Bottom of the Barrel Movie Reviews: Contamination
Well here we are
with another Bottom of the Barrel movie review, but one I must say is not all
that bad.
First to the blurb on the box:
A deserted ship arrives in New York City carrying its slaughtered crew and a horrific cargo: Mutant green eggs the size of footballs that pulsate with life until they spray hideous chest-bursting death. But when a government research team begins an investigation, they uncover a grisly conspiracy of murder, space monsters and coffee. Who is harvesting these alien hell-spores? What is their connection to a doomed mission to Mars? And most important of all, how many actors will die screaming in massive explosions of blood, guts, and gore?
Ian McCulloch (ZOMBIE) stars in this Italian splatter favourite co-written and directed by Luigi Cozzi (STAR CRASH) and featuring a pounding score by Goblin (SUSPIRIA) now remastered for the first time ever in mind-blowing 6.1 DTS-ES and 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX. Also known as ALIEN CONTAMINATION and TOXIC SPAWN, this juicy shocker was censored worldwide for its ultra-nasty exploding chest scenes that Blue Underground has proudly restored from the original vault negative to all their gory glory!
And truth be told,
it was the remastered 6.1 DTS ES soundtrack that made me get this instead of
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, even though the only thing that seems
to benefit from it is the Goblin soundtrack - and that is if you like Goblin
soundtracks. If you do, you will like this one as it sounds just like all the
other Goblin soundtracks, just in 6.1 DTS ES. If you don't like Goblin
soundtracks, then you probably wouldn't consider a 6.1 DTS ES Goblin soundtrack
to be a benefit.
Anyway, let's get on with it.
As stated earlier, this film is not all that bad. Sure the acting sucks, the
dialogue sucks, the plot seems incomplete at best, but somehow it rises above
that and is still an alright splatter film - unlike say, oh I don't know, every
Uwe Boll film which has shit acting, shit dialogue, stupid and incoherent plot,
and shit direction, resulting in nothing but a totally shit film - but that is a
review for another day.
First off, this Italian film is little more than a rip-off of the chest bursting
idea from Alien merged with Invasion of the Body Snatches and director Luigi
Cozzi (or Lewis Coates as it is "translated" to in the American print) freely
acknowledges his sources of "inspiration" for it in two quite informative
documentaries (one original and one retrospective done a few years ago)
I remember reading once before a quote by some Italian director "In Italy, movie
producers don't ask what your film is like, they ask what film your film is
like."
So that is not really a surprise.
It is bad acting for the most part but the dialogue doesn't help. For when a
group of people discover these strange eggs in a coffee carton, one says to the
rest "These green eggs came out of the coffee carton."
Wow. We never would have worked that one out by just watching the film. And then
there is the use of psychic characters to help to advance the plot. Within
seconds of finding out the eggs were going to a warehouse in the Bronx:
"Oh my god. Call it intuition but I think they planned to put them in the
sewers... Just as warm and damp and comfortable as an enormous incubator."
Of course it is never actually established this was going to happen as from the
warehouse they head off to South America on the trail of the eggs and the grisly
conspiracy of murder, space monsters, and coffee.
But none of that is the reason we watch these. We do it for the gore.
And though derivative, the chest bursting gore isn't all that bad. While looking
dated today, you can see it would have been fairly disgusting back in 1980. And
there is enough of it throughout the film to keep you interested.
(note: screen shots have been lightened)
(How can you not like a film with such gut-wrenching gore?)
Despite all its shortcomings, it is not an altogether bad film - at least by
Italian splatter standards. And the documentaries are well worth a look to see
what goes on in trying to make even a low budget film.
One can't help but wonder that if Italian production companies were not so
stingy with time and money and moved away from the "We only want you to rip off
[insert movie title] so this is all you are getting" philosophy, they might
actually have something halfway decent....
Nah.
Stay tuned for a very special Bottom of the Barrel Movie review in the future....
© by Tiberius Alatheus 2006