Greenpeace activists Lee (Robert Marius, who is the ultimate ’80s dude with his Long Beach t-shirt, acid-washed denim vest, and frosted tips) and Jane (Marina Giulia Cavalli) head off to a remote tropical island, bulky-as-fuck camcorder in tow, in order to investigate reports that a military-run chemical company is chucking radioactive waste into a nearby active volcano without a singular fuck given.
Once they ninja-shit their way into the facility, our heroes find that all of the stories were indeed true… but unfortunately their unwanted presence is brought to the attention of the company’s Badass-In-Charge, Col. Kovacks (Rambo: First Blood Part II‘s Charles Napier, who has a serious hard-on for Houston in this flick) who proceeds to capture Lee while Jane escapes courtesy of some truly action-packed shit!
Once lost in the wilds, Jane befriends American expat/professional (or is it for pleasure… ) snake-milker Bob (Daniel Bosch, proving his superiority at looking like a young Jeffrey Combs) who helps her rescue Lee only to encounter a titanic claw-sportin’, bio-mechanical, burning hot creature brought to pinching, scalding life by that discarded radiation!
Will Jane and Bob be able to survive the mutant menace and expose the company’s evil ways?
Man oh man is Antonio Margheriti’s (Yor: The Hunter from the Future, among many, many more!) Alien From the Abyss an absolute monster-piece of a fright flick!
Working from a screenplay by Tito Carpi (Warriors of the Wasteland, Escape From the Bronx), Dawson delivers a fast-paced, at times impressive creature feature filled with charming lead actors, gorgeous Philippines-lensed scenic vistas, explosions, exciting chase sequences, impressive stunt work, a snake or two… that’s not even mentioning the titular “alien”!
And what a beast it is! Standing tall… very tall, this manglin’ monster is a full-sized prop that towers over the actors, and the construction equipment they use to keep it at bay, and it is a thing of wicked wonder sure to appeal to the Monsterkid in us all!
It should also be noted that this film features a character executing a freefall from a helicopter down a waterfall and into a lagoon far below which is realized via side-splittingly obvious dummy and an actual fearless lunatic throwing themselves off that aforementioned water feature… breathtaking in it’s simultaneous victory and defeat.
In the “screamingly hilarious” department, and while we are speaking of dummies, we get treated to another one being tossed down upon some rocks… which causes it to shatter like the cheap piece of shit it is, and a boat/building explosion two-for-one that is presented using some charmingly shitty models (including the one used to bring that angry volcano to life)… but to be fair, there are some solid models on display in other sequences.
As for special features on this Severin Blu-ray release, we get two interviews with Margheriti’s son Edoardo, a filmmaker in his own right, who discusses the film at hand, and paying tribute to his late father trough his own work respectively, as well as a sixty-one documentary from the same that investigates Margheriti’s life and career in detail.
Also included is the film’s theatrical trailer.
Severin have struck fried gold with this release my cats n’ creeps; Alien From the Abyss is loaded with that hot n’ heavy jungle-based action and unwieldy, yet rad-ass, alien goodness that is impossible to resist!
