Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Breeders Blu-ray Movie Review

New York + Aliens + Virgins = Camp Classic.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 4, 2015

Most Horror movie victims tend to be promiscuous girls who strip naked and do the dirty with some loser of a guy they won't remember in a month. They almost always get their, um, comeuppance when they're, uh, penetrated by some deadly object. Whatever the rhyme or reason or metaphor, it's a pretty, well, hard and fast rule within the genre. But rules are made to be broken. Breeders chucks convention out the window. It's is a silly little 1986 Horror film from Writer/Director Tim Kincaid, whose credits also include gems like Robot Holocaust and Bad Girls Dormitory, both of which also released in '86. In the film, it's virgins that find themselves in danger, virgins who refuse to play before marriage but who obviously have no qualms about stripping down to their nothings for most every scene. Hardly a classic or even a good film but one with plenty of great camp value, Breeders was made for pubescent boys craving blood and boobs without care or concern for anything else the film art has to offer.

Pick the virgin.

A girl is fuming after a bad date at a second-rate Italian restaurant. She's approached by a kindly old man who warns her about being on the street, but he turns out to be a slimy alien. She's severely beaten and wounded and awakens in a hospital where she's questioned by her doctor, Gamble Pace (Teresa Farley), and a detective, Dale Andriotti (Lance Lewman). The doctor has discovered a strange, unidentifiable alien substance on her. Quickly, more girls arrive at the hospital having suffered the same fate. They include a former gymnast turned model named Karinsa (Frances Raines) and a young girl named Donna (Natalie O'Connell). It turns out they all have one thing in common: they're all virgins. Pace and Andriotti continue to investigate, leading them down a horrifically dark path that will change their lives forever.

From the get-go, Breeders reeks of bad moviemaking, and the stench lingers throughout. Performances are inorganic, ranging from painfully stiff to lackadaisical. Sets are pedestrian at best. The first hospital scene is filmed in a room that is essentially a blank canvas, a white room with the bed, a desk, a vase of flowers, and an IV. Oddly, the other hospital set is a little more alive, featuring colored tile on the walls and a veritable cornucopia of medical equipment in comparison. A few establishing city shots are recycled throughout. The film suffers from a dearth of interesting plot dynamics, content to simply recycle the same sequence over and over again, just with different actresses in different rooms. They're established just long enough to undress and get attacked by the monster, sometimes with very grisly results and others, not so much. The gory visual effects are decent enough, though prosthetics are easily spotted.

But to make up for all the rubbish -- which does have a certain campy appeal -- viewers are privy to a parade of naked girls who bare all in practically every scene. Sometimes, they're just stripping down while talking to their mother on the telephone or shedding their clothes to get in a warm shower. One girl decides to strip off all her clothes at a photo studio while everyone else is out to lunch and proceeds to perform various stretches and sensually writhe all over the floor because, well, who really knows. Two girls are seen walking down a hospital corridor, yes, completely in the nude. Then there's the coup de grâce, all of them jammed into one big alien cocoon, covered in slime and as naked as they day they were born. Yeah, it's that kind of movie, soft exploitation mixed with some gooey creature effects and bad acting. Classic no-budget 1980s B-movie genre goodness right here, boys and girls.

Breeders Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Breeders never reaches 1080p excellence, but Olive's Blu-ray presentation is surprisingly solid. Sure, it suffers in places. Contrast is off in the opening nighttime sequence. It's bright and diffuse and characters practically glow. Grain spikes in lower light, blacks brighten, and print wear is obvious though not debilitating. Details are occasionally smooth and practically lifeless; skin textures in the early hospital sequence, for example, show not even a hint of complexity: no pores, no lines, no nothing. For the duration, however, the transfer actually looks quite nice. Grain is moderate and not always consistent, but basic textures, like the brick wall in a photography studio, rougher city exterior accents, and some clothes and skin are adequately revealing and tactile. Colors enjoy decent balance and stability with good primaries throughout. Skin tones don't often stray from the norm. It's not without problems, but for the duration the image looks good for a dated, low-budget movie.

Breeders Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Breeders creeps onto Blu-ray with a paltry, but passable, DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The front left and right speakers create a "phantom center" effect from which there is no stray. Everything sounds crammed straight up the middle. Music is tight and crunchy, presenting with enough clarity to get by but hardly doing either lighter score or heavier Pop beats any justice. Basic city ambience is present but, of course, in no way immersive. Light action effects, like crashes and gooey violence, present well enough. Screams are suitably piercing and don't crack under the track's paltry constraints. Basic dialogue is presented with acceptable clarity and prioritization.

Breeders Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All that's included is the Breeders trailer (1080p, 1:40).

Breeders Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Breeders is a bad movie. There's minimal plot, and what plot there is amounts to nothing more than a vehicle for nudity and gore, the former presented in larger quantities than the latter. Awful acting and minimalist set pieces define the rest of the movie, but even as there's no real redeeming technical qualities here, there's a fun camp factor in play that, combined with the blessedly short runtime and ample T&A, should make this a favorite on bad movie night. Olive Films' Blu-ray release of Breeders features perfectly acceptable video, adequate audio, and no extras of note. Pick it up on a deep sale to watch with friends.