My love for Douglas Cheek’s C.H.U.D. has been well-documented for
some time now. It is, for me, the best
monster movie of the Eighties this side of John Carpenter’s The Thing. It has a strong story that’s about more than
one thing. It has excellent performances
from some great character actors (including interesting cameos from the likes
of John Goodman, Jay Thomas, and Jon Polito).
It has an outstanding synth score by David A Hughes which is haunting,
evocative, and melancholy, as the best synth scores are. It has excellent special effects work by John
Caglione, Jr. It should be said here
that Ed French, who was a member of C.H.U.D.’s
makeup effects department, not only did the makeup effects for Tim Kincaid’s Breeders (aka Killer Alien aka Breeders: La
Invasión Sexual) but also appears as Dr. Ira Markham in the film (special
effects artist Matt Vogel also worked on both movies). The popping up of French on both C.H.U.D. and Breeders makes for a nice, little coincidence, because the
similarities between the two movies is enough to say that the former film was,
at the very least, a heavy influence on the latter. There is a monster that has a disgusting lair
underneath New York City. There is a
crazy bag lady (Rose Geffen) who runs afoul of the monster. There is a featured character, Gail (Amy
Brentano), who is a photographer. There
is a scene where Gail’s lights go out, and she has to go down to the basement
to investigate (like C.H.U.D.’s Kim
Griest but, astonishingly, without the shock shower scene). Now, I wouldn’t declare that Breeders is only a ripoff of C.H.U.D. because it “borrows” from so
many other films - Humanoids from the Deep, Scanners,
The Fly, and Lifeforce just to name four – to the point that it feels a bit like
looking at old photos of that time you tried to do yourself up as The Wolf Man
for Halloween, and you wound up looking like an idiot with a bunch of brown
cotton balls glued to your face.
So. Breeders. The film concerns itself with the violent
rape and mutilation of a bunch of virgin women by an oily, insectoid
creature. I’d get into more of the plot,
but there isn’t one.
This film is a sleaze lover’s wet
dream. Every woman in it is a virgin
(sometimes - okay, always - unbelievably
so; a coke-snorting, former-gymnast-turned-fashion-model is a virgin? I suppose stranger things have happened), and
that term is treated like a four-letter word.
The women are all attacked specifically because they are virgins. The one character who isn’t a virgin is A)
ugly, B) insane, and C) torn apart by the experience. What does that say about the rest of the
women? Well, not much, since the
filmmakers don’t really give a rat’s ass about any of them. Gamble Pace (Teresa Farley) is a doctor, and
she’s ostensibly the protagonist. She’s
also as weak-willed and ineffective as every other woman in the film (though
Kincaid does give her a poignant scene at the very end that almost saves the
film; Almost). All the women feel a
great desire to tell us why they are virgins, as if it were any of our
affair. Kathleen (LeeAnne Baker) states,
“In this day and age, it’s almost some sort of dirty word to be a…virgin.” She even has a hard time saying the
word. Alec (Adriane Lee), Gail’s
stylist, explains to Gail about how she’s a virgin for no reason whatsoever
other than to fly a giant red flag telling us that she’s the next victim. All the women strip down at the most unlikely
of times (while cooking dinner, while talking with their mother on the phone
[okay, one is actually pretty likely], while on a break during a photoshoot,
etcetera), and since there’s no reason for any of this, these scenes simply
stand out as being the portions of the movie where Kincaid signals to the
audience that this is what they are there for, and, hey, it’s been five minutes
since you had a boner. That the women
ogled so heavily are virgins plays to men’s craving towards the Madonna/Whore
Complex. These women are willing to get
naked for your eyes only, but they’re unsullied, and boy oh boy, unspoiled
territory is the most irresistible, just so long as, you know, she’s also great
in the sack.
The opposite side of this is,
naturally, the Monstrous Male Sex Urge. Going
all the way back to, at least, 1931’s Dracula,
the idea of being raped by (or at the absolute minimum, giving one’s body over
to) an Other has been present in probably about half or more of every Horror
film ever made. The most famous example
is the underwater ballet/sex scene from 1954’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and this is what begat Humanoids from the Deep once the walls
had been broken down about displaying graphic monster-on-human sex on screen. What’s kind of interesting in Breeders is that all of the attacks are
initiated by normal guys who transform into (apparently) just the one monster. He keeps popping up like the Great Gazoo. The mere presence of a woman is enough to
arouse sexual urges in men (even gay men are not immune) that cannot be
overcome until their base desire is satiated (the film eggs this along by
almost always having the women be naked in the men’s presence first). Even when the men aren’t actual monsters,
they’re lasciviousness is brazen and on full display. Karinsa (the glorious Frances Raines, niece
of legendary actor Claude) avers to the guy who barged in on her naked calisthenics,
“It’s not like you were after my body” in an almost porno-coquettish come-on
manner. Kathleen asks creepy boyfriend
Brett (Mark Legan) how much he saw of her taking a shower. His unctuous response: “Enough that I know I
want you to bear my children.” But the
monster is, as stated, The Other (read here as “non-white male”). It wants to propagate its race, and it does
so by stealing “our women.” Further,
it’s “semen” is described as a “thick, black substance.” Have no fear, however, since all the beast’s
victims later get to frolic together in a giant, gross, “semen”-filled (this
time white in color, just to make all the men in the audience think of women
frolicking in semen) hot tub, which I’m convinced was taken, unwashed, directly
from Plato’s Retreat. One can just
imagine the bacteria in that thing.
This is not to say that Breeders doesn’t have a certain
appeal. After all, I’m a heterosexual
male who enjoys seeing a naked woman (or several), and I have a love for
special makeup effects going back to my pre-adolescence. Both of these bins are filled to overflowing
by Kincaid and company. It’s just that
the rest of the bins that a truly successful film needs to fill (compelling
characters and a narrative, namely) are ignored almost entirely. If nothing else, this film is an
American-made Hentai, and it does that as well as it was going to be done in
1986. It’s just disappointing that the
non-exploitation elements are so clumsy and dull that it dragged down the whole
experience for me. I think I expected
too much from a film titled Breeders.
MVT: The nudity and special
effects. Well-done on both counts.
Make or Break: The first
attack scene is admittedly unexpected in how it plays out, and it raises some
questions that the film quickly answers in the most ham-fisted way possible.
Score: 6/10
