Alien 2: On Earth (1980)

 

Director: Ciro Ippolito (and Biagio Proietti)

Screenplay: Ciro Ippolito

Cast: Belinda Mayne as Thelma Joyce; Mark Bodin as Roy; Benedetta Fantoli as Maureen; Michele Soavi as Burt; Valeria Perilli as Jill; Danilo Micheli as Bill

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It took seven years to get from Alien (1979) to Aliens (1986). Italy got there with an unofficial sequel a year later and likely with mind the Ridley Scott film would still be in cinemas around the world and people would believe this was an actual sequel, they could follow it with this without anything but pure carnival hucksterism. This is funnier as, with the actual Alien franchise, we never got Xenomorphs on Earth until Aliens vs. Predator in 2001 but this got there one year later too.

Set around astronauts on a space mission, we follow a group of cave explorers predating The Descent (2005), exploring a cave to their peril in the midst of an abrupt alien invasion. Immediately you see that the production wanted to make caving the exciting new thing, helped by the fact as the predominant set location for this lower budget film, actual caves, are impressive locations regardless of price of filming, legitimately beautiful locations and perfect for a horror film. More idiosyncratic is the obsession with bowling, which is Italian producers trying to figure out what is hip to American audiences and that they had access to a bowling alley too. Joking aside, it's a simple monster film, where Thelma (Belinda Mayne) as our lead is among this caving group, who also just happens to be psychic and has grim concerns about what is happening in general around her. That is a plot detail which is abrupt but means she is the one person with a bad feeling as, likely due to the astronauts' mission, there are festering alien blobs on the beach among the sand castles let alone in the caves.

Obviously, like Luigi Cozzi's Contamination (1980), these Italian films wanted to have the face huggers from Alien, one of its most iconic images from the pulsating eggs let alone the horrifying critters inside, but could not for copyright reasons. The iconic eggs even if their biology is weird, meant to be the selling point for both but having to figure out something new even if unconventional, here blue rocks which pulsate and become face eating entities. They do one better than the face huggers, whose children burst out of chests, by gestating and bursting directly out the face of their victims, but it is one of the touches you see where this was made to follow a major film globally. Like Contamination's, which were more biological bombs which made everyone explode, there is no logic like the Xenomorphs to how these alien "eggs" work, only the fear of unknown objects being played to in a film like this which, in content, cause gory results or leads here to mostly vague rubber entities which have red Twiglet tendrils.

This film has a style, even if it is as much an Italian production shooting in America trying to be American, even if it unfortunately leads to a dubbing of one black cast member, a bowling alley staff member, which director Eli Roth once bluntly called "Amos & Andy" dubbing, clearly an Italian man in a voice over he openly admits crosses a line into being racist¹. It is a languid film in fact, taking half an hour to get to the caves themselves, soaking in the American locations, and as a monster film pacing itself quietly with its cast, it is a distinct change of pace even from other genre films from Italy at the time even if might put some off expecting the purely over-the-top and lurid nature of others from this era. The music is one of the strongest aspects, composer Oliver Onions, alongside the memorable name, also happens to be a pseudonym for Guido De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis, the legendary composers behind films like Street Law (1974), acclaimed in the Italian genre field and earning their pay check for a great score here.

For the moments you can pick holes in this film, I have seen it enough times now they even have a charm. It makes no sense to see future director Michele Soavi, before directing Cemetery Man (1994), writing on a typewriter in a cave using lit candles, a habit his character has despite the newly elected Pope in Italy meaning the candles have become more expensive to buy, but it is a cool (and funny) image) alongside moments which work intentionally. One, in a prolonged camera pan after a victim against complete black, exemplifying the moment their face explodes from a recent host, is actually good enough to have become an iconic moment in a more acclaimed film. In terms of whether this is actually scary or good horror, that is entirely subjective. Honestly the more interesting thing about this era of Alien rip offs, which are different to even the ones for Aliens  which took a different tone as an official sequel, is how they reflect tropes from a popular film in their own way for better and for worse, like Peter Walker's Inseminoid (1981) for one closer to this Englishman's home. They are reflections of the industry of cinema, where everyone is eyeing everyone's success and sometimes blatantly cashing in on what worked, which can be ironic for entertainment for some viewers, but still counts as entertaining. This one at least, to the film's credit, has the creepy idea of being inspired by tape worms in terms of the alien tendrils, even if I made a joke about them earlier in the review, taking inspiration from something which is real and can be found in a human being's guts, which is creepy. The egg symbology from Alien as mentioned is scrambled, a pretence to sell the film, but when this is about cavern walls with tendrils coming out of them, and the aliens themselves being vague entities we never truly see the full sight of, even if to cover the practicalities of the effects, it is still effective.

Also this commits to an appropriately nihilistic ending, taking advantage of when you can shoot at the right time, and you can depict a metropolis in carefully chosen shots completely without people, offering a gut punch that makes up for this lower budget with an obsession for bowling. Ciro Ippolito, the credited director, is an outlier as none of his other films fit the template of genre cinema at the time, more of a producer/writer for titles like the romantic film Vanilla and Chocolate (2004). This is the same for the un-credited co-director Biagio Proietti, though he has a co-writer credit on Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1981). A lot of the history of Italian genre cinema factors in key figures, not just directors but also screenwriters and producers, who continued even if into other genres within this now-cult sphere of genre filmmaking. This makes these two fascinating alongside the film as a one-and-done in that said history. Literally they came to take advantage of the popularity of Alien, did not get sued or have their films pulled as infamously others did, like Enzo G. Castellari for the Jaws inspired Great White (1981). Whilst Alien 2: On Earth was once an obscure title, likely because it did not have a known or infamous name in the director's chair, it was salvaged and rediscovered, allowing its mischief with a known franchise, and that it managed to get away with it, to sparkle with ghoulishness.  

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1) Taken from the featurette Franchised Terrorist: An Interview with Eli Roth, as was available on the British Blu Ray release by 88 Films.