Contamination (1980) - Blu-ray Review

Details: By Loron Hays; 11 July 2015

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Contamination (1980) - Movie Review

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Italian horror filmmakers have a long and fascinating history of taking a successful Hollywood idea and running with it until at least 10 films, all with different titles, have beaten its singular uniqueness into the ground. I can’t say that I blame them as boobs and gore will always sell movie tickets no matter the country. Books have been written about this subject and these films – especially their directors - have a significant following because these films actually become something worth remembering.

Take, for example, Luigi Cozzi’s Contamination, released by Arrow Video on blu-ray complete with a brand new 2k restoration, which takes the basic premise of Ridley Scott’s Alien and brings it down to earth with splatterific results. When a crewless cargo ship finds its way into a harbor outside of New York, Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) drags Lieutenant Aris (Marino Masé) and Commander Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) into a mysterious alien-egg infested search for the truth behind the deadly shipment of large containers of coffee responsible for wiping out the crew.

The glowing green eggs at the heart of the narrative are, essentially, not unlike the eggs in Alien. They are dangerous and, when opened, they cause humans to explode in a slow motion. It’s a pretty neat effect that, due to the slow motion, gets a tad repetitive and, due to the low budget of the flick, obvious in how it was achieved. The gore is x 10 when compared to anything in Scott’s movie which, as per the Italian philosophy of genre filmmaking, is to be expected.

These practical effects, combined with the non-working animatronic “cyclops” creature (that had to be manipulated by hand) responsible for all the egg-laying, gave the film its reputation for being extreme (and banned in Britain). The eggs, which emanate a bizarre squelching sound vibrantly radiate their warning of no touching and, yet, the bright color can’t help but attract the next victim. While the egg cavern on Mars is laughably obvious in its use of green olives, the experiment done on a lab mouse, resulting in it being blown up, is quite disturbing. Okay, so the filmmakers don’t actually kill the mouse but they do perform their effect without any regard to the mouse. Scenes like that are sure to disgust some viewers.

I can tell you that the 2k restoration from the original camera negative does not fail to articulate all this gore in HD. It can be pretty disgusting (which is the point) and, with its tightly wound atmosphere, damn effective. This is not the work of inspired filmmakers. Contamination is, however, a great example of how Italian filmmaking can be a memorable knockoff. The dialogue, the acting, and the poor dubbing all work to establish a goofy tone the effects work very hard to wave off.

Ultimately, Contamination successfully brings the aliens to earth but, to this day, you have to approach the film with an understanding of how this type of exploitative genre goes in order to truly appreciate the work that went into making a knockoff matter.

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MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 95 mins
Director: Luigi Cozzi
Writer: Luigi Cozzi
Cast: Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Masé
Genre: Adventure | Horror
Tagline: A New Plague on Earth Will Come from the Stars!
Memorable Movie Quote: "Help! Let me out! There's an egg!"
Distributor: The Cannon Group
Official Site:
Release Date: June 11, 1982
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: July 7, 2015
Synopsis: 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.

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Contamination (1980) - Movie Review

Blu-ray Details:

Available on Blu-ray - July 7, 2015
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English SDH
Audio: English: LPCM Mono; Italian: LPCM Mono
Discs: 50GB Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Region Encoding: A, B

Courtesy of Arrow Video, the 2K restoration with MPEG-4 AVC on a 1080p transfer looks awesome. Colors are solid and skin tones are radiant. The gore, flying at the camera in chunks of all sizes, is effectively captured with the format’s HD attention to detail. Strands of ooze are effectively delivered via the screen. It’s quite disgusting which makes it a perfect contender for this restoration. There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: English LPCM 1.0 and Italian LPCM 1.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for English track and English subtitles for the Italian track. Quality dips between the tracks but, if you really want a laugh, watch the absolutely poorly-dubbed English version.

Supplements:

Commentary:

There is a new commentary from Chris Alexander. This Fangoria Magazine editor will give you a new appreciation for the film.

Special Features:

Arrow Video loads this sucker up with tons of good stuff. The supplemental features on the disc include a video interview with Goblin keyboardist Maurizio Guarini, a Q&A session with Luigi Cozzi and actor Ian McMulloch, and a brand new interview with the director of the film, plus a great short about Italian filmmaking entitled Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery that should be required viewing for all. The release also arrives with a 22-page illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Chris Alexander, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.