Alien 2
Italy 1980. Director: Sam Cromwell (Ciro Ippolito)
Cast: Belinda Mayne, Mark Bodin, Roberto Barrese, Michele Soavi
Aka: Alien 2 Sulla Terra

James Cameron devotees read no further. This is not your favorite Alien sequel. It's probably not even your favorite rip-off. Nevertheless this wonderful little abomination of a movie fooled many people as it was released within a year after Ridley Scott's Alien, at a time when people were perhaps expecting a follow-up, and some six years before the official sequel. If this had happened today writer/director and producer Ciro Ippolito would have had his ass sued so bad. I have a slight memory of Bruno Mattei getting himself into very immediate trouble when he announced a movie titled Alien 3 in 1989, but enough of that now.

The plot is as follows. A space rocket returns to earth after a failed mission. Only the capsule is empty, the astronauts are gone and nowhere to be found. Meanwhile a telepathic speleologist (cave explorer) named Thelma leads an expedition to a gigantic underground cave and one of the members of the expedition, Burt (Michelle Soavi), brings with him a mysterious blue meteroit which he has found while taking a leak. Soon they discover that the meteroit is not a meteroit at all but an alien life form which kills them off one after another. Eventually Thelma and some other guy can escape up to daylight where a surprise is waiting.

This film is cooler and more interesting than most other Italian rip-offs like Alien Contamination etc, with a bizarre soundtrack by The Oliver Onions (step forward you De Angelis bros). For a change it feels as if the director in charge has had at least a clue of what he's doing, even if he's hampered by a micro-budget and his own sometimes far-fetched script. The first hour underground is reasonably effective, with good atmosphere and imaginative killings. But when the film leaves the underground setting it looks as if it will get brilliant. For a moment anyway. Unfortunately it soon runs out of gas and the film eventually has nowhere to go except for the obvious. Great downbeat ending, though, almost increases the rating by one more star.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.