INSEMINOID
INSEMINOID
A cut-price imitation of ALIEN, whose director...implausibly argued that he had never seen ALIEN. On a remote planet, an extraterrestrial creature impregnates a member of a research team, prompting her to set about murdering her colleagues. A curious and oddly beguiling relic, complete with special effects fashioned from little more than rubber and cardboard.
When Ridley Scott's ALIEN established new rules for horror cinema in 1979, AAmerican and European producers competed to devise ways of capitalising on its success. And although the imitations of ALIEN could fill an entire festival programme, out of concern for the mental well-being of our viewers, we will present only one of them at this year's British Film Festival.
A group of archaeologists are exploring the caves of an ancient civilisation on a distant planet. During the exploration, one of the archaeologists is impregnated by an interplanetary creature. During her pregnancy, she begins to kill her colleagues and feed on their bodies.
The script for INSEMINOID was dashed off in just four days, three and a half of which the writers apparently spent in a nearby pub. The action was initially intended to unfold aboard a spaceship, but it was swiftly decided that there was neither time nor money to construct the set and that it would be cheaper to film in caves. Director Norman J. Warren, however, enjoyed far greater fortune with distribution – INSEMINOID scandalised feminist circles with its fertilisation sequence, which provoked protests and in turn gave a considerable boost to box-office takings.
From today’s vantage point, INSEMINOID stands as a curious artefact that teeters between genre cinema and a rather desperate money-spinner. And although Norman J. Warren insisted until his death that he had not been influenced by ALIEN, his denials were about as persuasive as the film’s bargain-basement special effects.
Text: Grzegorz Fortuna
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