Monday, December 01, 2008

Alien Contamination

This 1980 film is known by a number of names, including Contamination: Alien on Earth and Toxic Spawn. The original version is called Contamination and runs about 10 minutes longer than this version and is significantly more bloody. And after having watched the "cut" version, that's saying something.
A cargo ship sails into New York Harbor. It seems abandoned, but upon investigation, the crew are discovered to have ripped apart by something. In the holds, the investigators find large large containers of coffee, but hidden inside the coffee are large green eggs that look like giant limes. When these eggs are touched, they explode, spraying a green liquid everywhere. The liquid is toxic to living creatures, and makes anyone who comes in contact with it explode.
Any relation to Alien is purely coincidental.
The eggs, it turns out, came from Mars. A recent Mars mission went wrong -- on return, one astronaut disappeared, and the other had a breakdown and became an alcoholic. The astronauts has entered a cave on Mars where they discovered hundreds of these eggs.
Any further relation to Alien is purely coincidental.
It's discovered that the eggs explode when they get warmer, so when a human touches one, its temperature goes up and it explodes. But when a warehouse full of them are discovered, they are destroyed by flamethrowers. Strangely, none of them explode. Go figure.
They follow their only clue, and go to the coffee plantation that the coffee came from. Turns out of friend the missing astronaut runs the plantation. Bet you didn't see that one coming, eh? Somehow the aliens have taken over his mind and he's shipping the eggs all over the world in coffee shipments.
This is a pretty dumb and derivative movie. The writer and director, Luigi Cozzi, wanted to do his version of Alien, and he surely did, and interestingly, he foreshadowed Aliens by having a sequence with what amounts to the queen alien. But really this is just slow-motion blood-letting. Yawn. Next.

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