Two dashing white folk attempt to expose a corrupt government agency’s dastardly eco-un-friendly plans. A snake farmer (paging Dr. Freud!) all alone in the jungle. Chuck Napier. Budweiser. And a big, awkward extraterrestrial of unknown origin with a huge-ass claw arm thingy… Can the unexpected combination of these four random thematic elements make for a gripping cinematic achievement; one that generations will reflect upon for an entire millennia to come? Well, no, stupid! This is a just another Italian rip-off of the Alien franchise; what the hell are you smoking?
Actually, the phrase “What the hell was the famous boot-shaped country’s prolific b-movie maestro Antonio Margheriti smoking?” comes to mind once you pop Alien From The Deep, a vastly-inept and barely comprehensible mess from 1989 that attempts to splice elements from James Cameron’s Aliens into a blatant “Save the Planet!” message from the damn hippies. Signori Margheriti (aka Anthony M. Dawson) has earned something of a soft spot within the hearts of numerous bad movie lovers around the world such as myself for his long career of paying copyright infringement-worthy homages to one motion picture hit after another during his forty-plus year career.
Quentin Tarantino even paid his own homage to the late director (who died in 2002) in Inglourious Basterds. But, of course, no matter how much we praise Margheriti’s epic gothic horror flick Castle Of Blood from 1964 (one of several truly inspired and memorable original works that weren’t total rip-offs), aficionados of fine Italian cheese will probably chuckle over the memory of watching Yor: The Hunter From The Future before anything else.
But even the epically-awful Yor: The Hunter From The Future is a step up over this film!
Not to call for a personal vendetta between the noun and myself, the “story” for Alien From The Deep consists of several different plots that were thrown into a blender and left to puree for far too long. During the movie’s seemingly eternal runtime (good, God, does this movie ever end?!), we meet the aforementioned pairing of two inept, journalists determined to bring about the downfall of a greedy pro-Nuke island-based factory; an unquestionably-generic Indiana Jones adventurer employed by a pharmaceutical company to extract venom from poisonous snakes; and — towards the middle of the film, when things almost kinda sorta start to kick in gear (but not quite) — a gigantic and humorously-bulky alien critter that has crash-landed on the planet for no apparent reason whatsoever.
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