While these sort of marathons are generally a fairly satisfying sort of length, there are always a few that manage silly genre movies that slip past due to time or other factors. There are always more. Which is fine, since a quick jaunt into the vaults of Italian horror is hardly something I need an excuse for these days. We've got some zombies lined up, but first off we have a story about alien visitors with Luigi Cozzi's 1980 Alien rip-off Contamination.
A mysterious ship floats into the New York City harbour, with all of the crew missing. Soon its cargo is discovered - a bunch of suspicious coffee crates from South America full of avocados. But wait! Of course these are alive, and prone to releasing translucent slime over unsuspecting people who get too close. Whether they are outfitted with hazmat suits or not, the victims find the substance is rather nasty, causing burns and quickly exploding their bodies from inside. For some reason. Did I mention all the exploding? This this the exploding eggs movie.
Now then... it's unclear exactly why this happens. You'd think eggs that release some sort of cosmic spores might need live hosts or some time to incubate. But what the hell, if you're going to steal from Alien you might as well get straight to the effects and try outdo Ridley Scott's chestburster scene in the first few minutes. This isn't a film with a lot of internal logic despite the overall plot in which these cases of green pods are being shipped into the USA by a nefarious organisation.
Besides the staple splatter scenes this also stars Ian McCullock from Zombi 2 as a disgraced space explorer and you get a groovy but fairly simplistic period score from Goblin. There's a backstory involving astronauts, a lot of mind control and a reasonable amount of atmosphere. Some of the investigation scenes are pretty tense. The cause of all this is slightly spoiled by the opening credits if you pay attention, but it's not that important.
The space man teams up with a government agent and a cop as they race to discover the sinister plot. There's a lot of padding and conclusion isn't really satisfying thanks to silly shock ending. But most of it does the job, more or less. Some of the usual horror movie decision making is done by irrational characters and there's a lot of dubbing but I found it to be entertaining overall. There are some fun sci-fi sets and models, and overall I could probably chalk it up as a guilty pleasure.
3/5
I can't say the same for Nightmare City unfortunately, which as far as the zombie genre goes isn't something I found that entertaining or atmospheric. Sorry forgive me, they're not zombies... they're radiation victims. The director of this would like to think so at least. They attack by biting and multiply by the same method, and they have a drop in rational thought power. So in a way they are probably more like vampires, since their bodies cannot produce red cells they must take them from their victims.
I think Umberto Lenzi misunderstood how leukaemia works. What they look like on the other hand ... is people who need a wash. Some have what looks like manure smeared over their faces. More generously than others in some cases. A lot of them didn't both to put in the effort at all and have far less make-up (if any) which is a shame. But the effect is still pretty funny in any case. They still run about glaring wildly and try to look threatening anyway.
As a film taken on it's own terms there's a lot of random moments like an aerobics programme being filmed. The attack scenes are all repetitive as the radioactive goons burst into TV stations and hospitals, and run around hitting or stabbing people with weapons. There's a lot of gratuitous bare cleavage during some moments, which just detracts from any sense of panic or tension since it feels so sleazy. The story itself follows a reporter after he sees how this all began; an unmarked plane full of irate blood drinkers arrives as they film it landing, and soon he's on the run with his girlfriend.
Occasionally she'll pause to reminisce about the good old days or to think about how all of this is humanity's fault because of nuclear power or the state of the environment. I mean, sure? It's nice to have a message but this isn't place. Most of the time they just arrive somewhere that looks like a nice peaceful place to hide, before being proven wrong and having to escape. The next place though, I'm sure that that will be just fine, take a load off. There are subplots about military personnel and random housewives who don't understand how to secure the entrances to their homes; typical horror movie decision making is prevalent again here. Add a silly ending onto this and you get a less than exemplary pseudo zombie story, with more unintended laughs than chills - even if the running undead idea might have started here.
2/5
