| ·Alien Contamination (1981): So... do you like slime?
In capitalizing on the success of Alien (1979) writer-director Luigi Cozzi (under the pseudonym "Lewis Coates") found a refreshingly direct way to introduce his characters to vast quantities of toxic goop. There’s a bunch of these sticky, throbbing alien pods, see, and if anybody approaches them, they burst open and spray gloppy mucus over everything. If any of this corrosive muck gets on you, you’re a goner because – get this – it causes some weird sort of chemical reaction in your intestines, and you explode like a water balloon. Since your buddies get sprayed with your toxic remains, chain reactions are not uncommon. Kablooey! This happens a couple of times through the course of the film. There are usually a few appalled survivors who manage to avoid getting hit by flying goop – they typically run away from the pods (a wise move) and try desperately to warn the authorities about what they’ve seen. (Ewwwww.)
Thanks to the movie Alien, we as a society treat pulsating green watermelons with healthy suspicion. "That’s an alien pod," we mutter. "Better steer clear – them things is dangerous!" Very true. Nothing good ever comes out of an alien pod. They are not piñatas or Christmas crackers – they are jack-in-the-boxes of death. We know this. Sure, we might be a little curious about what’s inside, but we’ll let somebody else check it out for us.
The pods in Alien Contamination don’t seem to be essential to the life cycle of any particular organism (except perhaps micro-organisms). They’re just here to make humans go splat. We later find out that there’s a far-reaching conspiracy to seed the Earth with these icky things. Why would anybody co-operate in the gooey annihilation of humanity? Because they’re being hypnotically controlled by a big alien, that’s why. (Of course! I should have known! Quickly, Robin, to the Batcave!) It’s up to the good guys to find the source of the evil egg-importing company, and to put a stop to it.
Having discovered what they’re up against, scientists try to learn more about the contaminant. They administer a hypo full of boom-juice to a lab rat in a protective plastic dome. Then they whip out their stopwatches and count down until the rodent goes pop.
Later, a woman who Knows Too Much is the subject of one of the weirdest assassination attempts ever filmed. While she’s in the shower, a bad guy slips a pod into her bathroom, and locks the door. She now must sneak out of the bathroom without waking up the pod!
The film climaxes with the arrival of the alien puppet-master that’s behind the whole plot. Fortunately, it’s just a big, immobile prop that just stands there waiting to get killed.
A grislier uncut version of Alien Contamination (entitled simply Contamination) has been available through grey market mail-order companies for years. I haven’t seen this version, but I can guess what to expect from it – more scenes of wet, squishy death. |
