It is not enough to be in love with “Alien” to rise to its height, the proof with the formidable “Alien, the creature from the abyss”, filmed in 1989.
You are in the late 80s. Science fiction films are multiplying on cinema screens around the world, and you want to ride the wave. Except that you are a director in Italy, at a time when so-called “biography” exploitation cinema is experiencing a real decline and no longer interests many people. So what should you do with your idea of a film set on an island inhabited by an alien creature?
The answer: do it anyway! And this is undoubtedly how Alien, the creature from the abyss, was born, a not at all subtle and misguided mix of Alien.
Like this film which thought itself to be as good as Conan the Barbarian: we can say that no!
It’s not James Cameron who wants
VIP International Films “He lives in me!” Does this remind you of anything?
The film features Jane, a journalist, who comes to a Pacific island to investigate an atomic testing factory disposing of its nuclear waste by throwing it into a volcano. While she sneaks into the factory, her cameraman is captured by the surveillance team and a creature awakened by the dumping of waste emerges from the volcano with the intention of not leaving a single survivor.
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The Alien and his claw (yes, he only has one)
Director Antonio Margheriti – under his usual pseudonym of Anthony M. Dawson – uses miserable models, some images stolen from other films, and his script makes no sense. He’s playing time to fill 1h30 of what will be sold as an Alien film and thus should bring in a few dollars.
A bulldozed finale
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Jane with Bob the Snake Charmer and an outdated scientist
The grand finale of Alien, the creature from the abyss tries without means to reproduce certain scenes from the finale of Aliens, by copying Ripley’s little outfit from the first film. Since the film doesn’t have an exoskeleton, it falls back on a bulldozer (it’s yellow too) and adds a flamethrower (also present in Aliens) to give it an epic sense, to no avail.
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Charles Napier is there
Fans of bis cinema will recognize Luciano Pigozzi, seen in a number of films from the 60s to 80s, many of them by Antonio Margheriti, but also Roberto Dell’Acqua, and, much better known, Charles Napier, notably seen in Rambo II, The Blues Brothers , The Silence of the Lambs or Philadelphia.
Ironically enough, the international title of the film is Alien from the Deep, a title very close to James Cameron’s Aliens of the Deep (2005), dedicated to a series of expeditions studying the sources of the deep sea. But it’s very likely that Cameron has never heard of Margheriti’s film.