The United States is preparing to welcome back a spacecraft with two American astronauts on board. Meanwhile, the speleologist Thelma, after being a guest on a television program, is preparing to embark, along with her group, on a new mission in the caves of the eastern coast. Thelma, however, is endowed with telepathic abilities and perceives a nefarious power about to unleash itself. When the spacecraft lands, the authorities discover that there are no survivors and with it have arrived some fragments of pulsating alien rock; one of these is collected by Burt and given to Thelma just before starting the descent into the caves. The rocky fragment contains an alien parasite that unleashes itself in the caves, infecting and killing one member of the expedition after another.
One of the peculiarities of our fantastic cinema has been the ability to capture the success of international films and rework them in a strongly homemade perspective, often alluding to the original only in the title. The 1980s were the pinnacle of this creative appropriation, often ending up in territories of reckless plagiarism — as happened to certain works signed by Bruno Mattei — others using only the "famous" title as a decoy to tell completely new stories. In doing so, we have come across products of great success and enormous artistic value, such as the trailblazer "Zombi 2" by Lucio Fulci, and others with notoriously poor quality, such as "Terminator 2" by Bruno Mattei, and "Non aprite quella porta 3" by Claudio Fragasso.
Among the very first attempts to capture the public by posing as an apocryphal sequel is "Alien 2 sulla Terra" by Ciro Ippolito.
It was 1980 and the idea of reworking the theme of "Alien" in a terrestrial variant came to director and editor Carlo Broglio after seeing Scott's film. Ippolito's intuition, who also took care of the screenplay, was to move the action from the depths of space to those on Earth, thus facilitating the production of the film and having a sufficiently strong and original idea on which to build the film. In fact, Ippolito's intuition was not wrong at all and having as the main location the caves of Castellana, in the province of Bari, represented the true winning point of the project. The bowels of the Earth, in fact, are an optimal place to set a horror film, naturally predisposed to creating anxiety and unease due to the impossibility of escape, as well as a claustrophobic sensation regardless of the construction of tension.
The chronicles of the time tell us how the production of "Alien 2 sulla Terra" was not one of the easiest, starting with the inexperience of the people involved. Ippolito was initially limited to the role of screenwriter and producer, but had to improvise as a director — thus making his debut behind the camera — after the abandonment of the set by Biagio Proietti, already director of "La morte risale a ieri sera" and "L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone." Proietti was fired due to misunderstandings on the set and in his place Ippolito wanted to hire Mario Bava, who at that time was busy with "La Venere d'Ille" and therefore declined the offer, advising him to take care of the direction himself and giving him some tips for the homemade realization of the special effects.
Beyond the troubles with the direction, then signed by Ippolito himself with the pseudonym Sam Cromwell, "Alien 2 sulla Terra" was made with a ridiculous budget, initially composed of 400 million lire, but reduced to very little due to production waste that have since become legend. The fact is that the all-Italian art of making do came to the aid of Ippolito and company and "Alien 2 sulla Terra," despite the evident budget limitations, resulted in a dignified fanta-horror with a sufficiently exploited high concept.
It is the location that makes the film and the idea of setting it underground was a winning one. The alien creatures did not exist, recreated through subjective and fleeting appearances in which tripe soaked in syrup gave the appearance of a monstrous being, so all the attention of the viewer had to be focused on the anguishing situation and the inexorable body count, to which the cramped and inhospitable setting contributed fundamentally.
Some splatter ideas are also remembered with pleasure, especially the scene in which the speleologist remains hanging upside down with the alien creature wrapped around his neck, until it consumes his flesh and causes an impressive decapitation.
In some respects, "Alien 2 sulla Terra" almost anticipates some solutions that will then be at the center of Carpenter's "The Thing," with bodily mutations and alien possessions, and of course the scene in which the famous chest perforation of "Alien" is cited, with an alien snake that this time breaks through the skull of one of its victims, emerging from an eye.
Naivety is not lacking and the idea of endowing the protagonist with paranormal abilities has no importance at the narrative level, resulting in an unnecessary element in the context. Some dialogues are particularly bad, almost improvised, but it is the product as a whole that emanates a particular charm from a handmade work realized with full awareness.
Among the actors, the protagonist Belinda Mayne stands out, who will later appear in the slasher "Non aprite prima di Natale" and in the TV series "Doctor Who." But among the speleologists there is also the future director Michele Soavi, credited as Michael Shaw.
It seems that Ippolito also had legal problems with 20th Century Fox for the use of the title "Alien," ending up in court with the American major, even though the case was later won by the Neapolitan director, who in turn, in recent times, has sued Neil Marshall for plagiarism due to the similarity of his "The Descent — Discesa nelle Tenebre..." a denunciation that, obviously, did not find follow-up.
"Alien 2 sulla Terra" was first released on DVD in Italy in May 2014 by Minerva Pictures. The film had practically disappeared, as the only Italian home video edition by Gvr dated back to the 1980s. The Minerva Pictures edition boasts a very sharp video master, which is practically the same remastered version distributed in the United States in 2011. To this, we add a dual audio track (Italian and English) in Dolby Digital 2.0 that gives the right intensity to the sound. Unfortunately, no extra content is present.
Comments
Comments (0)
Comments