Breeders (1997)

     Back in the mid-Eighties gay porn director Tim Kincaid (a.k.a. "Joe Gage") tried his hand at going mainstream by directing a few small budget direct-to-video films.  Unsurprisingly, they were all wretched.  Amongst his short resume of work that didn't involve male-on-male sodomy was the 1986 science fiction/horror movie Breeders which haphazardly told the tale of an alien that rapes Manhattan's scarce supply of cocaine-snorting virgins. 
Virgins, I might add, which he keeps in a pool of space jizz in an abandoned subway tunnel.  Flash forward over a decade later and imagine my surprise when browsing the aisle of my local Blockbuster I came across what I thought was the aforementioned Kincaid abomination repackaged in an updated VHS box.  One glance at the comely female actresses on the back and I knew immediately that this was no Kincaid film.  Would I feel the same after watching it?  Well...

     This Breeders is directed by Paul Matthews who seems apt to pass the gloomy hillsides of England as American backdrops.  I actually watched his first effort, 1995's Grim, years later on an episode of TNT's homage to my kind of movies, "Monstervision" — hosted by the always entertaining and informative Joe Bob Briggs.  Grim was an abysmal film about a group of spelunkers that encounter a monster in a cave that was summoned using a Ouija board.  Breeders would be his second consecutive film centered on underground beasts.  Seriously dude, give it a rest. 

     The movie begins with a meteor crashing to Earth courtesy of the PlayStation quality CGI graphics during the opening credits.  Emerging from the rubble is our rather decent looking alien and his gorgeous, skin-barring, unwilling accomplice with an unsightly facial scar:

Despite the scars, I'm still turned on.

This "Space Girl" as she's so creatively referred to is Kadamba Simmons who starred in Matthews' first film, Grim.  More on her unfortunate story later.  Lucky for us, our alien beast happened to blast through the campus street of an all-girls college.  A college that seems to employ only three people:

The janitor actually teaches pre-med.

 The handsome looking cat is our hero, Ashley (Todd Jensen, the not quite cyborg cop in Cyborg Cop) along with Jack the JANITOR as it's emblazoned on his back and the college principal (shouldn't she be a dean instead?) Roper, who has a very difficult time trying to maintain her American accent.
     Let me address this here and now.  This is supposed to take place in Boston even though it was filmed on the Island of Man located in between Britain and Ireland.  Not once does anyone try to inflect the fakkin' annoying Bostonian accent that — and I'm just throwing darts here — seems pretty goddamn prevalent in the Boston area!  To say that certain American traits were lost in translation to director Matthews is an understatement.  For instance, the gas refinery is run by "Boston Gas".  The Boston Police drive a squad car that says "Highway Patrol".  Speaking of the police, Swiss-born actor Oliver Tobias portrays Detective Moore as a Dirty Harry/William Munny/mafioso hybrid.  It's fucking bizarre.  Then there's that basketball scene.  Ho-lee shit!
     Back to the story.  Ashley takes a shard of what he thinks is part of the meteor that crashed nearby when in actuality it was a piece of the meteor that our Space Girl "rode" on.  He's not the only one to snatch up pieces of the valuable space booty as it has become quite the rage for the young ladies to wear them around their necks as makeshift jewelry.  I guess NASA just doesn't give a fuck about investigating this.  Things just keep getting better for Ashley as he strikes up a not-at-all inappropriate sexual relationship with one of his students, Louise played by blonde cutie Samantha Janus.  I gotta hand it to Matthews, he knows Janus' strength and employs it well:

 Only gave her a B+ that year.  Fucking chauvinist.

During the above scene, Louise returns to her dorm for the evening when Ashley alerts her that she forgot her panties.  She tells him to save them until next time.  He obviously can't wait:

Art teacher.  Alien hunter.  Panty sniffer.  Hero.

Jack, who also is having sex with Louise's roommate Myra (The fuck is going on at this college?) gets knocked off by the alien.  Myra, looking for Jack whom she loaned $300, ends up getting kidnapped by said alien while Roper, who witnesses the whole thing, gets hit in the head by a forcefully closed door, knocking her out.  That same night Ashley spies Space Girl and chases her down and tackles her when she is pulled into the ground by the alien, slicing his side with claw marks.  Detective Moore is called to investigate the missing individuals and makes Ashley his prime suspect. He refuses to believe that a monster is responsible for this because Roper, for some fucking reason, refuses to confirm Ashley's story.  I guess large, bloody claw marks is not considered evidence.  What I would like to know is with a dead janitor and an injured principle and art teacher who is working at the fucking college?
     Detective Moore decides to send his "forensic team" to investigate what is going on underground.  There is nothing scientific whatsoever applied by this group of bungling assholes and petty douchebags who are armed to the teeth but lack the the collective intelligence to run a fucking Taco Bell.  The alien has the last member cornered when he decides to ignite a fuel line in hopes of killing them both.  It fails.
     Back at the dorms the women that wore the makeshift jewelry of the meteor shards have suddenly become mindless savages under the control of the alien.  They start making their way to his underground fuck palace.  This includes Louise, who Ashley confronts after his interrogation by Detective Moore.  Louise seems to have the upper hand until Space Girl comes to his aid:

