Donna (Natalie O'Connell) has not had the best of dates, and she storms out of the taxi, deciding to walk home. As she moves down the night time New York City streets, she becomes aware of a man's footsteps behind her and she grows frightened, worried that she is about to be attacked, so grabs her mace spray and prepares for battle - but it's all right, he's only a kindly old man out walking his little dog, and she is embarrassed that she could have been so wrong. They stroll along together, chatting, until suddenly the elderly gentleman doubles up in pain and collapses onto the ground. Donna is concerned and wonders what is wrong, especially when he transforms into a mutant space alien and rapes her...
What? As you may have surmised from that introduction, Breeders was pure trash in that it was a delivery system for sex and violence, but not in that it was in any way competent, which has seen it reviled as possibly the worst science fiction movie of the nineteen-eighties. Considering the other contenders for that dubious crown, this was really saying something, and it takes a certain brave soul to stand up and admit they secured some entertainment value from it, the concoction dreamt up by a pornography director who briefly tried to go legit in the middle of this decade before diving into the gay porn video business. This was resolutely heterosexual, however, pandering to those who appreciate the unclad female form.
Which would be all very well, except as you can imagine the rape element was a hard to dismiss part of what made this not as fun as its fans seem to think it is, sure it was in terrible taste and that can be perversely amusing if you are in the correct frame of mind, but not only did this alien sex maniac perform its depraved assaults it also splashed acid into the victim's faces. Now I'm not suggesting the filmmakers had issues with women - OK, maybe I am, but it didn't matter that later on those wounds miraculously vanished for more ogling potential when they wandered about in the buff, the fact Kincaid believed this sort of violence was perfectly decent material for his audience was a misstep, to put it mildly.
Fortunately, if Breeders had been any better made, it would be more offensive than it was, for what was on offer here was barely one step above a home movie, albeit a home movie that had amassed a budget for rubbery gore effects work. That the creature performed its assaults by possessing innocent males and forcing itself out of them to attack did not speak to a healthy view of male sexuality either, assuming it was intended as a commentary on how the most innocent of men could turn abruptly and get all rapey, and there was a scene early on when the doctor heroine with the odd name of Gamble Pace (the preternaturally untalented Teresa Farley) where she espoused the view that it was times like this she thought every man in the world should die (!), tarring an entire gender with the same brush.
Almost every actress with a speaking role aside from Farley and a hapless bag lady was required to perform a nude scene or three, and Frances Raines (niece of genuine movie star Claude Rains, though not a blood relation) played a model who for no very good reason other than Kincaid's lechery stripped off her bikini and threw some shapes for naked aerobics before she was chased around the photographer's studio by the bloke in the alien costume (which looked a bit like the one in The Fly - but not the David Cronenberg remake). All the other victims were seen without clothes too, though the actual rapes were coyly presented, often cutting away from a screaming face rather than delivering even more unsavoury scenes... such as the grand finale where said victims had been brainwashed to bathe in what looked like custard but sadly was not supposed to be for the purposes of the plot. The villain was like something out of a fifties B-movie, with motivations to match, only this era was able to be more explicit about his methods. Absolute garbage by any reasonable yardstick, but that's always going to attract interest. Music by Don Great and Thomas Milano.
Breeders was an omnipresent video at our local rental store when I was a teenager, but I was always too scared of what people might think to rent it. Sounds like it was too nasty to entertain and not sexy enough to match my own sick imagination. I do recall a minor outcry when Fangoria published a still with all those naked ladies writhing about in alien slime. Funny how all their gory photos got by but a few bare breasts outraged everyone.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
9 May 2017
Strangest aside: on DVD it's released not by Vipco or something similarly low rent, but by MGM!
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