Alien 2 - Sulla Terra

Plot synopsis:
The commercial spacecraft Nostromo is on a return trip to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis: Captain Dallas (Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (Hurt), Warrant Officer Ripley (Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Cartwright), Science Officer Ash (Holm), two Engineers, Parker (Kotto) and Brett (Stanton) and also a cat named Jones. Detecting a mysterious transmission from the nearby planetoid LV-426, the ship's computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Company policy requires crews to investigate such transmissions so they land on the planetoid, sustaining damage from its atmosphere and rocky landscape. Parker and Brett repair the ship while Dallas, Kane and Lambert head out to investigate. They discover the signal comes from a derelict alien spacecraft and head inside it, losing communication with Ash. Exploring the spacecraft, they find the remains of a large alien creature whose rib cage appears to have exploded from the inside.
On Nostromo, Ripley determines that the transmission may be a warning, not a distress call. In the alien ship, Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large egg-like objects. As he inspects one, a creature springs out and attaches to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo. As acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash ignores Ripley and lets them in. The crew unsuccessfully attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face, discovering that its blood is an extremely corrosive acid. It later detaches on its own and dies.
With the ship partly repaired, the crew lifts off. Kane awakens, dazed but otherwise unharmed. During a final crew meal before stasis, he chokes and convulses in pain. He dies as a small alien creature bursts from his chest and escapes out into the ship. Wary of its corrosive blood, the crew attempts to locate and capture it with motion trackers, nets, electric prods and flamethrowers.
While looking for the alien signals with motion trackers, Jones, the crew's Cat, was accidentally detected and emerges scared from a hole. To prevent further confusion, Brett tries to catch the cat and follows it into an engine room, where the now fully-grown alien (Badejo) attacks him and disappears with his body into an air shaft. After heated discussion, the crew decide the creature must be in the air ducts. They plan to herd it into an airlock to jettison from the ship. Dallas enters and searches the Nostromo's ventilation ducts but it ambushes him. Lambert implores the others to abandon ship and escape in its small shuttle. Now in command, Ripley explains that the shuttle will not support four people and pushes to continue with Dallas' plan of flushing the alien out.
Now with access to Mother, Ripley discovers that Ash has been secretly ordered to return the alien to the company, with the crew expendable. Ripley confronts Ash and he tries to choke her to death. Parker intervenes and clubs Ash, knocking off his head to reveal him to be an android. Parker reanimates Ash's head and they learn he was assigned to the Nostromo to ensure the creature was returned for analysis at any expense, including the crew's lives. Ash taunts them about their chances against the "perfect organism". Ripley disconnects Ash and Parker burns his smashed remains with a flamethrower.
Ripley, Lambert, and Parker agree to set the Nostromo to self-destruct and escape in the shuttle. However, Parker and Lambert are killed by the alien while gathering life-support supplies. Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence and heads for the shuttle with Jones but finds the alien in her path. She retreats and attempts unsuccessfully to abort the self-destruct, so she tries again for the shuttle. The alien has gone and she narrowly escapes in the shuttle with Jones as the Nostromo explodes.
As she prepares for stasis, Ripley finds the alien aboard the shuttle. She dons a spacesuit and opens the shuttle's airlock, causing explosive decompression which forces the alien into the airlock doorway. She propels it into space by shooting it with a grappling hook, but the gun catches in the closing airlock, tethering the alien to the shuttle. It attempts to crawl into one of the engines but Ripley fires them to blast the alien into space. After recording the ship's final log entry, she places herself and Jones into stasis for the voyage home to Earth.

Tags: violence

Review:
They've got some nerve calling this film Alien 2: although certain elements have clearly been inspired by Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror classic, the film as a whole couldn't be more differentWant tense, claustrophobic, space-bound, futuristic action?
Unfortunately, this means we get endless tedious footage of the characters wandering around the cave, the director so preoccupied by the wonderful rock formations that he forgets all about telling a coherent story, throwing in such random nonsense as a telepathic speleologist just for the hell of it.Looking forward to seeing a cool alien creature?
This film's extraterrestrial starts off as a blue rock, turns into a red hand puppet in a moment that rips off Alien's chest-burster (although I admit that the face-burster scene is pretty cool), and finally becomes a mass of indistinguishable and very unconvincing tentacle thingies.Expecting ground-breaking special effects?
This is a low-budget Italian production, so all we get is some grainy stock footage for scenes involving a space mission returning to Earth, and some cheap gore.
