If you have ever wanted to visit Italy's incredible Castellana Grotto, here is your chance to see the caverns. This gorgeous cave was discovered January 23, 1938, by Franco Anelli and Vito Matarrese. The photography of the Grotto is spectacular. Unfortunately the movie "Alien 2" is not so spectacular. It opens with stock astronaut splash down film footage, moves on to a bowling alley, then a beach, and finally the cave. Blue rocks that somehow turn into sock puppets are the "Aliens" that attack the group of spelunkers. Like I said, if you want to see the caverns, this is your movie. Simply ignore the ridiculous, boring story. - MERK

ALIEN 2: ON EARTH is one of those hilariously inept, no-budget Italian rip-offs of popular movies of the time. The Italians particularly liked reworking American sci-fi movies, beginning with STAR WARS, but come 1980 they'd moved on to ALIEN, delivering the double whammy of this and CONTAMINATION. There's no doubt that CONTAMINATION is the better film - it has a real story, after all - and that ALIEN 2 is a piece of trash, but nonetheless it has undeniable charm.It's clear that the brains behind this movie saw the famous John Hurt chestbursting scene in ALIEN and decided to base their movie around that single moment, revisiting it over and over again as a group of spelunkers are assaulted and killed by some hostile aliens who've hitched a ride to Earth on a returning spaceship.Production values are near nil but it doesn't matter, because ALIEN 2 is all about the gruesome spectacle. The special effects are rubbery but elaborate, and the underground setting is a perfect place in which to set scenes of gruelling horror. In some ways I was reminded of the recent British horror film, THE DESCENT, although of course this was made on a much lower budget.The acting is poor, the dubbing is poor, and the narrative falls apart towards the end, leading to an incredibly obvious so-called 'twist' ending, but still, but still...from early on, and THAT scene with the little girl on the beach, I was hooked and made yucky by this nasty little outing.

I have to admit, have really soft spot for this Alien rip off/sequel..The aliens are definitely not friendly...Its starts with stock footage of a failed mission that crashes in the sea, in the meantime the films heroine and her crew set off for a expedition into some underground caves deep below the surface, it seems the aliens (which we saw briefly on a beach) have made there way there too and who knows where else? after some grisly deaths and faces bursting open, done with some neat special effects, the film ends with the heroine (played by the gorgeous Belinda Mayne) and her bearded ugly geeky boyfriend (can you tell I'm jealous) get back to the surface, drive to the city...Not life left on Earth, the aliens have wiped everything out...the film finishes with @you could be next"..Good atmosphere, good effects and a pretty good film that if it was not slightly boring at time would be top marks..I think this film, unlike half of the doomed cave explorers in the movie, seems to have re-surfaced and getting a bit of a following again..Very well worth watching and its recent blu-ray release from the original negatives is a must have in a collector of cult film cinema.

The version I watched was a UK tape called Alien Terror. A couple named Thelma (Belinda Mayne) and Roy (Mark Bodin) are keen potholers and along with six of their friends, Bert (Michele Soavi) Maureen (Judy Perrin, this is where the credit information on the IMDb stops and the film doesn't list the characters on the credits), Jill, Bill, Cliff and Rod are planning a weekend exploring some caves somewhere in the Californian wilderness. As they drive out of the city (the closing credits mentions San Diego so maybe that's where these city shots were filmed) the local T.V. and radio news shows report that a space capsule returning from space has crash landed in the Ocean and it's crew are missing. The potholers stop at a roadside café and Bert (the idiot of the group) takes a slash against a wall and notices a strange blue football sized rock, he picks it up and gives it to Thelma, oh and by the way Thelma is a psychic and she has a 'bad' feeling. Once deep inside the cave they all have a good time until Jill and Thelma goes off on their own. Jill notices the blue thing in Thelma's rucksack is pulsating. Jill grabs it and has a closer look, it bursts open and something attach's itself to her face. Next thing we know Thelma is screaming for help, she explains to the others that Jill has fallen off a ledge and is lying hurt at the bottom. Everyone rushes to help her. Rod is left up top to operate the stretcher and crane to lift her up. Once Jill is up top her face splits open and a snake like alien thing emerges. Rod is taken by surprise and the alien attach's itself to his throat. Rod falls back and his feet get caught in some rope, as he hangs there over the edge the alien does something that makes his head fall off. The others below watching this are understandably shaken and even worse are trapped in the lower levels of the cave. They must use all their experience and know how to find a way out and survive the Alien Terror!Written, produced and directed by Ciro Ippolito under the pseudonym Sam Cromwell, rumour has it Umberto Lenzi might have been involved too. I have to admit I actually quite liked it, it has it's faults for sure and it certainly isn't a masterpiece but for what it was I thought it was an hour and a half well spent. The script drags a little in places and some of the dialogue is as absurd as we've come to expect from these 80's Italian produced low-budget horror films, but that's half their charm and entertainment. The ending was strange and somewhat of a let-down, nothing is really explained or concluded properly and just sort of ends suddenly it also went on for too long and would have been better served a few minutes shorter, Thelma's apparent psychic powers are never really made use of except her 'feelings' that she has. I liked the cave setting, I thought it was quite unusual and for the most part helped to create an atmosphere of isolation. The acting isn't up to much but then I didn't really expect it to be. There is some pretty good gore sequences in this too, Rods head oozing off and some of his insides following it down out of his neck stump is a definite highlight as is Jills face splitting open just prior, the special make-up effects are decent enough too. The aliens themselves are never really seen in their entirety, I felt there should be a big alien at the end (we get an alien point-of-view camera shot that towers above Thelma) but we never see 'it'. Mostly they look like mutant snake things. A special mention goes to Guido De Angelis & Maurizio De Angelis who provide the music and hide under the wonderful pseudonym of Oliver Onions! I don't really know why but this is one of those films that should be absolutely awful, and probably is to most people, but for some unexplainable reason I liked it. It's a film that for me has a indefinable 'X' factor. Impossible to recommend to the casual viewer and it's probably quite difficult to track down, but there are much worse out there.