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.