Aliens<\/strong>: Dr. Sara Drumbull (big screen one-timer Haven Tyler) and an executive from the Tubular Corporation join a military task force and penetrate the heart of Venice, Italy, now a massively polluted ghost city where some company men were recently lost to some possible alien force.<\/p>\nThe team scope through assorted tunnels, encounter a survivor who emits a high frequency that stuns the soldiers (dubbed Super Team), and are soon picked off by a creature that\u2019s really a giant model head covered in\u00a0 slime which we see in fast whip-pans because the budget didn\u2019t allow for a full-sized animatronic creature.<\/p>\n
When the aliens are seen, it\u2019s stuntmen in rubber suits who bite into unfortunate Super Teamers, eventually eliminating the obvious clones of Cameron\u2019s Hicks, Hudson, Valdez & Drake, and fusing Alien<\/strong>\u2019s robotic Ash with Aliens<\/strong>\u2019 duplicitous Burke. And yes, there\u2019s a Newt knock-off.<\/p>\nThe mission\u2019s initially being managed from outside Venice in a safe control room by a Lt. Gorman clone who later sends in remaining super teamers to rescue the group\u2019s survivors and stop a countdown that\u2019ll blow-up the entire city, much like the finale where LV-426 is ready to blow\u2026 but before the imminent kaboom, Drudi pulls a twist from Terminator <\/strong>and has the remaining \u00a0survivors flipped back in time before Venice\u2019s reduction to a polluted wasteland, and amid tourists, has them hunted by the Ash-Burke hybrid who\u2019s now a half-naked T-800.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a preposterous mish-mash of not only grafted characters, but whole scenes from Alien <\/strong>plus dialogue, and the finale where Drumbull (Ripley) finds Samantha (Newt), then loses her, and treks down into the bowels of the station to find her sealed up in alien goo.<\/p>\nThe acting is abysmal, the grafted dialogue perfunctory if not moronic, and Mattei has no interest in building characters, which would be fine if <\/em>there was enough action to maintain momentum. Not unlike his prior film, the Predator<\/strong>–Robocop <\/strong>hybrid Robowar <\/strong>(1988), Mattei inserts numerous ponderous montages of the group navigating their way through tunnels and catacombs latticed with pipes, heavy metal doors, spewing steam, and metal gratings, but lacking a budget for masses of bullets, big guns, canons, and major stuntwork, with the exception of two shots<\/em> in which the camera is physically moved, the montages are comprised of characters approaching the camera which occasionally pans a slow left or right.<\/p>\nRiccardo Grassetti\u2019s bright lighting never lets one forget where the key light resides, and Mattei\u2019s use of the power station is remarkably limited and banal, which leaves any newcomer to Mattei\u2019s canon a bit baffled: Why the interest in such a knock-off which even its writers feel a bit embarrassed about?<\/em><\/p>\nMatteiophiles will no doubt relish his directorial peculiarities, and there is the perverse fascination in seeing how the grafted material was recombined into a weird generic hyrbrid that kind of works; even the time travel nonsense adds to the film\u2019s fromage factor. Geretta mimicking Vasquez and bullying the men like Aliens<\/strong>\u2019 cigar chomping Sergeant Apone is surreal, but also rewarding in seeing an aggressive, testosterone-packed woman ripping apart her male studs.<\/p>\nOne wishes Geretta had taken the role of Drumbell instead of Tyler who\u00a0emotes little beyond a bored visage, but then the former would\u2019ve been restricted by far less dialogue.<\/p>\n
Coulson\u2019s too old and too tall to play Newt knock-off Samantha, which makes her attempt to transcend the character\u2019s limited nature even funnier; the scenes in which she stands like a dope and shouts \u201cSah-rah!\u201d over and over again are hysterical.<\/p>\n
The last slice of fromage lies in the transformation of \u201cSamuel Fuller,\u201d the Ash-Burke hybrid whose robotic makeup is revealed by a gashed arm, and whose overacting chews up some choice scenery. Christopher Ahrens looks the part, but his limited performing ability ensures the last 3 people left alive for the finale are not only the weakest characters, but the worst acted.<\/p>\n
Although the score is credited to Carolo Maria Cordio, the generic synth cues sound like stock material tracked over scenes, and they\u2019ve little punch in the film\u2019s rudimentary mono mix.<\/p>\n
Severin\u2019s ongoing series of Mattei titles will please fans \u2013 this is probably the sharpest the film\u2019s ever looked \u2013 and the interviews help contextualize both the film within the careers of the writers and Geretta, who recalls the director with much fondness, having appeared in Rats<\/strong> (1984).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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\u00a9 2018 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n
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