(upbeat rock music)
- (exhales) No that pain you're experiencing
isn't a xenomorph waiting to bust out of your dang chest,
it's the physical discomfort that comes with waiting
to find out what a new Alien movie will mean
for the franchise and its seriously messed up lore.
Who are the engineers?
Where do the aliens come from?
Do people really not know how to run in a zigzag pattern?
(yells)
And after 1979's Alien, many other filmmakers
couldn't wait to find out themselves,
so they did the next best thing.
They shamelessly ripped it off,
and made their own crappier version.
So in celebration of the fact that Ridley Scott's
Alien: Covenant, a real alien movie comes out this Friday,
today on the Dan Cave, we're running down
the best worse alien ripoffs ever made.
Contamination.
Ah, Italy. Is there anything they can't remake
cheaply and crap-ly in effort to make a quick buck?
I mean, even spaghetti began as a low-budget reboot
of England's floppy bread rope.
Now to make the quintessential Alien knockoff,
it took a man who two years earlier,
ripped off Star Wars with the bat- (bleep) crazy
crazy Starcrash, and that man,
is Italian exploitation director, Luigi Cozzi.
Renamed Alien Contamination in the United States,
because alien get it, it's right there in the name.
This movie features a weird one-eyed vagina monster
laying eggs and spraying people with a toxic goo
that makes them explode.
And the best part, because that's not the best part,
is they didn't have the money to set it in space,
so it takes place in New York City for some reason.
Honestly though, in spite of all of this,
this bonkers-ass voyage into the bargain bin of history
is worth it for the sweet Goblin score alone.
Suspiria heads, you know what's up,
and also it's worth it if you know, you're like,
super into cyclopean cooter monsters.
Jess.
Deep Star Six.
How do you make your Alien ripoff
seem like less of an Alien ripoff?
Well it's quite simple my boy,
set it in the next best thing to outer space,
under the sea.
Deep Star Six follows a group of scientists
and Navy crewmen establishing an underwater missile silo
that they discover is on top of
a massive underwater cavern system.
Of course, what lies beneath that cavern
is a murder monster that looks like a hermit crab
that ate nothing but steroids and PCP everyday for a year.
And honestly this film has everything.
It has accidental harpoon deaths,
hallucinogenic episodes and a literal chest-burster,
by which I mean, it's a guy who forgets
to decompress properly,
and the pressure change caused by rapid ascent
causes him to explode, like a dang meat balloon.
(pops lips)
Inseminoid.
Ugh, I just want to wash out my mouth
just saying that title, Jesus.
If your main complaint about Alien was it was too subtle,
it wasn't rape-y enough, then Inseminoid has you covered.
Ew, (bleep).
Even the poster itself is a visual assault
with a nightmare space baby emerging from a womb
to shoot jizz lasers at a pair of astronauts
that are looking on like, "No don't."
It's a surreal, sleazy and just all around uncomfortable
story of a foreign body invading our own,
in the most invasive way possible.
And once you add in chainsaw amputations,
harpoon guns, and more grizzly death
than you can shake a stick at,
you have a cult classic for total creepazoids.
Galaxy of Terror.
Rodger Corman is perhaps the master
of pervading B-movie shlot,
and his take on Alien didn't disappoint.
It features young James Cameron
serving as second unit director,
a cast that includes Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund,
and the late great Happy Days star Erin Moran.
Galaxy of Terrors is not just full
of recycled ideas from Alien,
but it's also full of footage from another
Corman Star Wars ripoff, Battle Beyond the Stars.
Now the basic premise is that a spaceship crew
winds up on planet with a face-sucker style creature
that takes the form of what they fear most,
and in the case of one unfortunate crew member,
she gets sexually assaulted by a disgusting worm beast.
And yes, it is as stomach churning and gross as it sounds,
so let's just move on to the next one, shall we?
Because, geez, this episode is ruining my day.
Parasite.
If you're going to get someone to ripoff the design
of H.R. Giger's iconic aliens,
you damn well better hire a master of the craft,
like Stan Winston.
The man who brought Jurassic Park to glorious life
also brought us a bunch of creepy fanged slug beasts
in Charles Band's ultra shlocky Parasite.
The movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic America
where a criminal organization runs
the show instead of the government, and they accidentally
create a parasite that manages to escape,
like all good parasites eventually do.
What follows is a whole lot of slugs bursting
out of places they shouldn't be bursting out of,
and also, a young Demi Moore is a lemon girl,
because why the hell not? We'll make anything.
Forbidden World.
It's a tale as old as time.
In the distant future a research team creates
a new experimental life form that winds up
murdering all of its creators and everyone else in the lab.
Of course, the old adage of "You are what you eat"
proves to be the creature's undoing
when it eats a liver that's just positively teeming
with cancer.
So you know.
Don't eat cancer liver is the moral of this story, I guess.
Anyways, produced by schlock master general Roger Corman,
this bonkers film has more unnecessary nudity
than Lenny Kravitz playing guitar in jeans
that just can't contain his wienemorph.
So if that's your bag,
nice.
Creature.
In grand Roger Corman tradition,
Creature ripped off a ripoff by reusing
sets and props from Forbidden World,
to tell its story of, you guessed it.
A bunch of explorers coming across a menacing
alien life form in deepest, darkest outer space.
But unlike lesser Alien ripoffs,
Creature stars as my colleague Kyle Anderson likes to say,
renowned German crazy person, Klaus Kinski.
It also has Lyman Ward,
the dad from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Honestly, it's pretty well-directed,
and it nails Alien style pretty well,
but it's still a lot like getting a Pepsi
when what you really asked for
was an end to police brutality.
Lily-Cat.
If you thought you were going to go one week
without hearing me talk about anime,
think again cohai!
Featuring character design by legendary
Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano,
Lily-Cat's plot might sound familiar to you.
A crew of people working for an intergalactic
mining company awake from cryogenic sleep,
and start dying off one by one
due to a mysterious alien invader.
Yeah, the ostensible culprit here though is a weird bacteria
that can mimic the forms of various crew members,
but the real villain is whoever approved
the God-awful English dub where they talk about
murder, suicide and the nightmare chameleon beast
hiding among them like they're reading
the iTunes terms and conditions.
- So for me the only answer is for us to kill ourselves.
OK?
- Oh and just in case you were wondering,
yes, there's a robotic cat that's
secretly controlling the ship.
You know, that old chestnut.
That old goddammit anime, really?
Chestnut.
Roots Search.
Yet another dumb-as-hell animated knockoff of Alien,
Roots Search follows a research crew in isolated deep space
that discovers a seemingly derelict ship
called the Green Planet, which contains a sole survivor,
named Buzz.
Sure.
Unfortunately though, Buzz neglected to tell them
that there was an alien onboard with a mouth
that would make Georgia O'Keeffe blush
that's using psychic abilities to systematically
murder everyone on board by using
their insecurities against them.
So basically, it's like if they made Persona5
into cheap trash instead of the best RPG of the year.
Are you guys playing? It's really good.
And those my friends are some of
the best worse Alien ripoffs ever made,
but tell me, which is your favorite?
What would you add to this list?
Let me know in the comments below
and give me a xenomorphic thumbs up
while you're there.
I guess that works. I don't know man.
Be sure to like and subscribe or else you might miss
next week's show about the story of a brave young snake
who has to leave her island home to stop World War I
and eat John Voight alive in Wonder Womanaconda.
Until next time, keep on digging.
Let's open up the ol' mailbag, shall we? @punkjunior asked,
"What's your first-time seeing a movie tradition?"
"Do you have specific snacks, seats, drinks, etc.?"
Well that's a great question.
Going to the movies is maybe my favorite thing in the world,
and if I'm seeing a new movie for the first time,
I generally like to have a bag
of peanut M&M's and a Coca-Cola.
It's the only time I'll drink soda,
and now because I go to the movies so much for work,
which I love, I don't do it every time,
but that is honestly my platonic ideal.
Peanut M&M's, a cold thing of Coke, it's the best.
But tell me, what's your first-time
seeing a movie tradition?
Let me know in the comments below
and I'll see you guys next time.
(quick techno beat)