Film Year: 1980
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror
Director: Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi)
Starring: Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Mase, Siegfried Rauch, Gisela Hahn
The Movie
Starcrash director Luigi Cozzi follows up his Star Wars knock-off with an Alien knock-off. Contamination finds the military investigating giant green eggs that explode and then make the people who have come into contact explode too. They follow the trail to Columbia, where they find an alien squid cyclops that is plotting to destroy the entire human race.
Maybe I expected more Alien in my Alien rip-off, but Contamination disappointed me. There are more than a fair few elements of Alien here: an alien, some alien eggs, exploding chests, acid goo, ect. The problem I'm having is that they're jumbled up and they're being used in ways that don't really play all that well. Let's talk about the eggs, which one would normally assume is a reproductive cycle, which is not only what it is in the film Alien, but what an egg in general typically is. Here they don't seem to serve any sort of reproductive purpose, but are rather time bombs that just explode and make people gooey. Okay, so they're not reproductive. Fair enough. But if they're a weapon of some sort, one would think the explosion of the egg itself would be harmful by itself. Instead the movie decides that just having the egg explode isn't enough, but the egg goo needs to make the people it touches explode too so we have a string of gooey explosions.
This is one hell of a cycle. It's no wonder I don't like eggs.
But yeah, you can totally see Cozzi taking the Alien concepts and running with them in a budget friendly direction. Budget friendly is the key word here, as he sets the film on modern day Earth, and it's a bit of a dull setting. What I wouldn't give to see Cozzi try and do Alien in the style of Starcrash, but one shouldn't fault a film for wanting to be different. Or as different as a copy can be.
I'm not too enthusiastic about Contamination. I thought I would be, but it doesn't have much of an energy. There are times where it's unintentionally funny, as the alien itself is funny enough and there are some hazmat suits in the film that resemble the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There is also a silly scene in which the female lead is locked in a bathroom with an egg, though why the bathroom locks on the outside, I'm not sure. These moments are about the only things worth mentioning about the film, which is by no means as entertaining as Starcrash.
The Drive-In
Probably the highlight of the episode are the Drive-In Totals, which is one of Joe Bob's longest lists yet and full of interesting additions. Even he seems surprised, as he faces the crew about two thirds of the way through and says "This movie is better than I remember it!" But as we get to the end, we receive his restrained two-and-a-half star rating, and we have to accept it may not be as awesome as it sounds. And it isn't. Boy that Drive-In Total should have been for a full on four star movie.
Joe Bob takes the time to discuss Italian rip-offs in general. He goes into the history of Italian cinema, where they became the "masters of dubbing" (wouldn't know it from this movie), and utilize techniques that allow them to have the actors recite their dialogue in their native tongue and just dub over them. He discusses their attempts to boost their popularity of their films by taking the concept of the latest Hollywood blockbuster and rehashing it for quick money, like Contamination and Alien, Starcrash and Star Wars, and Devil Fish and Jaws (all these Italian knock-off films that Luigi Cozzi worked on). There are also a few words mentioned about giving these films US settings, even though they're all shot in Italy.
As for crew, he tends to discuss Luigi Cozzi the most in-depth, and lists off his career and how he wanted to do sci-fi, but the film companies wouldn't let him, though he used the popularity of Alien to get Contamination off the ground and then just made a pair of Hercules movies in sci-fi settings. Joe Bob also relates that Cozzi wanted Starcrash actress Caroline Munroe to play the lead, but was disappointed that the studio forced him to hire someone "old and ugly" instead (note: I disagree With his assessment of Louise Marleau).
We conclude with a visit from Darcy the Mail Girl, who actually unknowingly met Cozzi at his bookstore in Rome with her son. It's a swell note to end on, though I must profess I had hoped Joe Bob would at the very least get to play with a flamethrower by the end of this episode, of which he professed an admiration for early on. After all, he is like all of us and never tires of the line "Call in the flamethrowers!"
Joe Bob's Rating
⭐⭐1/2
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