Inseminoid (1981)

aka "Horror Planet" USA

Directed by Norman J. Warren
Written by Nick and Gloria Maley

Rated R for sexual violence, nudity and gore.

"Inseminoid" is one of four films I recently purchased in a 4-Film British Horror Pack. Other films in the set are: "Curse of the Voodoo", "Horror Hospital" and "Tower of Evil" (click links for reviews).

"Inseminoid" is one of many sci-fi films from the early 80's to attempt to cash in on the success of Ridley Scott's "Alien". While it doesn't have the awesome sets, the amazing acting, or the iconic xenomorph alien of "Alien", "Inseminoid" manages to be surprisingly entertaining considering the film's obviously low budget. It is hard not to laugh at parts of this film, but it also has moments of genuine horror.

After some groovy, retro, spaced-out opening credits, a female narrator informs us that a ship has been exploring a planet that was once inhabited, but has since been abandoned. Some might criticize a film for using voice-over narration so heavy-handedly, but in all fairness it's less cheesy than the opening rolling text narration of the "Star Wars" films or the dense, confusing voice-over narration in "Dune". We then see two men in spacesuits exploring the planet. They stumble on a series of caves and split up to investigate (always a bad idea in this type of movie). One of the explorers discovers a pile of crystals which he examines. By the time his teammate returns, the first man has been rendered unconscious by the crystals, which have eroded through his glove and skin and infected his bloodstream. The infected team member is brought back inside the atmosphere-controlled headquarters of the crew, where we meet about a dozen crew members who we will later see killed in bizarre and extraordinary ways.

The crew tries to go about their work in spite of the accident, but Ricky, the infected man, begins to behave violently. He dons a spacesuit and goes back out into the planet's caves, apparently being controlled by the alien crystals, and attacks anyone who tries to stop him. He leaves one half of the air-lock open so that the other team members can't follow him. Ricky pushes rudely past another crew member exploring the caves, and the woman (I think the character's name is Gail) stumbles and gets her foot caught in some kind of metal debris. Now what happens next was like a precursor to the "Saw" films. Gail's suit's heating unit goes out abruptly, leaving her with no protection against the -80 degree F alien planet temperature. A male teammate tries to talk her through the repair of the unit by radio (which is apparently as easy as crossing a few wires), but Gail just panics and is completely useless. As a last resort, Gail opens her face-mask (!?!?) and puts one of the air-tubes from her suit directly in her mouth. She then whips out a hedge trimmer and tries to cut off her caught foot. Sadly, Gail's incompetence proves deadly to her. While completely absurd, this is one of the more interesting death scenes in the film.

 

"Gail. You've spent your whole life relying on the men around you to fix things. Now, in order to survive, you're going to have to help yourself. Your foot is trapped in some scrap metal. Your thermal unit is broken. You have three minutes to free yourself and get to the airlock before you freeze to death. Do you have enough of a grasp of basic electronics to cross the wires that will return power to your thermal unit, or will you cut off your leg with a hedge trimmer? The decision is yours."

Kate, another crew member, is now trapped alone (unless you count Gail's body) in the caves with infected Ricky. He tries to stop her from closing the airlock, so she shoots him, killing him instantly. She actually catches some flak from her teammates for not trying to find a non-fatal way to stop Ricky, which just goes to show you can't make everyone happy. Luckily for the crew, the mayhem appears to have subsided... for now... In spite of the team's incredibly low survival rate in the caves, two more team members are dispatched to continue explorations. This time, perky young Sandy (Judy Geeson) is paired with the only black guy in space, who is promptly torn to pieces in front of her by an unseen assailant. Sandy passes out only to awaken on some kind of laboratory table, stripped completely naked.

While lying prone and helpless, Sandy is given an injection by the ship's doctor, whose presence in this strange alien lab is a bit of a mystery. The best interpretation I've found is that he is actually trying to get one of the crew members pregnant with an alien baby as part of a dark conspiracy to bring alien subjects back in utero to the company they all work for. There isn't much evidence for this theory outside of this scene, but something similar happened in "Alien", so I assume the writers were thinking along these lines.

The following scene is the one for which this film has gained the most fame and notoriety. The "Inseminoid" alien finally makes an appearance. He is a comically grotesque, penis-shaped lobster-man who pops up between Sandy's open legs as if to say "Daddy's home and it's time for love!"

Big Papa Lobster wastes no time with foreplay. He slides what appears to be a monstrous turkey baster filled with creepy eggs and green liquid into Sandy and begins to pump his love-beasts into her womb. This tube scene is one of the best scenes in the movie for raw, visceral creepiness. It is also the scene which has inspired the most controversy.

When Sandy wakes up again, she's back in her team's base with the doctor and her other worried crewmates. Apparently she's two months pregnant, which is impossible as she'd been taking regular birth control injections. I guess human birth control can't hold back the virulent Lobsterman seed. As she gets more and more pregnant (which happens at an alarming rate), she becomes possessed by her alien spawn and begins killing and feeding on her teammates.

Up until her character's alien insemination, Judy Geeson hadn't had much opportunity to really act. While I wouldn't rate her among the best actresses ever, Geeson's performance in the second half of "Inseminoid" is really what carries the movie. Her intensity and craziness reach a fevered pitch quickly and keep building from there. One of her team members remarks "Well, that'll look good on the report: the team were terrorized by an expectant mother." It's a lot scarier than it sounds. The surviving crew members dwindle as Sandy strikes again and again, mercilessly slaughtering her friends and coworkers. In the end, she is finally strangled to death by her boyfriend Mark, but not before giving birth to TWINS!

I give "Inseminoid" a 9/10. It is quite possibly the most entertaining "Alien" rip-off ever made. It is serious enough to be genuinely thrilling, and contains images that are pure sci-fi gold. "Inseminoid" may even have surpassed "Alien" in terms of pacing. I dearly love Ridley Scott's original sci-fi masterpiece, but it sure did move along slowly. I cannot recommend "Inseminoid" if you are an expecting mother, uncomfortable with depictions of alien insemination or dislike cheesy b-horror films. If you enjoy bizarre, obscure b-movies, track down a copy of "Inseminoid" ASAP.













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