Breeders (1986)

If you've ever wondered what a low-budget science fiction horror film, featuring slimy aliens raping earth women, directed by a noted director of gay porn movies would look like, then Breeders (1986) could be your answer.  Actually, that brief summary doesn't come close to doing the film justice.  It is all too easy to simply dismiss something like Breeders as cheap jack semi-pornographic exploitation, but, in realty, it succeeds, to some extent, in rising above this.  To be sure, it is cheap and it is exploitative - it certainly does nothing to disguise the fact that its premise is an excuse for plentiful female nudity - but it certainly doesn't come over as fundamentally misogynistic as many such movies and, particularly toward the end, comes up with some inventive imagery unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry.  Most of all, despite its obvious limitations, it is actually very professionally made- good sound quality, good editing and well composed shots.  Sure, it is unlikely ever to win any awards, but it is very watchable and, at seventy seven minutes, never outstays its welcome.

The scenario is straightforward - women in New York are being attacked and raped by something inhuman, (although it disguises itself as various people in the course of the film, resulting in each victim describing their attacker differently).  A lady doctor and a police detective, (apparently the NYPD can spare only a single cop to investigate a wave of violent sex crimes), investigate and find that all of the victims were virgins and that their bodies now contain traces of what turns out to be dust from a type of brick used in the city's foundations.  Coupled with the fact that at least one of the attackers - now missing - had recently been exploring the abandoned tunnels under the city leads our protagonists to conclude that something nasty is coming out of the tunnels and molesting women.  Meanwhile, the victims themselves are vanishing from the hospital, (they wander off stark naked without anybody noticing).  The doctor and the detective pursue the attacker, after it is foiled in its latest rape attempt, into the tunnels, eventually finding themselves in an abandoned subway spur line, (I must admit that I at first thought that the doctor had said that it was an abandoned sperm line, which, actually, would have been quite appropriate, as things turn out). There they learn, via a possessed colleague of the doctor's, that an alien force has landed in the city and sought refuge beneath the streets, where it is now trying to reproduce, for which it requires the purity of the virginal victims in order to avoid mutations in the off-spring.  

As it turns out, the victims' impregnation doesn't result from their rape - this just put them under the alien's influence - but rather from the bathing in, well, alien jism which they are now indulging in.  The sight of a bevy of naked women slathering themselves in other worldly ejaculations in what appears to be a giant clam shell, (believe me, you'll never look at Botticelli's 'Venus on the Half Shell' in the same way again), is striking, to say the least.  The film moves to a somewhat underwhelming climax, whereby our heroes conveniently find, discarded in the tunnel, exactly what they need to destroy the aliens: a tin of flammable liquid with which to burn the adult alien to death and a reel of cable to connect to the subway conductor rail and electrocute the girls in the bath.  (On a point of fact, the cable is far too lightweight to carry that sort of current and just throwing one end in the bath wouldn't work - you'd need to complete a circuit, but the Hell, this is just a cheap exploitation film, so why am I worrying about such details?).  All of which gives the clear impression that Breeders is, in effect, the sort of science fiction B-movie which used to fill the bottom half of double bills throughout the fifties and sixties, albeit with added sex and nudity.  Which is exactly what it is - a homage/parody of films like Mars Needs Women, Night Caller From Out of Space or even The Body Stealers, all of which feature not dissimilar plots about aliens procreating with earth people.  If you accept that, then it is an enjoyable film.

The film's weak points lie with some pretty lame acting performances which, bearing in mind the director's pedigree, seem to come straight from a porn film.  To be absolutely fair, in part, at least, they can also been seen as part of the parodying of old low budget science fiction B-movies, which more often than not featured similarly flat performances.  The inadequacy of the performances is particularly painful at the film's climax, with the two leads offering absolutely no reaction at all to either the burning of the alien or the electrocution of a bath full of naked women, (who are, after all, innocent and unwilling victims of a force beyond their control).  Some of the plot points beggar belief (perhaps intentionally), most significantly the idea that the victims are all virgins.  Without wishing to indulge in sexist stereotypes, the idea that women working on New York fashion shoots might not be sexually active, (particularly as one spends her lunch break snorting coke and dancing naked) strains credulity.  On the other hand, as alluded to previously, the film does avoid falling into misogynistic stereotypes itself: none of the victims are portrayed (as they all too often are in exploitation films) as being 'slutty', 'provacative' or 'asking for it'.  Rape (even by a slimy alien) is also portrayed as being an act of violation which severely traumatises the victim.

Not surprisingly for a low budget production, the special effects are pretty variable, with the alien, basically a guy in a black rubber suit, is wisely confined to glimpses for most of the film.  Some of its slimy attacks are quite effective, as is the scene where the photographer begins to transform, while the bit near the end where a character explodes to reveal the alien beneath is pretty neat.  Overall, the film looks surprisingly decent, with director Tim Kincaid (who usually directed his gay porn under the name of Joe Gage), putting together a remarkably slick package, bearing in mind the production's obvious limitations.  Production values are solid rather than inspired, but certainly don't look threadbare.  Kincaid's direction is effective, managing a modicum of suspense in the attack sequences.  The opening, for instance, employs some decent misdirection, before the elderly dog walker is revealed as the alien attacker, likewise, a subsequent victim is saved from one would be rapist by the alien, only to be raped it instead.  Obviously, every time a young woman is alone and starts undressing, we know that she's going to be attacked, but it is the 'by who' and 'how' which provides the suspense. In the final analysis, Breeders is never going to be hailed as a masterpiece and there is no getting away from the fact that it is a piece of cheap sexploitation.  But it also clear that it isn't really taking itself too seriously - it is well aware of its own shortcomings - and consequently provides a lot of sleazy fun if you watch it in the right mood.

(Interestingly, Breeders must have made some impact, as it was remade in 1997, this time on the Isle of Man pretending to be Boston and with a cast of Brits - including Eastenders' Samantha Womack nee Janus - pretending to be American).