User Reviews

Alien Arrives on Earth is a 17 minute documentary produced by Blue Underground for their DVD release of Contamination (1980), the documentary is also featured on the British Anchor Bay DVD which is where I saw it. The only participant is the writer & director of Contamination Luigi Cozzi, the entire interview is conducted in Italian with English subtitles. As you would expect Cozzi discusses the film, it's Sci-Fi origins & influences, difficult producers, he openly says that the film was conceived as Alien (1979) set on Earth with a much smaller budget, the casting of Ian McCulloch who got the job purely because of the success of his previous acting job in Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (1979) which was doing big business at that time & that Canadian actress Louise Marleau was forced upon him by the producer who thought the role should go to someone old & ugly (Cozzi wanted Caroline Munro). He says the film was shot in 5 weeks, he also reveals that the exploding stomachs consisted of Chicken livers, guts & Cows intestines brought from a local butcher while the infamous alien eggs were mostly painted balloons & that the alien at the end was a nightmare to film & nothing worked properly on it. Cozzi also says that he hates the title Contamination which was forced upon him again by an awkward producer & much prefers the title Alien Arrives on the Earth, he talks of how the film was a box-office flop on it's initial release as well. Alien Arrives on Earth is a nice companion piece on the DVD & considering it's a free extra I think it's a great watch. I'm one of the few that actually really rather enjoy Contamination as a film so I found it interesting to listen to Cozzi discuss the film & get some behind-the-scenes information, he comes across as quite open & honest about the film. There are plenty of clips, a lot of the gory highlights are shown which isn't a bad thing & it uses bit 'n' pieces of the brilliant Goblin score for it's background music. Overall this is one of my favourite little featurettes that I have seen on DVD but that could be down to the fact that I like the film it's based on quite a lot. Definitely worth 17 minutes of your time & an absolute must for any other Contamination fans out there (if any exist!).

This is a mini-documentary about "Contamination" as an extra on the Blue Underground DVD of said movie.Director talks about his previous films, why he hates the title "Contamination", how the producer wanted more 'James Bond' and less sci-fi, the choice of actors, the costumes, locations, how he did the special effects (the alien eggs were balloons, the monster cardboard), the movies that inspired him, The Goblins, and why he stopped making movies. All in all a solid featurette and worthy of a look. So I feel that i can give it my seal of approval (like that matters in the least hehehe. So onto my grade

My grade: B

Alien Arrives on Earth (2003)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another excellent featurette from David Gregory and Blue Underground. This one here clocks in at 17-minutes and features director Luigi Cozzi talking about his film CONTAMINATION. What I enjoyed most about this is how likable Cozzi comes across as he talks about his love for the genre and I also respect the fact that he doesn't try to lie and say ALIEN didn't influence the film. A lot of times directors will lie at all costs to say their film is "original" but that's not the case here as Cozzi talks about the Ridley Scott film and what he wanted to do with this picture. He also tells some nice stories about the production of the film, which was just five weeks and there's also talk about the casting. Some of the best stories come from him talking about the film bombing in Italy only to later make money in America. He also talks about how he objected to the R-rating because he didn't feel the violence or gore was worthy of a strong rating (can you imagine this film as a PG?). Overall, if you're a fan of the film then you're really going to love this featurette. Even if you weren't crazy about the movie it's still highly entertaining and very much worth watching.