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CONTAMINATION **out of *****
 Genres
1980
Directed by Luigi Cozzi (as Lewis Coates) Written by Luigi Cozzi (screenplay and story) (as Lewis Coates) Erich Tomek (story) Cast Ian McCulloch .... Commander Ian Hubbard Louise Marleau .... Colonel Stella Holmes Marino Masé .... Lieutenant Tony Aris, NYPD Siegfried Rauch .... Hamilton Gisela Hahn .... Perla de la Cruz Carlo De Mejo .... Agent Young
Carlo Monni .... Dr. Turner
Contamination is a silly Italian horror film, the sort of film that’s much more enjoyable than it is good. I wouldn’t class it in the ‘so bad, it’s good’ category. More in ‘so trashy, it’s good’. If you’re excited by the idea of a film with exploding stomachs, bad dubbing, random scenes of the heroes travelling around South America, and alien pods hidden in coffee crates, then Contamination is for you.
 | | Better out than in. | The opening isn’t too bad, in the sense that it comes close to being the opening of a genuinely good film. A boat is floating into New York harbour, its crew no longer at the controls. A group of scientists in bio hazard suits looks around and find dead crew men, though their level of surprise is strangely muted. One of them says something like "He looks like he’s been dead for awhile" in an unimpressed voice, like only really decomposed corpses could impress him. And despite wearing masks you can still tell the actors have dubbed voices.
Soon they find more bodies and some strange pods, which look like the eggs in "Aliens" (which didn’t come out until 1986, there’s a reason they call him ‘Pinchy’ Cameron). One of the pods pops open and releases a liquid that makes a guy’s stomachs explode. The army is called in and freezes the pods, and keeps survivor Lieutenant Tony Aris of the NYPD for observation. But who is importing these pods? Why? When will someone else’s stomach blow open? Does the N in NYPD stand for Naples?
 | | The long lost Devo video. | Colonel Stella Holmes gets on the case, and tells Tony he’s to help their investigation despite the fact he seems to be a total goofball. This investigation initially involves several scenes of not particularly enlightening discussion of the science of the pods. They do blow up a mouse by injecting it with pod juice, which is cruelly humorous. After a while Tony clicks that the cargo of the ship wasn’t supposed to be delivered yet, proving he may still be as dumb as we thought, but everyone else is dumber. So a raiding team heads to the factory the pods were bound for.
More stomach explosions later they realise this all has something to do with outer space. They go and find an ex-astronaut who’s thought to have gone crazy, but with the gut-exploding evidence may not be (this is Colonel Ian Hubbard (as if anyone bothers to tick off members of the cast when reading reviews)). The three of them follow the clues to South America. This trip involves some silly hotel bedroom hijinks and lots of extras pretending there’s a huge carnival going on. Eventually the story resumes, there’s a final creature that’s borderline silly but looks good when it eats people.
 | A diagram entitled "Fecal Contamination". Only related
to the movie Contamination by being fun to look at. | There is one thing, other than Carnivale, that is by Oxford Dictionary definition ‘fun’, and that’s the score by Goblin (credited as "The Goblin" here, which would be cool if it was accurate). It doesn’t blast the eardrums like their music for Suspiria, but it’s still fun electronic ‘80s horror music. I miss the days when horror music had pulsating Casio beats, not just discordant scary noises. Give the soon-to-be-dead something to jig to, I say.
If I say Contamination is actually good someone might go and rent it then send me a rude email, and I’m not partial to being flamed. What Contamination is good for is after midnight viewing with friends who would actually get some enjoyment out of a cheap Italian stomach explodeathon. Friends you can chat with over the slow bits.
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