INSEMINOID

Inseminoid

Let's state the obvious right away: Norman J. Warren's INSEMINOID is a rip-off of ALIEN. There. I said it. What usually escapes the attention of ALIEN fans however, is that ALIEN is a rip-off of IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. It seems strange that so many people feel the need to attack INSEMINOID for all it's generous "lifts" from ALIEN while denying the fact that ALIEN, despite all it's pretty visuals, has nary an original bone in it's body. ALIEN, like JAWS before it, is little more than a B-Movie that works. Like JAWS, the level of professionalism behind the camera elevates the material out of the pits of drive-in trash. But it doesn't matter how slick it is or how well it's manufactured. ALIEN is little more than an "old dark house" film relocated to outer space. Strip away the sci-fi veneer and what you're left with is little more than a slasher film, the man in a rubber mask replaced by a man in a rubber suit.


Inseminoid

ALIEN would be a hilarious film were it not for the fact that it is a humorless endeavor. The entire film is saturated in an "ain't we serious?" tone. The films it "inspired", like INSEMINOID and Luigi Cozzi's CONTAMINATION, might not be as good, but they are undeniably more fun to watch. ALIEN tries it's damndest to look and feel like something more than sci-fi nonsense. INSEMINOID and CONTAMINATION do not. They both realize they're sci-fi nonsense and run with it, piling on the absurdities with reckless abandon.


INSEMINOID doesn't just lift bits and pieces from ALIEN. There are echoes of both PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and THE BROOD here as well. It's story is pulp science fiction at it's charming, brain-numbing best. A crew stationed at an archaeological research station on some strange planet stumble across a pile of crystals that radiate energy. While excavating the site, a couple of crew members are attacked by some kind of alien life form. One of the crew, a woman named Sandy, is abducted and impregnated. As the alien babies she's carrying begin growing at a accelerated rate, Sandy begins to go a bit bonkers. Like a hormonal Hulk, she begins tearing her way through the crew, trying to protect her babies. Hilarity and gruesome murder ensues.


Inseminoid

INSEMINOID was written by Nick Maley and his wife Gloria. Nick Maley is not a screenwriter and it shows. What Nick Maley is known for is his special effects work on films as varied as THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, SUPERMAN and Warren's earlier SATAN'S SLAVE. INSEMINOID feels like a film written by an effects man wanting to show off the goods. The plot at times feels inconsequential. The whole thing is designed to push the film from one effects piece to another. Take, for example, a scene near the beginning of the film. A female crew member has gotten her foot stuck in the floor. She's outside the station and in risk of freezing to death in the frigid cold of the planet's atmosphere. All she has to do, according to the crew's chief technician, is re-attach two wires on her temperature regulating wrist watch thingy. Instead of doing that very simple task, she decides to lift her helmet, suck on her breathing tube and cut her leg off using a saw. This scene is there for no other reason than to show off a gruesome little special effect. It's ridiculous and unnecessary, but it sets up the tone of recklessness for the rest of the film.


Inseminoid

The real eye-rolling fun of the film starts once Sandy decides to start wiping out the crew. INSEMINOID is not a poorly acted piece of fluff. The entire cast - with the possible exception of Jennifer Ashley - does wonders with their material and Judy Geeson, in the role of Sandy, is a real stand-out. I imagine this kind of role is difficult to pull off. It's not exactly a situation you can Method act your way through. Watching Geeson maneuver her way through the role of Sandy is one of the real pleasures of watching INSEMINOID. With it's flat, cheap look, the film struggles to maintain any kind of atmosphere of dread, but Geeson's performance is so over-the-top and the situation presented is so ridiculous, dread would have been impossible anyway. It doesn't matter. What Warren and company are aiming for here is not scares and gasps, but a little bit of excitement and a lot of fun. Geeson's crazy eyes and screaming histrionics ensures a good bit of the latter and the sheer insanity and relentless pace of the film provides the former.


Inseminoid

It's difficult to feel animosity toward this film. It really is. It's just a simple piece of entertainment. The cardboard and foil machinery, the Styrofoam rocks, the cheap synthesizer score... it really doesn't add up to much more than fast-paced entertainment. It's cheap, it's gaudy, it's gory, it's stupid, it's fun, and it's utterly ridiculous in the best possible way. Though ALIEN is a good film, it loses much of it's fun by putting on a pretentious aire of seriousness. INSEMINOID is nowhere near the quality of ALIEN, but it is an infinitely more enjoyable film, precisely because it plays the same game as ALIEN without ever once forgetting the fact that it is doing just that. Playing a stupid game.


Recommended.