Breeders

• USA • 1986 • 77m •

• Directed by: Tim Kincaid. • Starring: Teresa Farley, Lance Lewman, Frances Raines, Natalie O'Connell, Amy Brentano, LeeAnne Baker, Matt Mitler, Adriane Lee, Mae Cerar, Mark Legan, Dan Geffen, Pat Rizzolino, Derek Dupont. • Music by: Don Great, Thomas Milano.

The Manhattan General Hospital has admitted a string of young women who have been raped by something otherworldly. The perpetrator only attacks women who are virgins. Dr. Pace and Detective Andriotti work together to try and isolate the strange organic material found on the victims, and to try and locate the fiend. Soon the victims begin arising in a trance and leaving the hospital by an underground passage where their fate awaits them.

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1:53

Review:

After a couple months of wondering about it I finally sat through BREEDERS [as released by Wizard Video in 1986] and while it is far from even an "effective" movie it did have it's moments. THE PLOT: Young virgin white female women have been mysteriously snatched from the streets of lower Manhattan while nobody was looking -- in itself an improbability of such a high degree that it does not even rate mentioning -- only to turn up later as victims of sexual assault at "Manhattan General Hospital" where a young mulatto hottie doctor and a young police lieutenant who both look like fourth year NYU acting students decide that there is more to the incidents than meets the eye. The two embark on an hour long search through the lower bowels of the city, ending up in an abandoned subway line with nary a homeless person to be found, where they discover the "nest" of an alien life form who has come to the Earth in an effort to breed with our women. After all, what else WOULD a species capable of intergalactic space travel want from our ant-like civilization, other than our leggy bikini models? Since this is the only plot point of genuine interest I will leave out mention of the laughable special effects, wooden acting, improbable casting, dim-witted dialog, pedestrian cinematography, unlikable leads, numbskulled supporting characters [almost through here], idiot's perspective on life in NYC, and complete lack of understanding of how the subways work & why the idea of an "abandoned tunnel" at the 23rd Street exchange is ridiculous.

With all that aside now, this is actually a pretty interesting MasterCard budgeted film shot entirely in NYC, but not the NYC most filmgoers have become familiar with -- It is a Soho mentality world made up of cloistered studios, rooftops with water silos, lower Broadway's Fashion and NYU areas [I used to take classes up at 23rd and 8th Ave & enjoyed lunchtime walks down many of the streets used in exterior scenes whilst a slave rowing the Tower Records galleon right across from NYU] and the artsyparty slummers who populated it. The cast is made up almost entirely of unknowns who never really went on to do anything else, with only cult horror babe Amy Brentano [BLOOD SISTERS] making any kind of an impact as a cocaine snorting ex-gymnast bikini model who's photoshoot is rudely interrupted when the director mutates into an alien which proceeds to grope her leggy frame with it's gross tentical like appendages. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hate it when stuff like that happens.

The film's opening sixty minutes or so are pretty bad, with lots of talking and speculation over an "unknown biological substance" that the rape victims' bodies have been covered with, all of which serves to set up the movie's final 15 minute set-piece when it is revealed that this substance is alien sperm, and the women become covered with it while their naked bodies writhe in a steaming vat of the stuff four or five at a time -- an interesting twist on spawn reproduction techniques, provided that the women are attractive & willing enough. Director Kincaid is therefore forgiven for the film's innanities by providing a nice cross-section of caucaisian female types crawling around in the slippery gunk, though those viewers who may have been hoping for borderline pornography will doubtlessly be disappointed by results, which seems more like a waste of uncongealed geletain dessert than some sort of perverted group grope. The girls don't even interact with each other, not seeming to be really there even, and at the end the resourceful cop & doctor fry the sloppy mess with a handy electrical cable connected to the third rail. What a waste.

This movie was one of the first released straight to home video during the rental boon years of the 1980's and while a disappointment to be sure is worthy of some sort of cult status.

There are some nice parallels to LIQUID SKY [doubtlessly the movie's major influence] and Luigi Cozzi's ALIEN CONTAMINATION [with it's alien spores idea], an interesting electronic soundtrack, and some attractive babes with zero compunction about removing their clothes for the benefit of the camera, and there is something to be said for that.

Kincaid's 1986 movie is easily the more obscure & probably more fun, though snooty types who are insistent upon slick productions will find plenty to complain about, until the last 15 minutes that is, which should satisfy anyone with a taste for the naked & slippery prospects of alien movie hokum.

Review by Squonkamatic from the Internet Movie Database.

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