I'd heard bad things about this, like it was too slow, confusing, had too much potholing in it, but after finally watching this I feel the bad dubbing and general stupidity of the script (not to mention the great soundtrack by Oliver Onions) carried everything through. Sure, the ending was a bit of a let down, but still, where else do you have a guy explaining his wife's meltdown on live television as "It's okay- she's just telepathic".
A spaceship is due to land in the sea and while waiting for that, a TV show interviews a potholer on live television for some reason. She breaks down as she has a vision of sorts about something bad happening. When the spaceship lands, they find the pod empty, even though the astronauts reported that everything was okay. Meanwhile, our potholers go bowling for some reason, probably to introduce our characters. There's our telepathic lady, her boyfriend, another guy, yet another guy (dubbed by Nick Alexander), another guy played by Michele Soavi, a chick, and another chick (not dubbed by Nick Alexander.
As our bunch of victims prepare to go potholing, the telepathic spots a girl picking up a pulsating blue rock but is taken away by the boyfriend. Lucky for her, as the blue rock has torn off the face of the little girl! You know your watching an Italian film when a small kid is graphically mauled by an alien creature. Also, you know your watching an Italian film when Michele Soavi finds a similar blue rock on the ground while he's having a pee up against a building.
And now it's time for potholing! Our bunch of fuds head into the ground for a while, eventually settling down for the night so Michele Soavi can talk b*ll*cks about writing with candles. The next day, everyone rather stupidly splits up (and not for the last time), resulted in the blue rock bursting open, tearing a girls face off, and sending her down a ravine, where our numpties find her, face intact! After a long, long sequence getting this girl back up the ravine, one guy goes back up with her and we have the longest tracking shot in film history, as the camera pans from the guys shoes up the entire length of this girl's body (it takes ages). This pays off, however. You know how in alien they've got a chest burster? How about a face burster? You get that here as our alien makes an appearance, bursts out the girls face, and attacks the other guy causing his head to fall off onto the rest of our idiots.
From then on out it's alien (or aliens, it's quite confusing) versus potholers as they get lost in the dark, split up (again), and run around trying to find a way out – There's some gore, exploding heads, aliens bursting from bodies, people being killed and a bit of a psychic battle that's not even remotely explained. Needless to say a couple of people escape back to the world, which is strangely empty (save for one shot where there's people walking down the street and traffic and what not).
While strangely focusing on things ignored in other films (cars driving down the street for ages, bowling alleys, potholing) and kind of fizzling out towards the end there (although I loved the POV shot through the alien's mouth!), Alien 2 (which I'm sure is an official sequel) has enough extreme gore, bad dubbing and stupid characters to entertain a jaded Italian splatter fan. I will say that the soundtrack is great, as you would expect from Oliver Onions.
