Contamination
Contamination is a 1980 film from Italy, directed by Luigi Cozzi, running 95 minutes. reelscum files it under video nasty.
- Year
- 1980 · 1980s films
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 95 min
- Director
- Luigi Cozzi
- Updated
- 30 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (39/100)
- Also known as
- Alien Contamination · Toxic Spawn · Contamination: Alien on Earth
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Video nasty
A DPP video nasty, later dropped from the list; Luigi Cozzi's Alien knock-off was seized for its exploding-torso effects.
Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.
Alien by way of Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting. Eggs from Mars produce a slime that makes people burst, and a small team traces the plot back to its source, and Luigi Cozzi stages the gooey set pieces with real enthusiasm on a modest budget.
It is derivative and knows it, but the pulsing Goblin music and the gleeful chest-bursting give it a genuine drive-in charge. It landed on the video nasty list for the gore.
Cheap, colourful and entertaining Italian sci-fi horror. Turn the score up.
Trailer
The numbers
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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Written about
- Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
The cycle in depth
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
- The Exorcist was banned on video in Britain by one censor
The Exorcist passed uncut for British cinemas in 1974, then had no legal UK video release from 1988 to 1999 because one censor would not certify the tape.
On these lists
- Nastiest of the nasties
The tapes the DPP put on its seize-on-sight list. Prosecuting them in a country with ferries to France was the best advertising any of them ever got.
Filed alongside
The House on the Edge of the Park
Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.
Killer Nun
Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.
Cannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
Eaten Alive!
Lenzi recycling other films' footage into a Jonestown story. Grim work.
Anthropophagus
Almost entirely people walking around an island. Then two minutes of infamy.
The Driller Killer
Abel Ferrara's debut. More interesting as a document of downtown New York.
The New York Ripper
Genuinely nasty and hard to defend. The killer quacks. It doesn't help.
SS Experiment Camp
A DPP video nasty far better known for its poster than for anything in the film.
Maniac
Savini's effects, Spinell's performance, and a very bleak little film.
Mountain of the Cannibal God
The cannibal cycle in a dinner jacket, ex-Bond girl and real animal deaths included.
Island of Death
Mykonos has never looked prettier or hosted anything uglier. Mastorakis dared himself to be banned and won.
The Burning
The raft scene is the best kill in any slasher. The rest is fine.