Sorry....

I just recently moved and haven't had my internet set up yet. Supposedly, it's happening tuesday. Will be back with some reviews then (I hope). Thanks to all my followers (all 12 of you) for not dropping me!

Inseminoid (1981)

Well, shit man. Two alien rape films in a row! I can assure you this was not the intent. After sitting (suffering?) through Breeders I meant to take a breather from this, somewhat unfortunate, sub-genre. Too bad I forgot to check my netflix queue. Somehow, this one was on top. Similar to Breeders, I didn't take any notes during the thing. Also, like Breeders there is an alien involved. The main difference, as far as I could tell, was that the alien in Inseminoid (or Horror Planet as the version I watched was called) has a singular goal involving procreation. The alien in Breeders is more a fan of the act of bukake, involving three willing "virgins" from New York City. It's more interested in quick, sexual gratification, with anonymous partners.

I just wish the filmmakers (of Inseminoid) had some courage to go with their convictions. I mean, here we got an alien (that's shown once in a fairly dreamy, i.e. no budget, sequence) that rapes a woman with a see-through tube full of it's spunk. It must be it's race's version of a fertility doctor. So, it's an artificially inseminating alien, more than a rape-alien. Besides, rape, as a concept, may not exist for the thing. I actually liked the alien design but we almost never see it outside of this scene. Clearly, the film crew had no confidence in the appearance of their creation, their baby. After the victim, we'll call her Judy, is impregnated the picture follows her around as she insanely tries to defend her unborn alien fetuses (yes, Twins!). She murders with superhuman strength, drinks the blood from the bodies, screams incoherently, etc. Her babies are space vampires apparently. There is not much else to this picture. a little nudity confined to that dreamy insemination sequence (minimal to average turn on). A few amateurish shots of outer space, and lots of taking this shit way too seriously (which is something I usually appreciate).

Inseminoid has a plot, incredibly mundane as it may be, outside of the alien insemination and subsequent pregnancy. A group of astronauts land their ship on some planet. They discover an alien tomb. A small group goes out to investigate. One guy finds some strange space rocks which explode, injuring the John Hurt character. Later, he's brought back to the infirmary (I think there was an argument about quarantine procedures in here, but can't really be sure) and, even later, he goes insane. I can't remember how this ties into the alien that eventually inseminates poor Judy but I can tell you that there's between 30-40 minutes of this bullshit before we even get to what this piece of shit considers "the good shit".

There are two sets; alien tomb/caves and the ship/space lab. The picture does a lousy job of establishing location. I mean, we can tell when a certain character is in a cave or when they're on the ship. Unfortunately, we can't really make out distance or location in relation to other locations. A couple of scenes are shot through a red filter so I'm guessing those were meant to take place on the planet's surface.

I can't give you character name's because I don't remember them. Except for Judy, the inseminoid's victim. Several women factored in somehow (only one becomes an alien sperm container). A black guy. Couple white guys too. All British speaking and, therefore, humorless. There's a good scene involving a woman getting her foot stuck in a hole (while outside the ship and in a spacesuit) and having to saw it off before her oxygen runs out. I think that was the reason anyway. Minor spoiler: She sawed off her own foot and still asphyxiated. Good stuff.

Of course, this being an "impregnated by an alien" type picture (Alien, Breeders, perhaps Baby Blood, Starman, E.T., etc) there is sure to be a birthing scene. This one doesn't disappoint. Lots of spurting goo, some labor pains, etc. Unfortunately, the filmmaker's blew a golden opportunity to have the little son's of a bitch (accurate description of Judy) go It's Alive on everything in sight. I just sorta remember them being born and then there's a shot of another space craft descending towards the planet in response to their distress beacon. Who the fuck knows, I may have that completely wrong. Barely paid attention.

I would have enjoyed this more if Inseminoid was more prominently involved. Kinda surprising that he wasn't since the picture was named after him and shit. Maybe that's why they changed the name to Horror Planet. I didn't buy into this Judy character picking off the rest of her crew one by one and sometimes two at a time. Who gives a shit? Too easy, if you ask me. Where's the fucking suspense? I get that she was determined to protect her unborn deadly spawn and that pregnant women are bug nuts insane, but come on already. How did she get so strong? Why can't the gore effects be more convincing? What's with the implied telepathy? Could all this have something to do with the alien load she received, but didn't exactly sign for?

I liked the alien design (what little we saw of it anyway). Fucking show it more! Imagine if Jaws had been about a shark impregnating a woman and then having that woman kill everyone in Amity to protect their babies, while the shark remains off screen for the entire fucking movie. Well, that's not really close to the same thing. Still, Spielberg made the wise decision in having the shark be responsible for the actual killing. Also, he showed the thing at the end. Here's an idea for this picture. Why not have the alien impregnate Judy, take her back to it's lair, and spend the rest of the picture protecting her? It might even allow us sympathize a bit with the thing. What if it's the last of it's kind? Also, get off that fucking ship every now and then. For being a crew of scientists, these guys don't do much in the way of science type shit. They spend half their time sitting in the ship's cafe, drinking out of dixie cups and talking about shit they should be doing. Where's the fucking lab work, the analyzing of data, the extracting of face huggers, the fondling of breasts?

