Contamination (1980)

Director: Luigi Cozzi

Writers: Luigi Cozzi, Erich Tomek

Composer: Goblin (Agostino Marangolo, Antonio Marangolo, Fabio Pignatelli)

Starring: Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Mase, Siegfried Rauch, Gisela Hahn, Carlo De Mejo, Carlo Monni

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They Invade Your Body ... Control Your Mind ... Blow You Apart!

Plot: A former astronaut helps a government agent and a police detective track the source of mysterious alien pod spores, filled with lethal flesh-dissolving acid, to a South American coffee plantation controlled by alien pod clones.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This so-so Italian sci-fi/horror isn't as bad as you'd think but it's not even a minor classic.  There are a few things going for it that might make it worth your while.  The eggs look cool and it's always cool seeing people exploding.  You can't go too wrong with that, plus the sound they make is neat and kind of spooky.  It's rather a slow go for the first hour.  It begins stateside and it's all about the discovery of these strange eggs, what they do and where they came from.  This leads our heroes to South America.  YES!  That's a nice change of scenery except it takes another twenty or so minutes before we see any jungle and as you might can tell, I loves me some movie jungle action.  Sadly, there's next to no jungle action.  The plot isn't so bad and it gets better once we know who's behind all this mess and what they're plans are.  Oh, and you find this stuff out from the cliched villain explaining his mad plans to his captives.  That part shouldn't bother you because this isn't high art that falls back on silly, over-used cliches.  Goblin's score isn't nearly as good as their stuff for the horror pictures from around this time.  It teeters from not bad to cues that sound like they're from another, unrelated movie.  The art direction is good for what this is.  There are some nice shots and neatly lit scenes.  The big egg-laying alien at the end is kind of silly but then a lot of the goofiness is masked with shadows, rays of light and smoke.  If you're familiar with Italian genre films in this era, and you tend to like them, then you'll probably like this one, too.  The Blue Underground DVD has a great looking anamorphic widescreen print and extras in an interview with Cozzi (18 minutes), a making of featurette (23 minutes), the English theatrical trailer (anamorphic widescreen), conceptual drawings and the graphic novel.  Blue Underground did a fantastic job on this release.