Although never prosecuted, Contamination made in 1980 by Luigi Cozzi comes from the golden era of Italian splatter movies ending up embroiled amidst the video nasty furore. Showing what a dogs arse the whole panic was it had no real problems in later years flying through any censorship issues being released uncut in 2004 with no less than a 15 certificate! That should not put gore hounds who have not seen this classic off in the slightest and yes I am well aware that many are likely to be put off by anything not gaining at least an 18 certificate but Contamination aka Alien Contamination does deliver the claret in spades. Never more so on Arrow’s debut hi-def release where it literally explodes off the screen in Peckinpah style slow motion and douses it in mangled flesh and viscera. I guess with hindsight it is not difficult to see why it got its fair share of attention back in the day and lumped in with all the other titles as it is a gory delight and it definitely delivers the goods. That said it is also one of the wackiest of the titles with a plot that nobody in their right mind could take seriously and its fantasy based conventions should have had the censorious bodies and all the scaremongering press in stitches and cracking up at the absurdity of it all rather than considering it along with some of the other ‘sadist videos’ of the time.
A large container vessel is found dangerously drifting into New York and on being secured and safely docked it appears to be a ghost ship. On investigating with health officials NYPD Lieutenant Tony Aris (Marino Masé) discovers the crew dead and looking like they have been torn inside out. They also find a cargo of coffee boxes, one is opened and these strange throbbing like avocado coloured eggs are inside. One is looking like it is close to hatching and is stupidly picked up, exploding those health officials touched by its glutinous discharge in a horrifying gory deluge of organs and entrails. Aris is grabbed by higher authorities and decontaminated under the watchful eye of hard-ass Colonel Stella Holmes (Canadian actress Louise Marleau). Eggs are frozen and experimented on cue an exploding rat (possibly one reason that this had problems) and things are tracked back to a warehouse which is summarily hit by the forces. Rather than give themselves up the terrorists guarding thousands of the eggs shoot one whilst in close proximity to it splattering them with its discharge and suffering more of those grizzly slo-mo chest explosions. Stella suddenly clicks remembering an ill-fated Mars mission where one of the surviving members had come back raving about alien egg organisms. She was actually one of a board who discredited him and now goes to hunt him down. Hubbard played by Survivors star Ian McCulloch is obviously not happy to see her and is a washed up alcoholic but she pulls him out of his lethargy and along with Aris heads out to Colombia the source of the coffee and eggs for the second half of the film to try and stop what could inevitably be an alien attack that could take down the whole of mankind.
Cozzi directing as Lewis Coates to give the film the appearance of being American and not a cheap Italian rip off, made exactly what was none other than a cheap but very fun Italian rip off here of Ridley Scott’s excellent Alien, a huge hit in 1979. From chest-bursting scenes to alien eggs he does not try to hide this in the slightest. Getting McCulloch on board on his Italian jaunt after starring in Zombie Flesh Eaters and Zombie Holocaust was definitely another very good move as fans of these films had someone they could easily identify with and with his rugged charm and not altogether bad acting abilities they really had someone to carry the film. There is a lot of interplay between the three central characters with the detective Aris being portrayed as a bit of a bumbling fool and the butt of several comedic elements in the film. By comparison Stella’s role is a very strong one and at times she is pretty close to emasculating her male counterparts, something that no doubt stemmed from Sigourney Weaver’s strong portrayal of Ripley in Alien. One of the most memorable scenes involves her at weakest point however trapped in a bathroom with a gestating egg close to explosion. “Help! Let me out! There’s an egg!” It takes the still bumbling male leads an agonizingly long period of time to come to her rescue and it is one hell of a tense part of the film.
One of the other aspects that cannot be overlooked is the excellent score of Goblin who were at their height here before they too exploded like one of these dastardly eggs. Their score has a lot of very futuristic elements and broods and pulses over proceedings really heightening the tension. They go from this on tracks like ‘Connexion’ to the more fun filled tribal romp ‘Bikini Island’ making the film both stifling and fun in all the right places. It was obviously considered particularly effective at the time as much of it was nabbed by Bruno Mattei and used on his underrated Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980) too. Interestingly if you want to look on Contamination as a bit of a homage to Alien Mattei in later life went and helmed Zombies The Beginning in 2007 a very cheeky rip off of Alien sequel Aliens. Contamination is very much a film of two halves due to the fact it moves location so drastically at the half way point but I think this is one of the reason it succeeds so well and it is a trick that many of the Italian horror films used around this time to liven them up, throwing their cast into a tropical location part way through. Action here is very well paced on the whole and as the plot develops you cannot help marvelling at the absurdity of it all whilst at the back of your mind thinking “well it’s plausible, this could actually happen” (no, just me then). Naturally it all leads up to a dizzying conclusion that I won’t spoil for you, can mankind be saved? You are going to have to find out for yourself.
