This movie would fall under the category for guilty pleasure for me. The story tells of a mysterious occurrence of young virgin women getting raped and experiencing selective memory loss. The only problem is, the people who are responsible for this violent act some sort of slimy creature that lives beneath the city. Things become even more complicated when the DNA match turns out to be not human. This movie does have gore and creature features that are peppered throughout this movie however it is plagued with bad acting. It had a very interesting concept of combining pornography with horror but it fell through the roof.
First off, this movie had some very good gore and creature effects that I did not expect this movie to have. When it came to things popping out of people’s stomachs, skin tearing open and people getting attacked I will give this movie a standing ovation. There was one scene, in particular, that really mesmerized me. Ted, one of the photographers, has one of the Breeders coming out of his chest and we see him tear open his chest skin while pockets of pink, slimy flesh start to pop out. That was probably the worse scene in the entire movie. There was a great Scanners scene were a head explodes and a Breeder emerges and a horrifically creepy ending where all the virgin women are bathing in a pool of alien sperm. This movie just freaks me out in that sense.
The acting in the movie was far from good, though surprisingly not the worst. You have Teresa Farley and Lance Lewman who had some great potential but they were much too somber even when things were falling apart. They didn’t seem dedicated to their role or even put effort into trying to look panicked or scared. One line of dialogue, uttered by Lewman’s character, should have been yelled but instead it was said, "Your f**king bananas." The movie wants you to feel sorry for them, but they all seemed too stuck up and paranoid for me to feel sorry for them. In other words, they were begging to be taken.
What this movie tried to do and I will give them credit for a good concept with good intentions, was to combine "soft" core porn with a horror movie. There were plenty of scenes with naked women and a lot of sexual related themes; in fact, it’s almost like a reworking or even homage to Cronenberg’s Shivers. However, after seeing so much nakedness the nudity became overrated and very redundant, like there was no need for a woman to come home to her kitchen and just strip to take a shower. It’s almost like the girls wanted the role so that they can show off what they have, only problem is, they have nothing to show off. They tried to combine suspense with this concept and it just looked weird and awkward for an alien to attack and rape a naked young girl. It just seemed way too uncomfortable for any kind of thing to do that.
Overall, there was some bad acting and a failed concept of horror-porn and some top notch creature effects, but I enjoy watching this film for those exact reasons. I have my share of guilty pleasures, two being Chopping Mall and Snakes on a Plane, and this is another timeless classic that failed when it came out, but has a cult following. I would recommend this movie to those who enjoy cult classics as well as any horror movie fan, though if you are younger then you may want to avoid it because of the nudity. In my opinion, its probably one of the great cheesy and stupid horror / sci-fi movies of the 80 and I think it will go down as a timeless classic.
