In the 80's New York director Tim Kincaid cranked out a handful of sleazy low-budget genre pictures for Wizard Video (an off-shoot of Charles Band's Empire Pictures) with titles such as Robot Holocaust and Bad Girls Dormitory and they were cheaply made exercises in exploitation and cheesiness. Breeders is another of those films and it doesn't disappoint.

If you have a low tolerance for low-grade filmmaking packed with tasteless scenes, an overabundance of female nudity (most of it pointless, like when the nurse character strips down in her kitchen!), and dumb plotting then you might want to avoid Breeders. However, if you have a soft spot for campy cinema then you might want to give this one a go. It's certainly better than the 1997 movie that shares its name (and a lot of its premise) and it's always nice to see MGM releasing films like this and such fare as the Ghoulies and Troll movies on DVD.

The kind of film we're in store for is evident in the pre-credits opening scene where a woman (who it seems has no qualms walking barefoot down New York streets) ditches her date only to be scared by an old man with a poor German accent. But soon we find out our nice elderly gentleman is really an alien invader and after pointlessly ripping off her top it carries her away in order to "breed" with her.

Enter Lance Lewman as a detective who is investigating the woman's case only to end-up teamed with doctor Teresa Farley when a strain of rapes start happening around the area and not only seem to be the handiwork of the same person, but also seem to be carried out on women who are still virgins. For there we're given many scenes of female skin (like the ex-gymnast turned cokehead model who does naked aerobics), a scattered batch of mostly off-screen monster attacks, a whole slew of close-ups of screaming victims faces, and our two heroes trying to track down the truth.

Eventually the girls are turned into shambling killers (as one wimpy intern finds out at the end of a scalpel to the chest) and the entire thing ends-up under the Empire State building where the monster has created a "breeding pool" (in which all the female cast members get to slather what I assume is to be alien sperm all over their naked bodies - yes, it's tasteless stuff), our heroes have to take on a mutated baby with a vaginal looking mouth, and it all ends with a pretty dopey whimper.

Breeders isn't high art people, in fact it's a symbol of low-budget filmmaking that seems to be lost in the politically correct landscape of the 21st century. The story is pretty raunchy, there's tons of lingering shots of boobies, and the entire premise is fairly offensive if you think about it - but there's enough cornball dialogue (such as, "You're not dead, you're alive, if you're alive you can remember..."), a few okay "bladder" effects, and enough silliness to make it an alright throwback to 1950's drive-in movies.

Thankfully female lead Farley wouldn't do any other movies after this since her acting is terrible and director Kincaid would make a handful of other low-budget features before heading into the gay porn industry in 2001. (Chris Hartley, 7/4/05)

Directed By: Tim Kincaid.
Written By: Tim Kincaid.

Starring: Teresa Farley, Lance Lewman, Frances Raines, Natalie O'Connell.