Alien 2: On Earth (1980)

You already know how I feel about other cultures loving our (meaning: America's) movies so much that plagiarism is pretty much a given. Sometimes it works, sometimes it...wait, NO. It never works! There's just varying levels of failure.

Matter of fact, there's two levels of failure for foreign ripoffs of our films. There's the entertaining failure (Supersonic Man to our own Superman: The Movie) and the un-entertaining failure (Star Odyssey to our Star Wars), and though they have their differences, they are ripoffs of far-more successful films and suffer from budget restraints and the fact that...well...they're not from around here.

Before you say anything, I'm well aware that I should lower my expectations in such cases. No one, no matter the country, aims high when it comes to Xeroxing other movies - they make the movie quick, they distribute it even quicker. That's just the rules of the game and the way Obsequious Joe Productions does business.

But what about sequels?

No, I'm not talking sequels they way you know them: I mean sequels like Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws (1995) and Terminator 2: Shocking Dark (1990). Yeah; the unofficial sequels that strafe all throughout Europe and abroad, making paisanos and liebschiens alike believe that they are watching the licensed product of the original they saw in their friendly neighborhood cinecittà a few months ago.

It's not, but what would they know? These are the same schmoes who put David Hasselhoff at the top of the charts! Geez.....

Anyway, before I get any further afield: in 1979, Alien was released by 20th Century Fox Studios, directed by Ridley Scott, starred Sigourney Weaver and Tom Skerritt, featured the work of H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb and scared millions out of their sci-fi wits to the tune of some $185 million worldwide. Its success guaranteed sequels and big bucks for Fox, starting with Aliens in 1986.

BEFORE that, however...Italian director and writer Ciro Ippolito also saw this ground-breaking film and got the bright idea to do the world a favor and make a sequel to something his fellow countrymen apparently enjoyed. So from this train of thought came Alien 2: Sulla Terra, which translates quite easily into Alien 2: On Earth...and was released one year after the original Alien and a full six years before Aliens.

Timing...timing...timing!

Naturally, this being a sequel to Alien (unofficial sequel, but anyway), you would expect spaceships, alien planets, amazing effects, scary aliens and top-notch acting under the circumstances, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you??

It's not so much a warning when I tell you that you get none of the above as much as it is a "what did you expect" declaration. Just as you don't go to a Rob Liefeld exhibit expecting to see Michelangelo's David, you don't go into Alien 2: On Earth expecting anything from Alien. It's called common sense, paisano.

What should you expect? This: the film opens with stock NASA footage of astronauts in a space-bound craft sitting in chairs, shaving, flipping switches and the like as the brave technicians at NASA headquarters monitor their progress. Then it cuts to a TV studio where an interview is about to take place. THEN a car is shown emerging slowly from a garage to drive through a rainy, gloomy city. THEN the credits start.

Yes, all that disjuncture takes place in the first five minutes. I'd call it an artistic conceit, but I don't think Ciro Ippolito is an artisan.

The film itself concerns Thelma (Belinda Mayne), who is a spelunker (that's cave explorer, just so I can brag on my search engine usage) and also happens to be psychic, which apparently comes in handy more often than you may realize.

Spelunking Rule #37 - If you are going to be part of a spelunking expedition, make sure at least one of your members is psychic, since you never know when you'll need to mentally contact someone.

After a botched interview about cave exploration, Thelma decides to hang at the beach where she visits with a talkative fellow who barely lets her get a word in edgewise. Being psychic, I guess she should have seen that coming. Then she gets together with some friends at a local bowling alley where she and her boyfriend Roy (Mark Bodin) visit with a stereotypically jivey African-American fellow who wears funky radio headphones and has the combined appeal of Jimmie "JJ" Walker and Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington.

Spelunking Rule #54 - Beach-combing and bowling are important parts of spelunking. They should be a regular part of your pre-descent checklist.

Unfortunately, Thelma and Roy abandon such entertaining individuals and stick with their bland, uninteresting and dull-witted friends and head out to the desert to find a nice deep cave to spelunk in. And as they drive and drive (AND drive) there, they listen to The Oliver Onions along the way.