Thankfully, the latter is pretty juicy: the aforementioned face-burster sees the victim's eyeball pushed from its socket before the creature erupts; one of the cavers has his head chewed off, the severed noggin (complete with assorted giblets) falling onto the rocks below with a satisfying 'thud'; and another guy's head explodes to reveal thrashing tentacles.What about a thrilling finalé?
After a couple of encounters with the creature, the last pair of survivors emerge from the cave to discover that the planet is totally deserted, with the exception of the alien, which chases them around for a while, director Ciro Ippolito employing dreadful alien POV shots.
It's a lousy way to wrap up a fairly dismal film which is barely worth enduring for the gore (and a bit of gratuitous topless nudity from star Belinda Mayne)..
1980 was a banner year for Italians doing ripoffs as the film world received ZOMBI 2 (aka ZOMBIE) and this "sequel" to ALIEN.
Of course, the Italians wisely set it on earth, something the ALIEN series has been trying to do for almost 30 years now.Three astronauts return to earth in a space capsule, but are all mysteriously missing when the device is recovered at sea.
Along the way to the caves, Burt (Michele Soavi) picks up a curious looking rock which is actually an alien lifeform that spread over the desert upon the astronauts' re-entry.
The group heads into the caves and, before you can scream THE DESCENT, find themselves getting bloodied up by our rock monster.The last half hour or so is decent when the space monster finally attacks.
For some reason, Ippolito is intent on trying to make a bowling alley the scariest place on earth in the finale.
The film does end on a grim note and the scenes of the lead actress running around a deserted San Diego, CA are pretty effective.
This massively incoherent, dumb, cheesy and amateurish Italian early-eighties "movie-thing" rewards itself with the title "Alien 2" but there's very little, even no relation with Ridley Scott's Sci-Fi masterpiece that single-handedly altered the status of the genre.
That's right, even in the gigantic world of Italian rip-off cinema he's an absolute nobody, and then still "Alien 2" appears to be his best work.
Poor guy Anyway, this definitely isn't the most blatant& shameless Alien imitation we've ever seen, as Ippolito actually just stole the claustrophobic setting aspect as well as the idea that the extraterrestrial perpetrator initially requires a host-body to grow in size and appetite.
Naturally, it isn't just a stone but an alien's egg, and when the critter emerges from it, it goes straight for attacking the face.
Okay, the cave-setting admittedly was a nifty idea and it's much more original than other Alien wannabes like, say, "Inseminoid" and "Forbidden World".
The ending is fairly atmospheric and tense, even though it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense like so many other parts of the film.
"Alien 2" is a truly bad film, but there still are far worse ways to kill 80 minutes of your precious time..
I watched it years ago and just could remember the falling head attacked by an alien.
I have seen worser but don't expect a follow up of the original Alien, the budget is way to low for that.
I'd heard bad things about this, like it was too slow, confusing, had too much potholing in it, but after finally watching this I feel the bad dubbing and general stupidity of the script (not to mention the great soundtrack by Oliver Onions) carried everything through.
Sure, the ending was a bit of a let down, but still, where else do you have a guy explaining his wife's meltdown on live television as "It's okay- she's just telepathic".A spaceship is due to land in the sea and while waiting for that, a TV show interviews a potholer on live television for some reason.
You know your watching an Italian film when a small kid is graphically mauled by an alien creature.
Also, you know your watching an Italian film when Michele Soavi finds a similar blue rock on the ground while he's having a pee up against a building.And now it's time for potholing!
You get that here as our alien makes an appearance, bursts out the girls face, and attacks the other guy causing his head to fall off onto the rest of our idiots.From then on out it's alien (or aliens, it's quite confusing) versus potholers as they get lost in the dark, split up (again), and run around trying to find a way out – There's some gore, exploding heads, aliens bursting from bodies, people being killed and a bit of a psychic battle that's not even remotely explained.
Needless to say a couple of people escape back to the world, which is strangely empty (save for one shot where there's people walking down the street and traffic and what not).While strangely focusing on things ignored in other films (cars driving down the street for ages, bowling alleys, potholing) and kind of fizzling out towards the end there (although I loved the POV shot through the alien's mouth!), Alien 2 (which I'm sure is an official sequel) has enough extreme gore, bad dubbing and stupid characters to entertain a jaded Italian splatter fan.
It opens with stock astronaut splash down film footage, moves on to a bowling alley, then a beach, and finally the cave.
