The Cream of the Crap: ‘Inseminoid’

Oscar Wilde penned the oft-quoted phrase that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Well, it’s a sure bet that he never watched “Inseminoid,” a 1981 straight-to-video knockoff that shamelessly stole from the ‘Alien’ franchise, as much of the plot, characters and set design as its meager budget allowed. At an hour and half and change, this plodding sci-fi/slasher is sure to induce familiar feelings of regret in anyone who ever rented a video at Blockbuster based on a title or bitchin’ cover image alone, only to find themselves profoundly pissed that they hadn’t chosen Beastmaster instead.

Like in Ridley Scott’s space horror masterpiece, Inseminoid opens with crew members suited and booted in el cheapo space gear. These employees of the prospecting outfit Xeno have unearthed an alien tomb of some kind, filled with mysterious glowing crystals. Before you can say John Hurt, a pod explodes that kills one crew member and wounds another who, upon recovering in the sick bay, gets all scabby and sweaty. Against doctor’s orders, the ill-fated survivor breaks away and scurries back to the tomb. As far as I can tell, several other crew members follow in pursuit, resulting in the death of one by a gruesome self-amputation and then the dispatchment of another by spear gun.

Rather than nuking the whole place from space just to be sure, other idiot crew members head back to the tomb to run “further experiments.” A small away team composed of the ship’s male anthropologist and female crew member Sandy (Space: 1999’s Judy Geeson) redeploys to the site of the initial explosion when, out of the shadows, an unseen alien attacks the pair. The alien shreds the anthropologist but Sandy is in for far, far worse. She ends up immobilized on some kind of light table and, well, inseminated by the extraterrestrial who looks like the uglier cousin of Jeff Goldblum’s tragic Seth Brundle character in The Fly.

The flick then jump-cuts to the inside the ship where the bruised and now apparently pregnant Sandy awakens. Being knocked-up doesn’t seem to agree with her as she suddenly goes, as they say in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,  “batshit crazy.” Pitching between murderous rage and pitiable warbling, the suddenly super strong Sandy begins hunting down her crew members with an ardor of a pissed off female praying mantis. The Ripley-esque captain bites it, then the maybe-evil-android-British-sciencey guy and so on.

While now in full on slasher territory, the flick’s narrative grinds to a halt. Things only pick up steam when Sandy gives birth to her alien spawn–a scene that’s harrowing on two fronts as (1) her in-labor screams are so off the chart loud that I had to turn down the volume on my TV lest my neighbors think I was committing mass murder and (2) the hellspawn she delivers is a thing of pure nightmare fuel; a quivering mass of gooey neonatal flesh that makes the baby in Eraserhead look downright cuddly.

It’s possible that, using Sandy as a stylistic vessel, the filmmakers were trying to make a pithy statement about the perils of late 20th century motherhood, ecological distress and the overall nature of scientific exploration but I think this is giving the dummies behind this picture way too much credit. If Inseminoid does have any redeeming value, it’s to remind Gen Xers of those not so halcyon nights of arriving at the video store too late on Friday when the only crap left on the shelves was this drek, Dorf on Golf, or a worn-out copy of Buckaroo Banzai. After 93 dreadfully tedious minutes, the only appropriate summation for Inseminoid that comes to mind is “In space, no one can hear you yawn.”