Real quick here: Oliver Onions (also known as Guido and Maurizio De Angelis) are really quite popular in Europe and have scored many films, including several Terence Hill/Bud Spencer flicks and that inestimable classic Yor: The Hunter From the Future. They've won awards, even. But here, they come off as Nilsson during a slump. Their beginning theme sounds like they're stuck in the middle of The Guess Who's "No Sugar Tonight" without a way out. Still, look 'em up; talented guys.

Anyhow, along the way, one of the nondescript friends takes the time outside the roadside bathroom (or roadside WC, since this IS an Italian movie) to pick up one of the weird blue rocks littering the ground and, fascinated, puts it in his backpack.

Spelunking Rule #7 - NEVER put a weird blue rock in your backpack. It only means trouble.

Soon, everyone reaches the big hole in the ground and starts exploring the cave, its caverns, the pointy-up rocks and the pointy-down rocks.

Okay, we're well into this and the only thing I've seen so far is a day in the life of a spelunker. All well and good except for the fact that they put the word Alien in the title of their little movie (and in about every other alternate title for it as well) - there's no escaping the fact that there must be an alien in their movie. Somewhere. Somehow. At some point. But now that we're stuck in a cave with a bunch of cave explorers...well, things don't look too good for our titles guy. He may get sacked.

It's okay, though, because that blue rock (remember that?) hatches a ropey thin alien toothy thing that leaps out at its victims in POV shots and attacks several members of the spelunking expedition. Not that this means we ever get a chance to see it.

Special effects guy Donald Patterly apparently realized that while he did indeed create alien life forms, maybe 17 dollars (or lire or whatever) wasn't enough from the budget kitty to make these creatures look at least as effective as Ridley Scott and company achieved.

Therefore, thick shadows were employed, as were oblique camera angles, odd POVs and scenes so muddled and confusing that you could watch this at least 10 times (Which I don't recommend. Really.) and still not know what this thing is supposed to look like. Near as I can tell, it's a lumpy snake with a big puppety-like head. And that's just a guess.

At least Patterly followed the lead of his creations and was never seen or heard from ever again after this. See; justice is still served in this world.

After a while, everyone in the expedition is alien-invaded, blown-up, bloodied-up, beheaded, stared down into destruction by Thelma or otherwise dispatched. In the end, only Thelma and Roy survive, make it out if the cave and struggle to make it back to civilization before it's too late.

Well, guess what? It IS too late! As evidenced by the abandoned bowling alley and other points along the way, it would seem civilization has bit the big one, leaving Thelma and Roy on their own...minus Roy, maybe.

Long after everyone watching has realized what psychic Thelma has neglected to compute (rendering her psychic standing vulnerable to attack by The Amazing Randi), an end title card comes up declaring, YOU MAY BE NEXT!

No; if the rest of the world population is dead, then I wouldn't be next because I'd already be dead. And if I were dead, then I was actually far ahead of the actual person who IS next, who also shouldn't exist for all the same reasons. And if no one else is next, then who exactly are the end credits talking to? Mars? Jupiter? Courascant?

I don't mind SPOILERING this one for you because, fellow movie sufferer, this is a painful experience in film that makes Gigli look like high romantic comedy. That makes The Room seem a dramatic powerhouse. That makes The Adventures of Pluto Nash...tolerable.

Alien 2: On Earth is the rare film that will give the viewer the opportunity to build their own migraine headache from the ground up. If you watch this and suffer untold mental anguish, you have no one but yourself to blame. I tried to warn you: YOU MAY BE NEXT!

One last thing; I find it fitting that in one of its last incarnations, the alien of the film appears to Thelma in the point of view of a pulsating...oh, how to put this in a nice way, I got it...rectal cavity opening. As fitting and as disgusting as that is, there's no better way to describe the act of watching this movie.

Spelunking Rule #88 - When confronted by a pulsating rectal cavity opening, stand perfectly still and scream; there may be a camera inside it trying to film your reaction.