ALIEN 2: ON EARTH is one of those hilariously inept, no-budget Italian rip-offs of popular movies of the time. The Italians particularly liked reworking American sci-fi movies, beginning with STAR WARS, but come 1980 they'd moved on to ALIEN, delivering the double whammy of this and CONTAMINATION. There's no doubt that CONTAMINATION is the better film - it has a real story, after all - and that ALIEN 2 is a piece of trash, but nonetheless it has undeniable charm perhaps because of the sheer cheesiness of it all.

It's clear that the brains behind this movie saw the famous John Hurt chestbursting scene in ALIEN and decided to base their movie around that single moment, revisiting it over and over again as a group of spelunkers are assaulted and killed by some hostile aliens who've hitched a ride to Earth on a returning spaceship.

How or why they ended up in the caves remains a mystery, but it makes for good visuals. Production values are near nil but it doesn't matter, because ALIEN 2 is all about the gruesome spectacle. The special effects are rubbery but elaborate, and the underground setting is a perfect place in which to set scenes of gruelling horror. In some ways I was reminded of the recent British horror film, THE DESCENT, although of course this was made on a much lower budget.

The acting is poor, the dubbing is poor, and the narrative falls apart towards the end, leading to an incredibly obvious so-called 'twist' ending, but still, but still...from early on, and THAT scene with the little girl on the beach, I was hooked by this yucky little outing.

A surprisingly groovy, frenetic and fairly suspenseful subterranean creature feature earthbound "ALIEN" swipe about these ravenous shape-changing extraterrestrial rock monsters which prey upon a vapid assortment of spelunking youths exploring a deep, dark, dank remote cave. The ham-fisted direction, tin-eared dialogue ("Even he can't stop the monsters"),the cramped, creepy, claustrophobic cavern setting that's nicely redolent of both "The Boogens" and "The Descent," a throbbing Goblinesque score by Oliver Onions (who also supplied the rousing music for the snazzy, stirring post-nuke sci-fi/action zinger "2019: After the Fall of New York"),an incomprehensible, logic-defying narrative, the gorgeous, bewitching brunette Belinda Mayne's perky portrayal of the hypersensitive psychic heroine, the tacky special effects, the righteously gruesome gore, the generally flat acting from a non-star cast, an occasional sappy pop ballad blasting on the soundtrack, a hilariously idiotic climactic chase sequence which takes place in an abandoned bowling alley, future Italian horror film director Michele ("Stagefright," "The Church") Soavi as one of the dumbbell kids, a light sprinkling of charmingly unnecessary filler (i.e., faded, worn-out newsreel footage, a needless scene depicting a jeep pulling out of a garage and driving down the street, etc.) and a side-splitting concluding on-screen title statement which ominously proclaims that "YOU MAY BE NEXT!" all make this shamefully ignored hoot an extremely tasty and tantalizing slice of lovably shoddy and stupid spaghetti splatter schlock.

A space module lands back to Earth after a failed mission, but the astronauts have been replaced by hideous creatures that can penetrate into people's bodies and make them explode. A group of speleologists are attacked by the monsters inside an underground cave.

For fans of Italian horror cinema, the most notable name attached to this movie is probably Michele Soavi, who plays Burt. Soavi has acted many times, but really came into his own as a director of such films as "Stagefright" and "Cemetery Man". This was one of his earlier film projects, before he became a protégé of Dario Argento.

The effects in the film are fairly simple but effective, and I really liked the music. If I had to make a complaint, it would be that the pace was a bit too slow at times. That, and it seems the person who wrote the script did not try very hard to connect the astronauts, caves and the psychic aspects.