Alien 2: On Earth

By Ann Clarke

Midnight Legacy films, for some fucked-up reason only known to them, felt the need to re-release the Italian film known as Alien 2 Sulla Terra. That translates to Alien 2: On Earth. After wasting 84.25 minutes of my life watching this . . . I have to wonder why they even went through the trouble.

Now, I wasn’t expecting a good film; I was actually expecting a bad film. But how bad? There’s a level of “enjoyable bad,” but this was nowhere near that. There really wasn’t anything to like about it! Actually, I take that back; there was at least one redeeming quality, and that was a film score provided by Oliver Onions (a.k.a. Guido and Maurizio De Angelis). They are a sibling pair of Italian musicians who were responsible for many 1970s film scores (most notably, films that had Terence Hill and Bud Spencer). They are both very talented. Whoever wrote this film, however, clearly isn’t (or this was just a really bad day for them).

Apparently, this is supposed to be an Italian sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Obviously an unauthorized sequel. In fact, it has nothing to do with the original whatsoever. The only similarity is the storyline of an isolated team of people gruesomely killed by an unknown organism. That’s where the similarities end. For the record, I don’t like the classic Alien series of films, and I like this film even less. (I also should mention that this film was dubbed.)

The team of people in this film aren’t astronauts, but they appear to be rock-climbing geologists. The main character, Thelma, seems to be the main geologist, but she also possesses psychic visions as well as telekinesis. The rest of the crew looks like a mixture of ‘70s porn stars, and various victims (but slightly older) from Pasolini’s repulsion-fest known as Salo. This film doesn’t really give you the chance to even get to know the characters as there isn’t that much dialogue, so when they started to get snuffed out, I didn’t even really care.

Okay, so this crew of people who like to hang-out in a bowling alley (?!) decide to go on an expedition in a deep cave to study rocks and shit. Before they head out, Telekinesis-Thelma freaks out when they make a pit stop near a beach. She sees a kid playing in the sand, and just starts screaming. The kid’s mother is wondering what the hell Thelma’s problem is, but not much dialogue is exchanged. Thelma’s boyfriend retrieves her from the beach and they leave. A few minutes later, the kid finds a breathing rock, and it eats the kid’s face! Nice!

The team heads out to the obligatory rock quarry that seems to show up in every cheap ‘70s Italian film to get changed into their rock-climbing gear. I need to also mention that they show titties in that scene because for whatever fucking reason, when you go rock climbing, you go bra-less. Yup.

One guy takes a piss on a wall, and finds a fucked-up looking rock. He takes it with him and gives it to Thelma (since I guess she’s Queen of Geologists, or something). She puts it in her backpack. Then the team descends into a hole with stalagmites and stalactites and set up a camp site. Thelma and her dude disrobe to sleep because apparently when you camp out in the middle of the earth, you get butt-naked and fuck, too.

The next day, they go on their journey. One friend notices Thelma’s rock is breathing, and something pops out of it and decides to become a parasitoid inside of her. Thelma freaks and tells the team her friend fell and her face fell off with it. They find her, intact but unconscious.

Long story short: Instead of an alien popping out of her chest, it pops out of her face and immediately attacks her boyfriend—going for the jugular—and eats his neck all the way through until his head falls off. Adorable!

The rest of the film is the crew trying to get the fuck out of the cave, and all but two are picked off by the alien in gruesome ways. The two survivors are Thelma and her boyfriend. They get out of the hole, and realize that life above ground has ceased to exist. So where do they go? To the bowling alley, of course! And then guess what happens?

WHO CARES!

Jesus Christ, this movie sucked! I absolutely do not recommend this garbage to anyone. Maybe if you like slow-moving dubbed films that show gory deaths once in awhile, but I think this would even bore the shit out of people who like that sort of thing.

If you are curious, you can order Alien 2: On Earth from See Of Sound. It was released on April 5.