Cheap Alien Contamination (DVD) (Luigi Cozzi) Price

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Customer Reviews of Alien Contamination

Charming Low Budget SF
Finally this long neglected SF film appears on DVD: withdrawn some 20 years ago in Britain during the 'Video Nasty' witchhunt and unavailable in any form since, 'Contamination' is a film full of charm despite its highly derivative nature. The most obvious comparison is with 'Alien' of course but as the director himself points out in a lovely interview that is the best of the extras on this disc, his aim with the film was to pay homage to 50s American SF pictures. What a nice chap Luigi Cozzi clearly is - ready to admit his debts to other SF, clearly in love with the genre and unashamedly open about his derivative approach
References to 'Invaders From Mars' and 'Quatermass 2' abound: the Martian Cyclops monster is a corker, refreshingly unrealistic and like the director charmingly unsophisticated and direct.
The gore effects remain quite shocking but are relatively few and far between - most descriptions of this movie indicate that someone's chest bursts apart every ten minutes or so, but all such descriptions are overexaggerated. Why this film remains banned in the UK after so long is a mystery to me...
The main problem with the film is its pacing - the middle of the film does lack suspense and imagination, some scenes crawling along when the injection of original ideas (unfortunately the lovely Cozzi doesn't have many of his own, apart from the blatant blood and guts) would have upped the adrenalin.
The picture on the DVD is very good indeed and the music by Goblin is of course excellent, despite the absence of Claudio Simonetti: only one gripe here, Cozzi under-uses the score which is apparent when one owns the superbly remastered cinevox CD.
If you love cheap pulp SF, you have to get yourself this unoriginal but fun film that will take you back to your childhood experiences of lurid science fiction at its most potent.

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That's Not Coffee!
This is the only film I've seen of Luigi Cozzi's, and it's not too shabby. Silly and moronic to be sure, but we're talking about Italian gross out flicks here. The Italians loved to try and cash in on whatever was big in America at the time. Italian directors did westerns in the 70s, along with adult films, zombie films(because of Romero's success), crime and sword and sorcery films in the early 80s. Considering these films are so low budget, they have to try and give you something you can't find in Hollywood pictures, and that "something" as you may already know is GORE. Amidst the slew of zombie/cannibal flicks that came flying out of Italy comes Contamination-an imitator of the hit, Alien. Cozzi isn't really into horror films, so decided to delve into his favorite genre, sci-fi. Contamination is your basic Italian horror formula only with a sci-fi theme this time around. We get an abandoned boat sailing into New York harbor(sound familiar?) carrying some eggs that spit out acid and make peoples' chests explode(don't ask). This takes our cast of characters on that journey down south(sound familiar?) to solve the mystery. Starring Ian McCulloch-a good actor who always gets suckered into doing these kinds of films-as our butt kicking hero, this film will make you puke in your pants and do a funky little dance as you watch exploding chests(and mice) and a man eating alien cyclops! This was particulary scary for me coz I was attacked by a cyclops once in the Bahamas. Certainly not the best import from Italy, but I've seen alot worse(see Bruno Mattei).

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Avocado of Death
No, this is not about Pinkwater's Snarkout boys. Instead it is about a movie called Alien Contamination (A.K.A. Toxic Spawn) a strange but entertaining foreign film set in America with shades of Atomic Submarine and The Arrival.

A runaway freighter is boarded and found to contain a gruesomely dead crew and boxes marked coffee that contain large avocado-like pods or eggs. These eggs explode on maturity and any mammalian life nearby will explode seconds later. Research shows the eggs to be non-terrestrial in nature. A chance landing by alien spores is ruled out and the failed Mars mission is suspected.

The surviving astronaut from the Mars mission is now a drunk. He had claimed to have seen avocado-like eggs on Mars but the rest of the crew denied his claims. With his help the coffee shipment is tracked to a plantation in South America and the action moves there.

It turns out that the Mars crew mate is not dead. He is alive and running the operation to destroy all human life. He is under the control of a being known as the Cyclops. He brought a Cyclops spore back from Mars where he was hypnotized. After some fun scenes the heroes triumph in the end and the menace from Mars is ended.

Despite the feeling of wrongness that foreign films in English often have, this is actually well above the usual monster shlock movie. In a way it reminds me of The X-Files with investigators that actually investigate records instead of just stumbling along. It was much more of a detective film with aliens than an alien movie with detectives.

I recommend this film for anyone who likes better horror and science fiction films.