't be too harsh on a film that displays its affections so openly. Amazingly, Contamination has been banned in England since being named in the "video nasty" debacle of the early '80s. Blue Underground's widescreen DVD is uncut (with 5.1 Dolby and DTS sound!), and should be a welcome addition to any cult collector's cache. --Paul Gaita

Additional Features
In addition to the image and audio presentation, Blue Underground's DVD includes an English-language theatrical trailer (for the original release, not Cannon's version, which was retitled Alien Contamination for U.S. audiences). A pair of behind-the-scenes documentaries is also offered. The first is an Italian-language short made after the film's release in Europe, which offers a wealth of grainy making-of footage as well as glimpses of Cozzi's home and hobbies. The second, titled Alien Arrives in America (the film's original title), is a talking-head interview that allows Cozzi to detail the numerous production problems he faced before, during, and after its completion, as well as his love for vintage sci-fi. A gallery of poster and still reproductions round out the extras; viewers with a DVD-ROM can also access a 56-page graphic novel based on Cozzi's original script (which often differs considerably from the completed film). --Paul Gaita

Review
This ambitious but threadbare exploitation opus does its best to combine modern gore and old-fashioned sci-fi elements but the end results are far from impressive. Writer/director Luigi Cozzi's approach is agreeably unpretentious, stitching together ideas from worthy sources as diverse as Alien, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Zombie, but his combination of these elements lacks the inspiration and craftsmanship to make this patchwork approach work. Even at a 90-minute length, Alien Contamination drags interminably due to Cozzi's poor pacing. Some horror fans might find themselves drawn in by the film's array of gruesome makeup effects scenes but even these moments aren't terribly impressive due to poor editing and staging that makes them look unintentionally silly. The script's ham-handed dialogue doesn't help things, veering between phony science jargon that makes Ed Wood's scripts sound like Shakespearean works and groan-inducing romantic banter that fail to spark any interest in the colorless leads. The performances are the final nail in the coffin: genre vet Ian MacCullough acquits himself well but the other performances are either inert (Louise Marleau) or amateurish (Marino Mase). To sum up, Alien Contamination fails to deliver even by exploitation film standards and is likely to disappoint even the most patient viewers. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

They came, they cracked, they killed
I don't know about you, but I always get a kick out of these Italian knock-offs of successful American science fiction films. In this case, it's Alien that serves as the major inspiration, although one can't help but draw a similarity here and there with the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well. Naturally, Contamination (or Alien Contamination, as it was called in the USA) doesn't even begin to compare with Aliens, but it is worth viewing - if you're a fan of the genre, at least. I think it's safe to say that those who care nothing about low-budget science fiction and horror films will not enjoy this film at all, and those without the stomach for gore should also stay away. The film basically has just one gory effect, but it's a pretty good one and is used on a number of occasions. Gorehounds like me, of course, will revel in the "he done blowed up real good" moments.

Contamination opens with a cargo ship barreling into New York Harbor, its crew unwilling or unable to respond to radio calls. Once authorities corral the thing and pull it in, the mystery of the missing crew is solved - they're all very dead, their bodies seemingly ripped open from the inside. Of the three men sent in to explore the ship, only local cop Tony Aris (Marino Mase) comes back out alive. Having found a bunch of strange egg-like things in the ship's hold, the other two made the mistake of picking one up - quickly demonstrating to Aris the awful, immediate, and painful way in which everyone on board the ship must surely have died. That's more than enough reason for the government to quarantine the entire area and send in Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) to figure out what the heck is going on.

Tests soon reveal the deadly acidic nature of the "eggs," as well as the fact that they are not terrestrial in origin. So where did they come from? As it so happens, Commander Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) had described finding the same sorts of objects in a Martian cave he explored on a recent manned mission to the Red Planet. No one believed him, though - until now. He reluctantly joins Holmes and Aris as they follow the deadly cargo's trail back to a coffee warehouse in Colombia, where all things are revealed.

Not surprisingly, Contamination has its share of weaknesses. Special effects, apart from your general lab design details, aren't among them. Sure, the dark-ish nature of the print sometimes makes it hard to fully enjoy the sight of people exploding from the inside out, but writer/director Luigi Cozzi's commitment to quality gore is obvious. The storyline, though, is rather weak, the acting is not of the highest caliber, and you have to slog through several sections of painfully boring exposition on your way to the end.

I should also mention the fact that there are basically two versions of this film. Unfortunately, I was only able to find the American version (released as Alien Contamination), which has a run time of some 84 minutes. The original film runs a full 95 minutes, so you'll definitely want to pick up that full-length version if at all possible. Why would they cut a full ten minutes out of this film, you ask? It almost surely stems from the fact that the UK's infamous Video Recordings Act originally led to Contamination being branded a "video nasty," effectively banning it at the time. (It has since been released in the UK with a 15 certificate.) Apparently, slow-motion shots of characters exploding were just too extreme for the mother hens clucking over the British Isles.

Avocado of Death
No, this is not about Pinkwater's Snarkout boys. Instead it is about a movie called Alien Contamination (A.K.A. Toxic Spawn) a strange but entertaining foreign film set in America with shades of Atomic Submarine and The Arrival.

A runaway freighter is boarded and found to contain a gruesomely dead crew and boxes marked coffee that contain large avocado-like pods or eggs. These eggs explode on maturity and any mammalian life nearby will explode seconds later. Research shows the eggs to be non-terrestrial in nature. A chance landing by alien spores is ruled out and the failed Mars mission is suspected.

The surviving astronaut from the Mars mission is now a drunk. He had claimed to have seen avocado-like eggs on Mars but the rest of the crew denied his claims. With his help the coffee shipment is tracked to a plantation in South America and the action moves there.

It turns out that the Mars crew mate is not dead. He is alive and running the operation to destroy all human life. He is under the control of a being known as the Cyclops. He brought a Cyclops spore back from Mars where he was hypnotized. After some fun scenes the heroes triumph in the end and the menace from Mars is ended.

Despite the feeling of wrongness that foreign films in English often have, this is actually well above the usual monster shlock movie. In a way it reminds me of The X-Files with investigators that actually investigate records instead of just stumbling along. It was much more of a detective film with aliens than an alien movie with detectives.

I recommend this film for anyone who likes better horror and science fiction films.

Alien arrives on Earth, indeed.
A search of a supposedly deserted ship uncovers a gruesome mystery. The crew is dead, literlly torn apart by some unknown force, and the ship's cargo is not coffee, but groaning, glowing eggs that make people explode whenever contact with the slimy green filling is made. Writer/director 'Lewis Coates' (aka Luigi Cozzi) crafts an incomprehensible story of alien invasion (or simple destruction, the exact goal is never made clear) in this most famous (or infamous) Italian cash-in on Alien. In the to be expected excellent supplements (the disc is from Blue Underground, so special things are almost a matter of routine) Cozzi comes across as a real classic sci-fi geek. Too bad that love didn't infuse his script or direction. While the movie is entertaining, it is mostly for the wrong reasons, and Cozzi fumbles chances for suspense during key moments in the film (i.e. having the female lead trapped in a bathroom with an alien egg) by dragging the scenes out until they become ludicrous. Nonetheless, fans of this long gone era of movie making (late seventies/early eighties low budget schlock cinema) will find something to enjoy in the movie. I did.