As much as I enjoyed Breeders I'll be the first to admit it's main weakness is the lack of a narrative flow. Usually, that's something I require. For some reason, Breeders worked ok without it (maybe it was the rampant nudity, or the lovable creature designs, or the pool of spunk). Well, Inseminoid has a story (sort of) but it still failed miserably. The acting was superior, across the board, to Breeders. Everything is taken seriously (again, this is a plus). Could it be possible that the only things I need to keep me satisfied are a solid creature design (shown often) and naked females? I don't believe that. I can't believe that. I just wonder why these guys would make a movie taking place millions of light years away and restrict the thing to two unimaginative sets, give us a solid alien-type being and never use the thing, not spend more time impressing us with creative bloodletting, etc? What we have in Inseminoid is basically a primitive, boring, slasher film that's set in space, only not really. True, the location spans space, yet is completely tied to an unconvincing sound stage in Britain. Fuck this movie for not having the balls to be about what it wanted to be about.

Breeders (1986)

If aliens ever do invade our world I'm sure they'd immediately get to some serious raping like this film hypothesizes. Breeders is that all too common type of film involving a pretty cool looking creature saddled with a putrid story involving constantly naked women, atrocious acting, pools of spunk, and some more naked women. In other words, a hearty recommendation.

I'm actually not sure where to begin with this one so I'll just start at the beginning. A young woman is driving around a bad part of Manhattan with her, much too forward, date. It's the middle of the night. She demands he stop so she can get out. She encounters an old German man out walking his dog. Old geezer says she should know better than to walk through this part of the city after dark, all alone. Old geezer doubles over in pain. Old geezer turns into an alien, tears off woman's dress, rapes her (off screen), etc. Rape alien spews black spunk.

That scene basically represents the beginning, the middle, and the end of this picture. Along the way, we encounter several characters; a lady doctor, a detective, a fashion photographer, several girls who have been "around the block" more times than they can count trying to pass themselves off as virgins. Seriously, who are these girls kidding? Basically, the moral of the story is, especially if you're a girl, sleep around. A lot. Don't take any unnecessary chances girls. Just give it up already before rape-alien comes to your town.

There's a story in here somewhere. We learn the alien traveled to earth on a space spore. Landed in Manhattan, made his home in the underground, mauls an elderly bag lady, and so on. The detective and the doctor try to solve the case while caring for the victims at Manhattan General Hospital. Several rape victims have been admitted with acid burns. Also, covered in alien DNA. The actors are unanimously awful. The script, the direction, etc all lousy. The female doctor looks at the victims and says it's things like this that make her want to kill every man on the planet.

What we got though are several completely naked women. We got a scene where a fashion model strips off all her clothes and, as soon as the photographer and her gay friend leave the room, begins writhing around on the floor. It's her Jennifer Beals moment. Then, the gay friend returns and morphs into rape-alien.

So, we got a movie inspired by Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and possibly The Thing. Only with rape. The creature can apparently take many forms as long as that form is human. No rape-kitties or rape-plants or any shit like that. The alien looks sorta like Brundle fly only with a giant priapic penis (looking like a tentacle) spewing it's black stuff all over the fucking place.

This is not really a good one folks. The suspense is minimal. The only question is how long before she takes off that robe and is she trimmed? Whenever a new character is introduced we know exactly what's going to happen to them. There's one plot line, involving this movie's version of a virgin about to get naked and take a bath, that is completely dropped. We never see the broad again. I guess the two main characters, besides rape-alien, are the doctor (Teresa Farley) and the detective (Lance Lews man) who is apparently the only cop on the entire fucking island.

The end is incredibly bizarre. I'll give the film minor credit for at least being way out there, and borderline inspired, for one scene. It involves the rape victims waking from their slumbers and being psychically drawn down into the New York sewers. Once there, they gyrate, hug, and fondle each other, while quite naked, in a vat filled with alien spunk. I guess this is where the picture earns its name.

I'll just sum up by saying this was well worth the $3.99 I paid for it. I'm not being sarcastic with that statement. I mean, the movie is a piece of shit but at least it has the sense to treat this material like Shakespeare. Teresa Farley is probably the worst actress to star in a movie I've reviewed. Seriously, check out her emotions in this thing. She's a fucking cold fish so it's no wonder the alien stays away from her. The alien design is good; scale-y, squid-y, spew-y. This is more than I wanted to write about a plot-less movie with a raping alien.