There are a couple of hours-worth of extras and I was looking forward to them especially to see what McCulloch had to say. I met him at an event years ago and gave him a video of Contamination to sign and to say he wasn’t impressed about what he had done in these ‘ghastly movies” was an understatement. I know he has changed his tune now and says has a new appreciation after watching them again for the first time in years but seriously at the time I met him he loathed them completely. Interesting to note he didn’t exactly go and stop fighting crappy monsters after these films, battling away with Silurians and Sea Devils in Dr Who four years later (Ingrid Pitt was also in that one fact fans!)
On to the extras and first up is an archive piece seeing director Cozzi talking about the film and how it was conceived sitting behind the very typewriter which he wrote the script on. He definitely considers it a sci-fi film rather than a horror one and tells us that these type of films are a passion and it was Quatermass 2 and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers as much as Alien that he took inspiration from here. We get a look around his house at all his posters and artefacts from old sci-fi magazines and films and also some behind the scenes footage from the making of Contamination itself. Much more recent is a Q&A session with Cozzi and McCulloch at the Abattoir Film Fest in 2014. It’s got to be said that this is a lot better shot and sounds great compared to many such examples. Audio is very clear and concise, Cozzi’s English is very good and he and McCulloch have loads of interesting anecdotes both being in good humour and seeming warm with plenty to say. I’m not so sure how much of the talk about the film being funded by Colombian marching powder should be taken seriously though? Grateful as he is for his involvement, it’s still clear that McCulloch is not exactly a fan of his trio of Italian splatter films and I cannot believe he has never even bothered to watch Zombie Holocaust. He’s a funny charismatic guy though, even if I have heard a couple of his anecdotes before.
Original Goblin keyboard player Maurizio Guarini features next in a short piece about the music and the revolving door policy that afflicted the band although he doesn’t expand upon what exactly the “arguments” were. He still has the main keyboard that he used but doesn’t remember anything really in detail about what was essentially a quick few day’s work on constructing this particular music. I guess it’s longevity among fans however proves just how effective it was. Cozzi made somewhere in the region of 18 films including one that is in production now Blood on Méliès’ Moon. Apart from Contamination my favourite is his Black Cat (1989) which could be looked at as an unofficial sequel to Argento’s Three Mothers films Suspiria and Inferno. It got shown once in the UK here on a cable channel and I have it on video from then and wondered if he was going to talk about it on the 42 minute Luigi Cozzi vs. Lewis Coates interview that’s on here. Fingers crossed. It was fantasy and sci-fi that he grew up on though contributing to fanzines and mags as well-known as Forrest J Ackerman’s Famous Monsters. This eventually led him into a film career but certainly not quickly and we get a lot of talk about how he gradually learned the processes of becoming one before moving to Rome and becoming a music journalist (no doubt as thankless a task then as now). Due to a newly acquired friendship with an equally young Dario Argento the turning point came collaborating and writing the screenplay of Four Flies On Grey Velvet with him. In the second half he talks a bit more about his actual films such as giallo The Killer Must Kill Again and fantasy films Starcrash and Hercules. Black Cat gets the briefest mention Paganini Horror none. We do however get a brief clip from his aforementioned Blood on Méliès’ Moon although plot wise things are kept intriguingly vague. Guess we will have to wait and see on that one. Final feature is a critical analysis with Argento author Maitland McDonagh along with Chris Poggiali on the Italian art of nabbing things from US blockbusters and making them into their own. It seems like things have reversed nowadays with Hollywood remaking anything foreign they can get their hands on (Martyrs really)! Nobody did it better than the Italians though and this is kind of preaching to the converted as far as genre fans are concerned.
Naturally there are other extras such as trailer, booklet, graphic novel reversible sleeve and a commentary track from Fangoria editor Chris Alexander. I did have a quick look for any Easter eggs but didn’t find any; probably just as well that. Contamination, cracking good fun!
(Pete Woods)
http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/contamination
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