Inseminoid (1981)

Why so much hype?

Excellent but underrated film

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This paint by number alien flick has colored inside the lines on so many levels, it so sad they missed the most important one…. How man deals with man during this catastrophe. Anyhoo the boys aren't hup- hupping around in black pajamas but they are hup hupping in specially designed top gun painted helmets. So they o have the latest tactical sheik. ANyhoo they land on a planet, something strange goes on, the black guy gets killed first, of course. Once they discover the infection it becomes who's infected. Then they realize they must stop the infected from reaching earth. And thus the big hunt begins and brother turns on brother as the figure out who is infected, and who's not.

Britain has produced some great science fiction writers, such as the late Sir Arthur C Clarke, and an iconic science fiction television show, "Doctor Who". Sci-fi, however, has not been something that the British cinema has normally excelled in, although there have been occasional exceptions such as "Village of the Damned" and "Quest for Love". In the late seventies and early eighties, however, sci-fi was all the rage, following the success of "Star Wars", and even the British felt they had to get in on the act. Lack of finance meant that Britain was unable to produce its own big-budget space epics of the "Star Wars" type; that camp, self-mocking parody "Flash Gordon" was about the closest we got. "Inseminoid" is rather based upon another successful American science fiction film of the late seventies, "Alien".A group of interplanetary archaeologists (apparently in the far distant future there will be such an academic discipline) are carrying out a dig on an alien planet, otherwise known as Chislehurst (a dormitory town on the southern edge of London). One of the team, Sandy, is raped and impregnated by an alien creature. (Although the film is set many centuries in the future, all the characters have nice, user-friendly twentieth century English names like Mark, Gary, Sharon and Sandy). Pregnancy seems to change Sandy's character for the worse, because she goes on a homicidal rampage, slaughtering her colleagues one by one in order to feed on their blood. Although Sandy is outnumbered by about ten to one, and although the others have weapons which she lacks, they are unable to combine effectively to overcome her, merely offering themselves up like lambs to the slaughter.In the course of the film we make some interesting discoveries about the planet and its inhabitants, namely:- • Alien males have transparent plastic penises.• The main symptom of pregnancy among alien females is not morning sickness but murderous bloodlust. This possibly explains why their species is on the verge of extinction.• Contrary to what biologists might think, it is quite possible for humanoid life to evolve on a barren planet with temperatures of ninety degrees below zero.• There may be intelligent life in outer space but there is precious little in the British film industry.The film was made on a very low budget, as will be evident from the sets, costumes and props. The only thing director Norman Warren can do to make the exterior scenes look a bit less like Chislehurst is to shoot them through a red filter, although that makes it look as though the characters are moving at the bottom of an ocean of strawberry jam.Low budgets are not necessarily an impossible obstacle in the science-fiction field; the makers of British television series such as "Doctor Who" and "Blake's Seven", and even American ones such as "Star Trek", did not have at their disposal the huge amounts of cash George Lucas spent on "Star Wars". They could, however, sometimes call upon intelligent scripts and decent acting, which is not the case with "Inseminoid". The cast, at least on the female side, includes some relatively well-known names such as Judy Geeson, Stephanie Beacham and Victoria Tennant, none of whom look as though they know what they are doing in a film like this.At its best, science fiction can ask some pertinent questions about how science and technology might possibly develop in the future, and also about the philosophical, ethical and social implications of those developments. At its worst, it is "Plan 9 from Outer Space". On a scale of Ed Wood to Asimov, "Inseminoid" comes very close to the bottom end; it is only the third film I have ever given the minimum mark. The science fiction setting is really no more than an excuse for some video-nasty type gore and mayhem. 1/10.

Scientists encounter something buried within a cavernous entombment that somehow infects two men. One goes bonkers and is quickly deposited of. Amazing that he is put away by Kate(Stephanie Beacham)yet the entire crew has a problem killing another, Sandy(Judy Geeson)who is kidnapped by a big bug-eyed alien who inserts a tube into her vagina with little monster fetuses making their way into the human womb for gestation. Somehow, and this I never understood, the alien has done something to Sandy's brain where she has to obey it(..I guess;for some reason we never see it again which is kind of strange because you'd think it would like a piece of the action)equipped with enormous power to toss the others aside like paper. Instead of banding together, the crew members often separate(..before this they didn't even bother her;there's a large portion of time where she just runs around free)leaving themselves open and always prone for extermination. At first, we see Sandy battling with the thing inside her mind with the control of it too powerful for her to withstand. The thing that has puzzled me is when Sandy was left alone in the room as she was recuperating. The doc sees a hole insert where obviously someone or thing have bored there for some reason, yet little researching into that is done. She's pregnant, we get that, yet the scientists run no tests to determine what caused the pregnancy. Okay, saying this, if the scientists had done their jobs, ran some tests, and studied what happened to Sandy while outside the compound, perhaps some lives might've been saved. But, these characters are presented so inept and stupid, it's no wonder they die so easily. They try to face off with her one at a time(..when they do try to apprehend her in twos, they get in each other's way easily allowing Sandy to get enough shots in to escape and maim them)with the result nearly always the same..death. Oh, and to top it off, they find the monster babies once they are born(with Sandy screaming in agony)yet instead of killing the alien bastards, they hold onto them! Oh, and besides being equipped with superpowers, Sandy can also now breathe the atmosphere outside despite still having the same human skin as the others.I hope I have proved the point that this is a horrible exercise in ineptitude. It comes from the fact that the screenplay was written with little awareness to fine detail. You get lots of implausibilities piled upon implausibilities not even explaining how a human, even if she is controlled by a bug-eyed alien, could toss around humans with such ease and breathe the frozen atmosphere(produced to us in the beginning of being 90 degrees below freezing). And, there are moments where they could've stopped Sandy, particularly as she's giving birth. She was crouched in agony with little chance of fighting them, yet the crew listen on in fear not even trying an attempt to save their own skin. The effects are cheap and the cast, except Geeson, do little to assist the terrible plot. There is some decent gore(mainly stomachs being ripped open), but not enough to satisfy.

Man, this deliciously vicious early 80's British low-budget "ALIEN" rip-off can't seem to buy a positive comment. Well, luckily I'm here to post the token "where's this fool's head at?" odd man out favorable review for this enjoyably rough'n'nasty sci-fi/horror nugget. This extremely crude (and hence pretty smoking in my severely misguided book) dreck epic par excellence arguably boasts the single most brazen and absurd premise imaginable: Judy Geeson (yes, the same exact Judy Geeson of "To Sir With Love" fame) delivers a bang-up performance in the very thankless part of a luckless arid desert planet explorer who gets raped and impregnated by a foul extraterrestrial monster, which in turn causes her to go utterly bonkers and savagely butcher her fellow researchers. Geeson blows one guy's stomach open with a bulky laser gun, slices up future Steve Martin better half Victoria Tennant with a pair of scissors and snacks on a shrieking Jennifer Ashley, taking time out in between committing these ghastly murders to give painful birth to two slimy and ugly lethal humanoid alien babies in a sickening sequence that's absolutely appalling to behold (naturally, it's one of my favorite moments in the film). Directed with a laudable lack of taste and restraint by Norman J. Warren, with a quick, steady pace, a suitably bleak tone, some pleasingly barbed dialogue ("That would look great on the report," one beleaguered astronaut caustically remarks, "the team terrorized by an expectant mother"), an unusually strong cast, plenty of unflinching in-your-face graphic splatter, and a way funky score by John Scott, "Inseminoid" rates highly as first-rate unapologetic down'n'dirty trash that's not to be missed by hardcore connoisseurs of low-grade sleazy cinema.