Inseminoid (1981) has to be awesome because things that end in “oid” are inherently cool. For example, remember Zoids? How about the Noid? Then you got androids, meteoroids, asteroids, hemorrhoids — the list goes on and on…
Plus, Inseminoid is British and partially financed by the Shaw Brothers. I don’t even need to bother looking up the current IMDB top ten movies of all time because Inseminoid is certainly near the top of that list, likely lagging just behind A View To A Kill.
Norman J. Warren directed. You know him. He directed Prey, that movie about a carnivorous alien that lands on earth and befriends lesbians. Nick and Gloria Maley wrote Inseminoid. You know them. Nick built Yoda. More importantly, he built that monster that the male space vampire turns into at the end of Lifeforce after he says…
“It’ll be much less terrifying if you just come to me.”
Yessir, quality all around. Inseminoid will likely become my new favorite movie.
Inseminoid
Inseminoid starts out like gangbusters. We get cloud tank effects to simulate flying through space! The cloud tank got used in pretty much every 1980s movie, and I genuinely miss it. For my money, cloud-tank clouds are way spookier than CGI clouds.
John Scott provides suitably spacy music. Not only did Scott do the score for King Kong Lives, he also did the rejected score for Clan of the Cave Bear!
Narration tells us that scientists are exploring a vast tomb-like complex on another planet. The temperature of said planet is eighty-nine degrees below zero.
So, basically, Minnesota, when it finally starts to warm up in June.
Cut to space-suit scientists exploring a dusty cave. Their flashlights cut through the muck dramatically. Their suits look like fireman outfits characters would wear in a movie like The Towering Inferno. One of them comes across a wall-carving. Most likely, Prometheus directly copied stuff like this from Inseminoid.
One scientist discovers crystals. The other scientist has a transparent wall explode in his face. He gets wheeled into the base, unconscious, and we are introduced to our intrepid crew.
Doubt Creeps In
Look, I don’t mean to doubt the genius of Inseminoid, but I feel a bit overwhelmed here. The movie seems to literally have a dozen characters to try to sort out. Did I make a mistake? Am I actually watching a mini-series on par with something like Lonesome Dove?
A quick check of Google confirms I am watching a sub-ninety-minute movie that has a poster depicting a woman birthing an alien baby that looks like it is shooting lasers from its hand (it’s not; the “lasers” are flashlight beams from horrified space-suited onlookers).
I refuse to sort all of these characters out. I’m not getting paid by the hour here. Suffice it to say, one lady looks like Barbara Carrera with all sultriness removed. Victoria Tennant is in the background. Also, one of the crew members is black and looks like Ken Foree. Wait…that was racist, wasn’t it?
Whatever. I’m not saying all black people look alike. I’m saying all these people are indistinguishable from one another. You know, like Asians.
One lady manages to stand out somewhat. She collects crystals from the injured scientist’s unconscious hand. That is not what makes her stand out, though. What makes her stand out is that she is not wearing a bra.
I Capitulate, Inseminoid!
Aaaaaand, I’m lost. Suited folks wander around tunnels and uncover other suited people who got buried by a cave-in. A journalist asks Not-Barbara Carrera questions. The black guy thinks the cave engraving says something about “twins.”
The Minnesota Twins baseball team?
No clarification is given on whether or not that is the case.
A man and a woman make out. Another guy was also apparently injured by the exploding transparent wall, even though he wasn’t by the exploding transparent wall when it exploded. He goes crazy and runs back and forth through the tunnels.
One cool thing: the tunnels have a mini-train, like something from the villain lair of a James Bond movie like You Only Live Twice. Later in the movie, it is used to virtually no effect whatsoever. Incredible production value there…
All of this initial confusion culminates in the crazy guy pushing a woman down, and she gets her foot caught on a piece of metal. This also tears her suit, and her heater malfunctions. Over the radio, another guy tries to talk her through a process to bypass her thermostat.
Finally, we are back on track. I understand what is happening here. A man tries to explain a simple technical process to a woman. She needs to switch the blue and yellow leads on an electronic wristband.
In response, the woman tries to saw her foot off.
Men everywhere nod in total understanding…
Have Mercy, Inseminoid!
The crazy-guy-running-around plot thread is resolved by a woman shooting him in the heart with a piton gun. Eventually, the black guy and the whitest girl on the crew go back into the tunnels because they want to learn more about the crystals.
Some sort of creature tears the black guy apart like a Lego man. It knocks the girl unconscious. She wakes up on a fluorescent light table, topless. She is not really on a table, though. All of this is a hallucination. The creature impregnates her with a glass tube filled with eggs and green slime, tastefully, of course. Inseminoid then treats us to a trippy sequence that was probably inspired by 2001, or, I should say, .00002001.
It turns out the girl’s name is Sandy. She is played by Judy Geeson (The Eagle Has Landed), who kind of looks like Dee Wallace.
Sandy wakes up in the infirmary with no memory of what happened. The .00002001 montage happens again, and I wonder if I accidentally hit the rewind button.
No, it’s just the movie padding out its runtime because sometimes endless scenes of people running through tunnels aren’t enough.
The plot finally sorts itself out. Sandy is pregnant with alien offspring that causes her to start killing everyone as she goes into possessed mama-bear mode to protect her gestating brood. Things become easier to keep straight as Sandy picks off crewmembers one by one. She starts by grabbing a pair of scissors and giving Victoria Tennant’s intestines a haircut.
I Just Want To Go Home
While the plot is now easier to follow, it is still a mess. Characters run back and forth through the tunnels. Sometimes they go to get explosives. Or they go to get tools. Sometimes they just go to the bathroom… for all we know.
Meanwhile, Sandy continues to kill them. Sometimes she eats pieces of her victims. Or she has super strength. Sometimes she even talks to them on the radio.
“You can’t get way. You have to come out sometime. There’s no other way. So why don’t you all just come out now.”
Meanwhile, Sandy’s belly swells, except for when they use footage out of continuity. When her belly is swelling, she unbuttons her pants like someone who ate too much at Thanksgiving.
At last, Sandy births two alien babies that look like those M.U.S.C.L.E. figures from 1985. What is the plot’s response? The plot responds by having characters run back and forth through tunnels. This is starting to make me cry. And not purging tears that leave one feeling cleansed. These are the kind of tears Philip Seymour Hoffman shed in Boogie Nights.
“I’m an idiot for watching this. I’m a mister-falconing idiot!”
Let me cut to the chase. Everyone dies. Inseminoid ends with a rescue ship landing. Or maybe it is a resupply ship. I don’t care. For a stinger ending, this goes on waaaaay too long. When the end finally, blessedly, comes, it reveals the two alien babies have stowed away on the ship as it leaves.
What Is Left?
How did things fall apart so fast? Inseminoid was supposed to be awesome. If a person can’t depend on “oid” things being awesome, what can they depend on? Watching Inseminoid has sent me into a downward existential crisis.
What do I do Saint MacReady?
