Contamination - Alien arriva sulla Terra

This film has good ideas, some good gory visuals; however, it is extremely slow after a fast start that it makes the film less enjoyable than it should have been. This film is obviously trying to capitalize on Alien, but does so in a very roundabout way. We do not get an Alien on the attack in a spaceship; no, instead we get an alien life form on earth, one that we will not see until the very end! Instead, it is all conspiracies and lunch plans as the film stops focusing on the action after the first 15 minutes as it seemingly tries to lull you to sleep after it begins with a bang!

The story has a ship that is essentially a runaway as the crew is nowhere to be seen. A group of people explore the ship and find the crew has been killed in most gruesome fashion and a bit confusing fashion as we learn that they were killed by alien eggs exploding and spreading goo over its victims. However, how did goo get on the captain hiding in a closet or to anyone not near the eggs? Soon a cop and a scientist track down the place where the cargo was to go and find more eggs and then they track down an astronaut who has seen this things on Mars and then they make dinner plans and we get to watch a woman beat on a bathroom door for five minutes leaving one to question why a bathroom door would lock from the outside as an egg takes forever to explode! Soon they must battle the people responsible, but not really the alien because the poor thing is stationary...

This film has promise and could have been good with more exploding effects and action. After the factory the film becomes almost a chore to watch, even when the alien is revealed as we have to watch people slowly walk through the jungle and stumble towards the alien! The alien actually looks pretty gruesome though, so kudos to the visual effects department as they did a good job on both it and the exploding bodies. The people responsible for the plot, not a very good job at all.

So, you get a somewhat entertaining film to watch if only it did not get so slow. I watched this thing again after watching as a kid so long ago and I was like 'awesome' after the first bit, but then it becomes a chore to watch as my eyelids got heavy watching the padding in this thing. Italians can make some entertaining films that are basically ripped off American films, but they seem to have a harder time with alien films as Alien 2: Alien on Earth also has the problem of being slow, but at least it picks up in the end. This one, not so much, though it was fun watching the alien eat a guy!