The film opens with two concurrent events going on. First, the return of the space shuttle is being eagerly awaited by everyone, although when it finally does land, they find it empty with no sign of the astronauts. Second, a speleologist named Thelma (Belinda Mayne) is being interviewed on TV about her work spelunkering in the local caverns. She has some strange fainting spell during the interview and fortunately, the crew can cut to footage of the space shuttle to fill the gap. It is revealed that she has some sort of psychic ability and can determine when bad things are going to happen (hmmm...). In the meantime, these peculiar pulsating blue rocks begin appearing on the beaches of Los Angeles and they begin to wreak a strange form of havoc, that is, they have a way of taking the faces off of people who interact with them. But enough about the rocks - the movie then jumps back to Thelma, her boyfriend Roy (Mark Bodin) and their friends as they plan on exploring another cavern. They make a stop at a gas station on the way to the cavern and one of the guys spots a pretty blue rock (hmmm...) and gives it to Thelma. There is a very long scene where the viewer is forced to endure the group of six as they descend into the belly of the cave and it looks more like an Abba video with all of the lens flares of their lights being constantly focused on and the horrible music playing in the background. Did I mention its a long scene?
Once they finally get to where they want to set up camp, they pitch their tents and there's the obligatory but very brief love scene where Thelma sheds her top and she and Roy roll around a bit. The next day is where things get interesting. At one point, the six split off into three pairs and go off in different directions. Tina, the girl paired up with Thelma, notices the blue rock undulating in her bag and before you know it, the rock has exploded into an alien creature that appears to rip off Tina's face and cause her to fall down deeper into the cavern. Thelma runs away screaming, fearing Tina dead. When her screams bring the others, they find Tina still alive and with her face, but unconscious, and they determine to bring her up via the stretcher. However, much to their surprise, Tina isn't Tina anymore, but is merely a suit that the alien creature hides in, waiting to "hug" their faces. All hell breaks loose and gore ensues, causing the remaining four in the group to scatter, looking for a way out of the cave, because hey - that's a great idea - scatter when the scary music plays and the alien attacks. The alien continues to make its way through the group, killing all but Thelma and Roy in gloriously bloody ways. One guy even explodes after having a stare-down contest with Thelma. When Thelma and Roy finally escape the cave from the same hole in which they descended (mind you, they made it out much quicker than when they went into the cave), they find the city deserted and it seems the aliens have taken over. Will anyone survive the onslaught? Before the credits roll, the words "You could be next" flash on the screen in Italian.
Ok, first off, this movie has nothing to do with the plot of the original Alien and doesn't really even seem to try that hard. Aside from the fact that the aliens had eggs and that at one point, one of the creatures sort of looked like one of the creatures from Alien, that's the extent of it. Wrong timeline, wrong setup, wrong everything. While we were watching this movie and prior to doing any sort of research on it, we came to the conclusion that it was a fan film sequel to the original Alien, but alas, no. That would be insulting to fan films everywhere. The dubbing is pretty horrible. Apparently, the film was originally done in English, then dubbed in Italian and then the original English was dubbed back over, although it didn't synch up quite right. In fact, at some points it's so painful to watch, I thought maybe they threw out the original English and redubbed it with something new. Next, there are a lot of crackling artifacts and hums in the sound, so much so that I paused the movie to make sure it wasn't some sound happening in my house. Yay, bad audio in surround sound! As for the high def transfer, it's not much to look at. Sure, you can tell it was cleaned up, but you won't get the typical lush Blu-ray experience here. As for special features, the only thing you'll find here is a Dutch VHS trailer and some special effects outtakes, which amount to the same shot of an alien bursting from someone over and over. Like 10 times. The same shot. There was also another shot of the camera panning up Tina's unconscious body veeeeeerrrrry slowly (a "technique" this filmmaker was fond of, sadly) and that was about it.
Unless you have some fond memories of this film or want it simply for the campyness of it all, I can't recommend this movie. The sad part is that this is the first release from Midnight Legacy, a company that claims to want to bring classics back in fully restored and uncut glory. But if this is an example of things to come, it's not looking too good. Alien 2 On Earth felt like a complete waste of time for me and that's an hour and a half that I'll never get back. Avoid.