Blue rocks that somehow turn into sock puppets are the "Aliens" that attack the group of spelunkers.
But the good news is - this one's not bad.After a brief intro about the return to earth of a spaceship where all the astronauts were dead and/or hideously mutilated (or something), the main action of the film gets going with a group of people exploring an underground cave.
Among them are people involved with the investigation of the spaceship, including a (slightly) psychic woman who senses the presence of...something.The reason the film entertains is because of the well made scenes set in the cave.
We follow the cavers through lots of perilous exploration, which starts off with the usual terrors of ropes snapping, long falls, dead end tunnels, etc, but soon starts to move into "Alien"-type territory as an unseen menace starts chomping on the cast!
My only disappointment was that the extreme darkness of some scenes obscure a lot of what is going on, but generally the darkness works in the film's favour.Bizarrely, the film does eventually leave the confines of the caves, but in a baffling change of location, the climactic scenes are filmed in...a bowling alley (?)!
I can only assume that it is very likely that the bowling alley was known to the film makers and they got a very good deal for filming there - apart from that there is no possible logic behind the choice - it's really not a scary place at all!
The ending - which is as unexpected as it is unexplained, and finally the monsters: it's a case of less is more here, so don't expect to see any big rubbery creations.Made on the cheap I presume, but a lot of the low budget is covered up by keeping the project quite modest.
When I watched this film I knew almost nothing about the original Alien series.
You can understand only from the last scene how silly this movie was (I decided to watch it all because I should pay for it).
The heroine found out that she was alone in the city and then a title came out saying: YOU COULD BE THE NEXT!(No other comments for that) I can't advice you to watch it because I'm not sure if your local video store would have it (it is a very popular movie, you see) but I would recommend this movie to anyone loves gore (Too gory with very silly special effects)Here's the main plot: The heroine (I can't remember her name) discovers caves and has terrible headaches because of the alien's arrival on earth.
Anyway, they (there were some others too) decide to go to a cave to find out that they were carrying an alien rock with them witch turns them to disgusting monsters/aliens which are after the rest of them (or something like that).
A Slower Pace, But I Actually Liked It. A space module lands back to Earth after a failed mission, but the astronauts have been replaced by hideous creatures that can penetrate into people's bodies and make them explode.
A group of speleologists are attacked by the monsters inside an underground cave.For fans of Italian horror cinema, the most notable name attached to this movie is probably Michele Soavi, who plays Burt.
The film at the beginning talks about this space pod returning to earth, we have an interview with the star female of the piece where we learn she is apparently psychic.
Finally, after more cavorting in the cave the alien attacks and general mayhem ensues.
You can see the problem, I am afraid the makers of this film were so enthralled with the cave that they forgot multiple times that they were supposed to be making an alien horror movie.
There is some potential in this one, as there is a great kill involving a guy losing his head, also a nice attack on a couple as the cave seems to be alive.
The makers of this film really did not seem to have a vision on what they wanted their monster to look like.
As with all the Italian-made films, the acting is not very good, and the camera is sometimes amateurish, but it compensates with plenty of gore, good cavern sets and a good score, not to mention the tag line, which is either going to make you frown or laugh..
A couple of astronauts are missing from a shuttle after its re-entry to earth, and mysterious blue "rocks" appear at the same time.
A Cheap Italian Alien film.
The acting of course is bad (It's ITALIAN after all) and the movie pretty much all takes place in a cavern-like place.
Horrid film that follows eight cave explorers on an expedition that gets ruined by a blood-thirsty alien rock.
A fair few bloody deaths, (face sucks, heads falling off; stuff like that) but mainly very hard to watch or understand..
ALIEN 2: ON EARTH is one of those hilariously inept, no-budget Italian rip-offs of popular movies of the time.
The Italians particularly liked reworking American sci-fi movies, beginning with STAR WARS, but come 1980 they'd moved on to ALIEN, delivering the double whammy of this and CONTAMINATION.
There's no doubt that CONTAMINATION is the better film - it has a real story, after all - and that ALIEN 2 is a piece of trash, but nonetheless it has undeniable charm.It's clear that the brains behind this movie saw the famous John Hurt chestbursting scene in ALIEN and decided to base their movie around that single moment, revisiting it over and over again as a group of spelunkers are assaulted and killed by some hostile aliens who've hitched a ride to Earth on a returning spaceship.Production values are near nil but it doesn't matter, because ALIEN 2 is all about the gruesome spectacle.
