Breeders (Tim Kincaid, 1986)

Breeders is a reasonably entertaining piece of sexploitation alien invasion schlock with lots of intentional and unintentional laughs and a reasonable running time that doesn't get bogged down with too much exposition, side plots, or characters wandering around aimlessly in corridors and catacombs. (You might think that's a weirdly specific point, but so many cheapo genre films pad their running times with aimless corridor and/or catacomb wandering. See also, wandering in the woods.) Alien rape is a major plot point, which could have led to much grim, sleazy, unpleasantness that makes audiences with reasonable moral compasses feel dirty, but almost all of this business takes place off-screen. Director Tim Kincaid understands that most of us would rather see flesh-ripping, slime bathing, nude aerobics, and alien mutation than graphic sexual assault, and I thank him for his understanding.

The film begins with two sci-fi premises -- (1) an alien spore has drifted from space to earth and uses human host bodies to impregnate earth women against their will (well, not quite impregnate; it's weirdly complicated) and (2) a large percentage of attractive women in their twenties and thirties who live and/or work near the Empire State Building are virgins. The alien needs virgins and has very little trouble finding them in '80s midtown Manhattan. Seems like the alien would have had better luck in a fundamentalist Christian-dominated small town, but hey, stereotypes are sometimes wrong. Still, it seems unlikely that the photographer, the stylist, and the model at a single fashion shoot are all virgins, especially since the model snorts coke and exercises naked while the rest of the crew goes to lunch. This is the only thing I find implausible. The alien spore business, the goo bath, and the flesh ripping are all pure science.

The rape victims all end up at a hospital under the care of Dr. Gamble Pace (Teresa Farley) with oddly similar symptoms. Each woman has an unidentifiable black substance on her, has some kind of minor genetic change, experiences amnesia after identifying her attacker, and falls into a catatonic state shortly thereafter. Also, each woman remembers a different assailant (which we understand, having seen the alien, who resembles a large fly wearing K-Mart-purchased winter wear, inhabit different humans). Dr. Pace is committed to solving these bizarre crimes, and so is the detective assigned to the case, Dale Andriotti (Lance Lewman), who takes it personally since his older sister is a rape survivor. The doctor and the detective bond over the case, which catches a break when another doctor at the hospital, Ira Markum (Ed French), recognizes microscopic slides of a substance found on the women as a particular kind of red brick dust found in a particular stretch of disused underground rail line beneath the Empire State Building that has been out of use for nearly a century.

This info comes in especially handy when the women burst out of their catatonia and take nude walks to the abandoned rail line, where the alien has prepared a strange kind of milk/semen/cake frosting slime bath that will somehow assist the women in giving birth to aliens or transforming into aliens (who the hell knows?). Whatever the case, they have to writhe around nude in the stuff for a lengthy period of time. (Some of the actresses are way more committed to the writhing than others.) Pace and Andriotti make their way to the weird alien bath, and Dr. Markum shows up, too. I won't spoil this part of the story, but it does contain my favorite line of dialogue, spoken by Detective Andriotti: "You're fuckin' bananas." 

Breeders would make an appropriate middle section of a triple bill with the last movie I reviewed on this site, Blue Monkey, and C.H.U.D. Like Blue Monkey, Breeders sees a female doctor and a male detective team up to stop a large insectoid creature hatched from a spore in an abandoned stretch of catacombs in or near a hospital (a story told since time immemorial). Like C.H.U.D., Breeders is about human-into-monster transformation originating beneath the city of New York and is slimy and greasy as all get-out. Breeders and C.H.U.D. both share the same makeup effects artist, too.

That special effects and makeup guy is Ed French, who also plays Dr. Markum in one of his rare handful of acting roles. Though the alien itself is mostly a cheap rubber suit, French's transformation, slime, and guts effects are top-notch. French has had one of the longest and most successful FX careers in Hollywood and indie filmmaking. His other credits include Amityville II: The Possession, Sleepaway Camp, Exterminator 2, The Stuff, Blood Rage (one of his other acting roles; he got to decapitate his own character as the head makeup effects guy), Creepshow 2, the Tales from the Darkside TV show, Vampire's Kiss, Prime Evil, The First Power, The Guardian, Terminator 2, Star Trek VI, Hellraiser: Bloodline, The Black Dahlia, Walk Hard, and (really) Paul Blart: Mall Cop, as well as episodes of Six Feet Under, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Monk, and Westworld, and many, many other films, shows, and music videos. Okay, a few more movie titles from the French CV: Geek Maggot Bingo or The Freak from Suckweasel Mountain, Dead Dudes in the House, and Chopper Chicks in Zombietown.

Director Tim Kincaid has also had a lengthy career, albeit an exceedingly strange one. He made his directorial debut in 1973 with a drive-in sexploitation movie called The Female Response before shifting to gay and bisexual porn for the next dozen years under the name Joe Gage (or, occasionally, Mac Larson). His titles in this period include Kansas City Trucking Co., El Paso Wrecking Corp., L.A. Tool & Die (clearly a theme is emerging), Oil Rig #99, Heatstroke, In the Name of Leather, and Orange Hanky Left. In 1986, Kincaid switched back to exploitation, drive-in fare, making cheap women-in-prison, sci-fi, crime thriller, and horror films at a blistering pace. This phase came to an end with a mainstream comedy in 1989 starring Carrie Fisher. It was called She's Back and was a big flop. Kincaid disappeared from film until 2001, when he resumed his gay porn career under his old pseudonym of Joe Gage and delivered a prolific string of adult films until 2017. I can't resist listing more of his filmography. I find porn films dull, but I love porn film titles. The second wave of Joe Gage porn includes Joe Gage Sex Files Vol. 1: Jack-off Party at Billy Bob's (if IMDB is to be trusted, there are 22 sequels), 110 Degrees in Tucson, Tough Guys: Gettin' Off, Lifeguard! The Men of Deep Water Beach, Gunnery Sgt. McCool, Crossing the Line: Cop Shack 2, Campus Pizza, and Jock Park.