You catch that wardrobe malfunction?  Space Girl tells Ashley to rip off the necklace.  He does and she returns to her senses.  Easy huh?  Well not so much for the other poor girls as the pair return to the underground hideout and remedy Louise's classmates with shotgun blasts to the abdomen.  After their carnage it comes to Ashley's realization that the women are being controlled by the shards.  Louise wonders who they killed to which Ashley coldly replies, "They were already dead".  Try telling that to a judge Ash. 

     The lovers come to rescue Space Girl but not before Louise is knocked unconscious when they fall into the alien stronghold in the depths of the sewer.  Space Girl tells Ashley the purpose of the women is to carry his eggs.  That's carry — not impregnate — something the movie makes sure to stress to the viewer so that we are aware that there was no intergalactic coitus between the alien and the women!  The alien needs the women to act as incubators so his species can survive.  Along the way Ashley makes a wild assumption that even though normal ammo won't work, somehow shotgun shells stuffed with fragments of the meteor shard will do the job.  Where he got this from, I don't have the faintest clue.  At one point Louise tells Detective Moore to avoid eye contact with the alien so as not to be hypnotized.  Okay, this movie is clearly making shit up as it goes.  Anyway, the alien is dispatched by getting dropped into water that's on fire (don't ask, just keep moving) and Ashley, Louise, Detective Moore and Space Girl escape.  Their celebration is short-lived as multiple alien meteors make their way into Earth's atmosphere.  Who knows. Maybe they're enrolling in the Humanities courses at the college.  

     First, let me start with the positives.  The alien looked pretty badass:

and so did Samantha Janus' constantly erect nipples:

After that it's all downhill.  This was a remake of Kincaid's 1986 work, albeit, with far better looking women.  At least Kincaid stayed true to the seedier aspect of the premise by implying that the alien impregnated the women personally.  I guess Matthews wanted to take the high road and make a shitty b-movie with class.  The first twenty minutes started off promising, even adding a rather gratuitous shower scene for good measure.  The rest of the movie however is quite a bore.  It's a tedious buildup to the eventual showdown and the payoff once you get there is definitely not worth the price.  One other thing — Paul Matthews the director needs to fire Paul Matthews the writer.  Here's why:

• Traveling by meteor seems really inefficient.  How do you steer it?  What if it crashes into a star?  Speaking of crashing, how the fuck does the alien always survive?  
• What was the motivation for Roper to not tell Detective Moore about the alien?  Was she worried about enrollment next year?
• If the shard necklaces controlled whoever wore them then why didn't the alien put one on Space Girl?  Was that his special side piece?
• What exactly was Space Girl's purpose?  She seemed to be able to come and go as she pleased.  If she really wanted to escape why did she mockingly laugh at the cops when they found her then attempt to help one later?  What the fuck Kadamba? 
• Removing the necklace from Louise brought her back to her senses but the same thing couldn't have helped the other girls because they were "already dead".  Why?  Was there a time limit?
• Where did Ashley get the idea that the very same shards that gave the alien power over the women would somehow hurt him in exchange?  
• When the fuck did the alien suddenly become able to hypnotize anyone by looking at them?  It certainly didn't work on the cops or Roper.  
• What exactly happened to the alien?  The "water" was on fire before he landed in it.  Why was it lit to begin with?  Was it butane?  Is that why the refinery exploded?  It was established earlier with the "forensic team" that the alien was immune to explosions.
• Finally, how did the alien species even survive this long if every time a new one is hatched it devours its parents?   

Sadly, Kadamba Simmons would be murdered the following year by her former Israeli military boyfriend who believed she was possessed by demons.  Simmons gained some notoriety in her native England for her high profile relationships with Oasis singer Liam Gallagher and boxer Prince Naseem Hamed.  Guess she really had a thing for assholes.  Janus, now Samantha Womack, would take her sensitive nipples and Cadillac ass and star in various British television shows.  She can currently be seen as the mother of young hoodlum-turned-British agent, "Eggsy" in Kingsman: The Secret Service.  As for star Todd Jensen, he seems to still find jobs here and there though it's clear his peak was definitely in the mid-90's.  Kinda like me.