Director: Ciro Ippolito (as Sam Cromwell), Biago Proietti
Year: 1980
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Alien 2 - Sulla Terra; Alien Terror; Strangers
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Attempting to explore an underground cave, a team of underground explorers are dismayed when a series of strange accidents and incidents start occurring where the team finds the cave is infested with alien beings that arrived from a recent astronaut voyage and must try to stop them from leaving the cave alive.
Review:
Generally, this is a pretty cheap and cheesy creature feature with some positive aspects. Most of the positives here are based around the film’s second half where it starts to generate some intriguing aspects. Having built up the underground explorer group and their upcoming expedition, this all comes off decently enough with the atmosphere of the underground caves working nicely alongside the encounters with the creatures that provide some tense enough scenarios. These build nicely to the enjoyable confrontation with the final creature in the cave as well as the typically apocalyptic ending which not only lets the cheesy creature effects and goopy gore that are present here for some enjoyable factors.
There are some big issues here holding this one down. Among the biggest drawbacks to this one is the random and highly uninvolved storyline that doesn’t engender itself rather well. The first half here isn’t that well developed going for a dual storyline here where we spend time with the two stories about the astronauts returning to Earth and the group of friends hanging out around the bowling alley while neither of them is all that intriguing. The astronauts are fine enough if interrupted far too frequently by the constant questions to the rock-climber so it makes sense yet interrupts the flow of it all, while the friends are simply unlikable with not knowing much about them and the bowling alley set is quite goofy, and appears as a cheap product placement plug.
The other real issue here is the overall cheapness of the whole thing appearing as a general low-budget approach that undoes a lot of what’s going on here. The opening’s frequent use of grainy stock footage to stretch out the running time and set up the story at play is a huge mark here due to the mismatch it creates against the proper footage. The cave locations are obviously cheap and flimsy soundstages when it’s not underlit to make it hard to see what’s going on, and it all looks cheap and rushed as a result. The last minor flaw here is the inherently silly use of the telekinetic powers that come into play as the concept is ridiculous and feels shoehorned into the film for no real reason, all of which hold this one down.
Overview: **.5/5
An underwhelming if still somewhat watchable genre effort, there’s enough to this one to keep it tolerable at best but its flaws do end up holding it back into being just a cheesy genre figure. Those who appreciate this kind of genre effort, enjoy this period of Eurohorror, or are fans of this brand of cheesy creature feature will like this one the most while most others out there should heed caution with it.
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