Contamination



Another week, another crappy Italian horror movie. This week I watched Contamination (1980), an obvious rehash of Alien (1979) by way of Quatermass 2 (1957), with lots and lots of fake gore. It’s bad. Very, very bad. As a matter of fact this movie is another one that could be used as an example of how not to structure a screenplay.

A freighter enters New York harbor but won’t answer hails. The New York Police department sends officers on board in hazmat gear. The officers find gruesome corpses and a hold full of boxes marked coffee, but actually filled with giant greenish eggs. One of the eggs explodes into green goo when touched, and everyone splattered with the goo in turn explodes in a bloody mess.


I've always wondered what the TARDIS kitchen looks like.

The only survivor of the debacle is officer Tony (Marino Mase), and he’s taken into custody by a government agency headed by Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau). The agency exists to combat disease threats, and has the power to pretty much go anywhere, order anyone around, and even kill people if they really want to. Eat your hearts out CDC. Stella tells Tony that they’ve determined that the eggs are of alien origin, and that goo from the eggs will explode rats.

Everybody thinks hard for a few moments about where alien eggs may have come from, and then someone pipes up with “What about the Mars mission?” The Mars mission, of course! The one that hadn’t been mentioned before just now! We find out that there was a Mars mission, and when it returned one of astronauts, Hubbard (Ian McCulloch), claimed to have found a cavern full of alien eggs. The other astronaut with him at the time, Hamilton, said that there were no eggs. Stella was on the review board that decided that Hubbard was crazy.  Now she and Tony seek out Hubbard so that they hear his story again, even though you’d think that Stella would know it perfectly well. Once Stella and Tony talk to Hubbard all three depart for South America to find the source of the coffee shipment.


There's no way anything bad could happen in this Martian cave.

The coffee company that sent the eggs, Universe, is secretly run by Hamilton, who for reasons that are never explained is thought to be dead. Hamilton runs Universe like a Bond villain, complete with machinegun toting soldiers in hazmat gear and a female henchwoman to carry out assassinations. Speaking of, prepare for big laughs when the henchwoman tries to kill Stella by secreting an egg into Stella’s hotel room bathroom. To seal the deal the henchwoman puts the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the hotel room door. Hubbard ignores the sign and breaks in, saving Stella. When the henchwoman finds out about her failure she says something along the lines of “That’s impossible! There’s no way she could have escaped.” Sorry lady, you’re not allowed to say that if your master plan hinges on a “Do Not Disturb” sign.

I would also like to point out how silly Hamilton’s plan is. He’s going distribute alien death pods to the United States by disguising them as coffee. How is that going to work? It’s not like there’s one brand of coffee that’s sold on every street corner in this country.


And that's when we found out Juan Valdez was using DDT on his ranch.

Despite the assassination attempt, Tony and Stella visit Universe and ask pointed questions about the contaminated freighter and “special” coffee; then they have the unmitigated gall to be surprised when their tour of the coffee plant ends at gunpoint. I can’t say I felt all that bad when Hamilton feeds one of these characters to the Martian he’s keeping in the basement.

Contamination is typical Italian sci-fi/horror film. None of the characters ever act in a logical manner, characters bicker for no reason, and practically every plot element is lifted from some previous movie. If you want to see this last rationalized, check out Blue Underground’s DVD. It includes a vintage interview with screenwriter Luigi Cozzi explaining that he wanted to make an original thriller for Italian audiences while checking off the laundry list of much better movies that he stole from.


"My name is Kang, and this is my sister Kodos."

Posted: Tue - September 28, 2004 at      

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