roybatty-1 Oh, how I loved this movie. It is filled to bursting with everything you could want from Margheritti, and then some! Lots of exploding miniatures, plenty of running through the jungle, and a heroine who keeps finding ways to lose her pants. The real charm of the movie is trying to count the myriad other films it is trying to rip off. Obvious nods to ALIENS abound, (flamethrowers,a battle with a towering monster and a big yellow vehicle), with plenty of allusions to the first ALIEN thrown in for good measure (building the weapons, the chamber filled with hanging chains). Amusingly the first hour seems to be a curious mishmash of either THE CHINA SYNDROME or SILKWOOD with, of all things, ROMANCING THE STONE!!!! It is all daffily endearing.

Vomitron_G Antonio Margheriti still is one of my favorite Italian directors (thanks to his 70's & 80's films), but the mix he presents us with "Alien From The Deep", he has done before and much better already. "Killer Fish" mixes a heist movie while cashing in on Joe Dante's "Piranha". With "Hunters of the Golden Cobra" he gave us a hero with James Bond allures in a film reminiscent of an Indiana Jones adventure. In a way, "Aliens From The Deep" fits in perfectly with all other blends of Margheriti entertainment. It's not on par with the films it borrows from, but it tries to redeem itself by going over the top a little further.So what kind of blend does Margheriti present us this time? Obviously, the Italian title "Alien Degli Abissi" (which roughly translates to "Alien Of The Abyss") tries to cash in on James Cameron's 1989 hit "The Abyss". But that's where the comparison ends. Most of the film can be categorized as some type of 'adventure on a tropical island' film. Some military/governmental facility is dumping toxic waste into the earth. Some noble people try to expose this and ultimately stop them. Some action & some shooting. Fair enough.Now what's with the alien-aspect of this film? Well, we have to wait a good 50 minutes for it to show itself, and it's not really an alien, but some mutant giant monster (basically formed by toxic waste, creating a symbiosis of organic material & scrap metal – I know, that sounds way too smart for a movie of this type) emerging from the bowels of the earth. It somewhat looks like a black giant crab-robot monster of sorts. It just gets thrown into the movie's third act so they could rip off the climax of Cameron's "Aliens". Remember Ripley fighting the mother-alien in that yellow robotic worker-unit? Well, it's here too, only it's some type of bulldozer.So "Alien Degli Abissi" is just entertaining Margheriti nonsense (featuring yet again fun miniature effects) and nothing more. It's sub-par, as to be expected, but thankfully it's not boring. Oh, and it has Charles Napier running around in it, mainly behind computers. Other than that, he seems to have little else to do.Good Badness? Yes, fair enough fun & inept action/adventure/monster fodder. 4/10 and 6/10.

Woodyanders Tirelessly prolific veteran Italian exploitation picture director Antonio Margheriti's cinematic oeuvre is a very mixed bag, running the gamut from delightfully sleazy ("Cannibal Apocalypse") to nice, spooky, dripping with sepulchral atmosphere fright film fun ("The Virgin of Nuremburg," "The Long Hair of Death") to entertainingly goofy sci-fi ("The Wild, Wild Planet," "War Between the Planets") to pleasingly tacky spaghetti Westerns ("The Stranger and the Gunfighter," "Take A Hard Ride") to the unavoidable occasional dud. This sci-fi/horror/conspiracy thriller sadly constitutes as one of Margheriti's dullest and least satisfying features, mainly because it's crucially bereft of the gleefully trashy verve which distinguishes his more enjoyable efforts. In its place there's no sex or nudity, mild profanity, tame violence, an interminably draggy pace, a wearily drawn-out narrative, and tepid action sequences; in short, everything a solid, rewarding little B-movie needs to seriously smoke is noticeably absent here. The blah plot offers a tediously trite'n'tired mishmash of boringly overused clichés, centering on your standard evil corporation illegally dumping radioactive waste into a dangerously volatile volcano located on a remote obscure island. Two wet-nosed bleeding heart liberal limp dishrag Greenpeace workers discover the pernicious goings-on and spend the rest of the film being hunted down in the dense tropical jungle by the usual assortment of greasy company flunkies. Oh yeah -- and there's a lethal, clawed, slime-drooling, steam-expelling extraterrestrial subterranean creature the pair also uncover and do their best to protect from the conglomerate's vile, greedy clutches. Token semi-name rugged, craggy-faced, firm block-of-granite character actor Charles Napier portrays a typically malevolent nasty army colonel on thespic automatic pilot throughout, wearing a fixed scowl on his puffy, roughhewn mug and grumbling all his dialogue in a deep, earthy, barely audible rumble mumble. Napier's given precious little to do that's worth seeing, an unfortunately malady that infects this dismally dreary clunker as a lethargic whole.

unbrokenmetal `It's gigantic, evil and invincible!' boasts the tagline. Well, this alien dwarfs the original alien in physical size only. Although the film takes place on a tropic island, a few similarities to `Alien' are obvious, down to the fact that the heroine has to stand the last fight with the creature wearing nothing but her white underwear. No, I don't complain about that ;-) Anyway, the huge creature which can move under the ground is quite scary (but only until it stands up and suddenly looks like a cross between a senile robot and a lunatic crab), the characters (including a snake hunter, Greenpeace investigators, a not-yet-mad scientist and an unscrupulous officer trying to `control' the situation) help to develop an interesting storyline, and I cannot agree with reviewers who consider this a simple rip-off. There is a lot more to see, `Alien degli abissi' is not too bad entertainment from an experienced director (voted 6/10).