Tim Kincaid (better known as prolific gay porn director Joe Gage) directs this 1986 creature feature, one of a few segues he made out of the hardcore arena and into generally more mainstream exploitation friendly territory with films like Riot On 42nd Street, Bad Girls Dormitory and Mutant Hunt. As messy as the movie might be, and it's pretty messy, Breeders has, like a lot of Kincaid's movies, understandably developed a cult following over the years and members of that cult should be pleased that the film is now available on Blu-ray.

Most of the story takes place in a Manhattan hospital where one Doctor Gamble Pace (Teresa Farley, who also pops up in the aforementioned Bad Girls Dormitory) struggles to understand why so many young, (formerly virginal) women are being rushed into the emergency room with serious injuries. She treats them, as any doctor would, but notices as she's doing so that their behavior is more than a little erratic and that they seem to be healing differently than the other patients. Not all that long after these ladies are admitted and left to rest, they start getting up and wandering around, seemingly in some sort of trance.

Gamble is understandably confused and before long, she and an NYPD detective named Dale Andriotti (Lance Lewman, who Kincaid directed in Riot On 42nd Street) decide to put their heads together to try and figure out what exactly is going on here. Soon enough, they've collectively come to the conclusion that an alien menace is impregnating Earth women in hopes that their ensuing deliveries will allow them to take over the planet. In order to put an end to this threat, Gamble and Andriotti will have to find the alien's nest and destroy it… but in a city like New York, they could be hiding anywhere!

This is goofy, trashy stuff but it's pretty entertaining. Kincaid's emphasis here is on the admittedly very low budget but somehow fairly effective practical SFX work rather than on coherent storytelling or coaxing good performances out of his actors, so know that going into it. Nobody here can act, everyone in front of the camera is wooden and frequently very awkward, but Kincaid knows he can compensate for that by offering up lots of weird alien monsters, some pretty decent cheap gore effects and plenty of female skin. Most of the women who appear in the film were no doubt cast for their looks rather than their acting chops but those familiar with some of Kincaid's other exploitation films will be keen to recognize LeAnne Baker, Amy Brentano, Natalie O'Connell, Frances Raines and Adriane Lee… they've all appeared in similarly cheap-jack Kincaid horror/trash epics made around the same period, which probably makes it a pretty safe assumption that he had a cast of regulars at his disposable for these forays into non-XXX territory.

At just short of eighty minutes in length, Breeders never overstays its welcome. It is fast paced and screwy enough to hold your attention and as the entire thing was shot in early eighties era Manhattan it has some decent scuzzy ‘old New York' atmosphere to it (at least when it leaves the hospital). The movie is fairly well shot and features some decent camerawork. This doesn't overshadow the bad acting or loopy story but it is worth noting, as is the presence of a genuinely good score courtesy of Don Great and Thomas Milano.

Video:

Breeders debuts on Blu-ray from Olive Films framed at 1.85.1 widescreen in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer that looks surprisingly good. For a low budget quickie, this one is quite well shot. Tight focus means we get nice, crisp detail here and color reproduction is excellent. This is a bright and frequently garish looking film and the transfer really hammers that home at times but nothing looks artificially pumped up or over saturated. Black levels are typically strong though there are a few shots here and there where they are closer to dark grey. Skin tones look good and the picture is pretty clean. There are some minor white specks here and there but that's about it. The image is also free of any noise reduction or edge enhancement, so there's nothing funny going on in terms of grain structure or anything like that. This is a pretty solid transfer.