Inseminoid

Inseminoid (1981)

Image From IMDB

If you haven’t heard of Inseminoid, you’re not alone, I had no clue what it was either. But, sometimes you just want to watch a post Alien movie, and this is exactly what Inseminoid is, except the Xenomorph was replaced by a homicidal British archaeologist. Also, the movie was co-funded by the Shaw Brothers, i’d like a documentary telling me how exactly that one happened.

The story follows a group of archaeologists on a distant planet trying to put the pieces of their discovery together when an incident inside the caverns where they are located sends one of their crew completely loopy courtesy of a bunch of crystals. Not learning from the event, it happens again, this time to the somehow impregnanted by Aliens Sandy, who proves a lot more difficult to stop as she murders the entire team one by one.

The films big strength for me was the location. Shot inside actual caves the underground aspect looked amazing. Whether the actual production design around the caves worked or not i’m not sure, but the actual caves themselves looked incredible. I’m one-hundred percent certain the whole movie was written around somehow getting permission to use them.

The other big strength of the movie was Judy Geeson’s performance as the homicidal Sandy, and I quite liked Stephanie Beacham as Kate. Remember when everyone in films used to look like adults rather than teens, I miss those days. Both try their best to capture the tension and danger, and in this sort of movie, that’s all you can ask.

With the Alien rip-off plot, sub-standard acting, and pretty poor effects, the film was never going to be groundbreaking, but I do feel like it was slightly more than a cheap cash in. It had some ideas, and a wonderful location. It was let down by a lot of filler, which you always get at this budget in the genre, and maybe also running out of ideas in the third act… either that or Sandy really was just way to clever for them.

The poster and title give away the entire plot of the movie and nothing happens that you wouldn’t expect so it’s an easy one to skip, but at the same time, if like me you just enjoy watching films from that post Alien world then its worth giving a watch for the location alone. Not a great movie, but not particularly terrible either, just one with few surprises.