Truly Dreadful Film

An Exercise In Nonsense

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Alien is a haunted house movie in space that has begat a slew of imitators, copycats and outright rip-offs. 1982s Xtro, on the other hand, is truly a movie that has something for everyone: if everyone includes folks who want to see movie about a father reconnecting with his son, as well as a film where Maryam d'Abo is repeatedly naked, a kid discovers his psychic powers with a weird clown, an Alien-style birth scene of a fully-grown man being born out of a pregnant woman ("What is it with all the alien birth scenes in these movies? What is wrong with people?" asked my wife), toys coming to life, a child hunting down people like The Omen…truly Xtro is about ten movies worth of ideas in one scuzzy, scummy exploitation fever dream.I'll do my best to summarize the plot, but at any point, you may declare, "You're just making this up now." I assure you that what follows is as close to the filmed truth as possible. It truly is that weird film that even surprised a jaded viewer such as myself.Tony and his dad Sam (Phillip Sayer, The Hunger) are playing fetch with their dog. On the last stick through, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sam tossed the stick high into the air and the screen goes white as he gets abducted.Three years later, the light appears in the sky again and an alien creature scurries across a British countryside road. It gets hit by a car, yet survives to kill the driver and his passenger, then find his way to a cottage where it impregnates the lady who resides there. Moments later, Sam is reborn, clawing his way out of the woman, even biting into a bloody umbilical cord before he leaves. This is ten minutes into the movie. And if you think this is the end of the craziness, read on….Sam wants to find his son, who lives with his mother Rachel (Bernice Stegers, Macabre), her new boyfriend Joe (Sinon Nash, Brazil) and a French babysitter named Analise (the aforementioned d'Abo, The Living Daylights) whose sole job seems to be getting naked every time she is on screen. Sam has nightmares about his dad every single night, waking up soaked in blood. Oddly, it turns out that the blood isn't his.READ MORE AT http://www.thatsnotcurrent.com/xeroxenomorphs-xtro-1982/

Tony's father Sam, abducted by aliens three years earlier, returns to earth and seeks out his wife and son, but Rachel has since been living with Joe and the reunion is awkward. Joe does not trust Sam, and Rachel cannot quite decide what her feelings are for her two men. Sam is not the same as when he left, and he begins affecting Tony in frightening ways.This is one of the strangest films I have seen. And I have seen many strange films, wading as I do in horror, fantasy and cult flicks. This one is... well, hard to say. Definitely horror and definitely science fiction, but far too strange to be a straight narrative in either genre.One suspects the budget was zero, as nobody of note was involved in the picture. Bob Shaye produced for New Line, but this was before New Line had really gotten to be a big name. And yet, budget or not, we have some of the finest practical effects and creature designs you may ever see.

Xtro (1983) ** (out of 4) Three years after being abducted by a UFO, Sam Phillips (Philip Sayer) returns to Earth in hopes of getting his son and wife back but there's more than this going on. XTRO has become notorious over the years for a number of reasons but the biggest is its inclusion on the Video Nasties list. There's certainly no question that the film contains some very memorable scenes but sadly I think the film is a bit too weird for its own good. There are several moments during the final thirty-minutes that just left me rather bored because of what was going on. There's some extended scenes with the boy playing with certain "toys" in his room that just never worked. I also didn't think any of the psychological stuff works at all. The entire plot of the father being abducted and coming back to Earth has many small subplots throughout the picture but I think they all add up to a big, fat zero. I'm not really sure what the director was trying to go for but story wise this thing is pretty much a mess. Where the film does work are in its gore effects. I'm a little surprised to see that this film got a R-rating considering how hard the MPAA were on horror films from this era. Perhaps they were too busy with the slashers to notice how nasty this film is because there are certainly some very memorable moments. The highlight of the film would have to be the birth sequence, which contains plenty of the red stuff and is creepy enough to make you squirm watching it. Another highlight is the first couple we meet including the man who has to be one of the dumbest characters to ever be placed in a horror film. The performances themselves are actually much better than you'd expect and director Harry Bromley Davenport at least keeps the film moving at a good pace. There's enough to enjoy in XTRO to make it worth viewing but the nice special effects can't overcome a confusing story.

This sci-fi horror film from the UK is certainly something of an oddity. It tells the tale of alien abduction but in a way no other film ever attempted to. Sure, it has some similarities to the likes of Alien and E.T. but they are really just superficial ones, as this movie takes it's influences and puts them together in a very bizarre way. Xtro is often mistaken for a video nasty, which it never was. It made one of the published lists by mistake and so the legend followed that it was one of those infamous flicks. In fairness, it wouldn't have been all that surprising if it had made the DPP's hit list seeing as several other films tagged with the video nasty brush were even less violent and gory than this one. But, don't be mistaken, Xtro is certainly not a disturbing film, it's just a bizarre one.If it wasn't for the overall weirdness this would be a pretty useless movie to be perfectly honest. It's quite poor in so many ways. But how often do you get to see a woman giving birth to a fully grown man? Or a human sized action man conducting a house invasion? Pretty much never I would say but you can here. And the weird alien creature spotted on the country road early in proceedings is pretty freaky. So to be fair to Xtro, it does dare to be different, even if it cannot entirely escape it's overall rubbishness in most other respects.