In some ways I was reminded of the recent British horror film, THE DESCENT, although of course this was made on a much lower budget.The acting is poor, the dubbing is poor, and the narrative falls apart towards the end, leading to an incredibly obvious so-called 'twist' ending, but still, but still...from early on, and THAT scene with the little girl on the beach, I was hooked and made yucky by this nasty little outing..
The following 20 minutes tell the story of a group of spelunkers who encounter a killer blue wad of play-dough, attempt to escape from it's deadly grasp, and die graphic, bloody deaths that are out of proportion to the decided lack of actual activity.
Finally, the closing 20 minutes finds the two survivors returning to the bowling alley, finding an alien covering the lens of the camera, running around shouting at nothing, and the suggestion that YOU COULD BE NEXT.Yes. That IS chilling.
You too could end up engaging in odd, meaningless hobbies like bowling and spelunking to fill your idle hours between major meals.
Even the instant low budget 'alien world' look of the underground caverns, moments of nudity, gore, and interesting electronic music score (which I believe we hear in CONTANIMATION as well) cannot save this film.
I have to admit, have really soft spot for this Alien rip off/sequel..The aliens are definitely not friendly...Its starts with stock footage of a failed mission that crashes in the sea, in the meantime the films heroine and her crew set off for a expedition into some underground caves deep below the surface, it seems the aliens (which we saw briefly on a beach) have made there way there too and who knows where else?
after some grisly deaths and faces bursting open, done with some neat special effects, the film ends with the heroine (played by the gorgeous Belinda Mayne) and her bearded ugly geeky boyfriend (can you tell I'm jealous) get back to the surface, drive to the city...Not life left on Earth, the aliens have wiped everything out...the film finishes with @you could be next"..Good atmosphere, good effects and a pretty good film that if it was not slightly boring at time would be top marks..I think this film, unlike half of the doomed cave explorers in the movie, seems to have re-surfaced and getting a bit of a following again..Very well worth watching and its recent blu-ray release from the original negatives is a must have in a collector of cult film cinema..
A couple named Thelma (Belinda Mayne) and Roy (Mark Bodin) are keen potholers and along with six of their friends, Bert (Michele Soavi) Maureen (Judy Perrin, this is where the credit information on the IMDb stops and the film doesn't list the characters on the credits), Jill, Bill, Cliff and Rod are planning a weekend exploring some caves somewhere in the Californian wilderness.
The potholers stop at a roadside café and Bert (the idiot of the group) takes a slash against a wall and notices a strange blue football sized rock, he picks it up and gives it to Thelma, oh and by the way Thelma is a psychic and she has a 'bad' feeling.
Once deep inside the cave they all have a good time until Jill and Thelma goes off on their own.
Once Jill is up top her face splits open and a snake like alien thing emerges.
They must use all their experience and know how to find a way out and survive the Alien Terror!Written, produced and directed by Ciro Ippolito under the pseudonym Sam Cromwell, rumour has it Umberto Lenzi might have been involved too.
The script drags a little in places and some of the dialogue is as absurd as we've come to expect from these 80's Italian produced low-budget horror films, but that's half their charm and entertainment.
There is some pretty good gore sequences in this too, Rods head oozing off and some of his insides following it down out of his neck stump is a definite highlight as is Jills face splitting open just prior, the special make-up effects are decent enough too.
I don't really know why but this is one of those films that should be absolutely awful, and probably is to most people, but for some unexplainable reason I liked it.
I went to the movies that day thinking it to be an official sequel to Ridley Scott´s Alien, and I was only 9 years old.
I  saw the first Alien when I was seven, my mom had to bribe the theater´s clerk in order to let me in, because, in my country, at that time, those type of horror films were restricted for people over 16.
So, I went on and decided to see Alien 2 as well, a few years later, unaware that it was only an italian flick, with no connection whatsoever to the first one.
If the first Alien happened to be an experience in terror, due to the masterful editing and camera work(you never see the monster, but you feel its menacing presence),  this one was a major experience in gore, because the monster itself, that comes off some rocks that fell from space, looks like a blood jelly of some kind, that penetrates human body and melts its victims, producing more blood jelly.
Among them, a little girl has her face "eaten" by the monster, some of the cave explorers literally explode in contact with the monster, including one of them who melts to the point of losing his head.
A fun'n'funky piece of early 80's Italian sci-fi/horror splatter cheese.