OMGJeremy

Movie Review: Xtro

I’m not normally a fan of Alien rip-offs, and that means that initially seeing the poster for this movie I really wasn’t too excited about it.  That cover pretty much screams “ALIEN-CLONE” to me, or even worse it’s a reminder of the terrible live-action Guyver movie, which is not a positive thing.   But it was recommended to me by someone so I gave it a shot and wow… am I glad I did.  This movie doesn’t really do anything new, but instead takes a whole bunch of other things, throws them into a blender, and shits out something far more entertaining than any of its parts.

Because I’m a crazy person who can’t just enjoy a movie by watching it, I had to look into why I hadn’t heard of Xtro up until now, especially when I had heard that it was part of the Video Nasties list.  You can get more involved information on the Video Nasties list with some google-fu, but the short version of the story is that in the UK during the early 80s, there was no real regulation on movies being released in the then new home movie / VCR formats.  This meant that all these horror / slasher / exploitation movies that were deemed unsuitable for cinema release were just being shoveled out into the unregulated home video market.

However, as white people tend to do when they have too much free time on their hands and/or a technology that is new, parents freaked out that their precious little children would be exposed to excessive violence by getting a copy of The Evil Dead or Killer Nun, and so they caused an uproar that led to many VHS tapes being seized for a much wider obscenity law.  Much like the PMRC in the US, the end result was a rating system for video releases, but all the questionable movies that were released before 1985 had to be re-submitted for ratings or be considered contraband.  The Video Nasties list is simply a list of movies that at some point or another were considered contraband.  And simply put, some of my favorite horror / slasher films of the early 80s are on this list, and I’ve looked at it to find “new” things to find via Netflix often.

So now that we’ve had our OMGJeremy history lesson of the day, why hadn’t I heard of this movie when it was supposed to be on that list? Because it was never really on the list.  It was one of the movies that was seized in the initial raids, but never actually showed up on the official lists.  The Exorcist is in the same situation, except that the Exorcist is a far superior movie to this, and probably shouldn’t be used in the same sentence.  Either way, it explained why I hadn’t heard of it, but it got me completely re-interested in this movie.  So, without any further boring interludes, let’s start with Xtro.

Another unassuming country day about to be ruined by a man with a stick.

This is Tony Phillips and his dad, Sam.  After Tony’s mom, Rachel, leaves for the day, Tony and Sam are having a little father and son time out back with their dog, Katie, playing fetch with a stick.   Then, much like you’d expect, Sam throws the stick high in the air, where it seems to explode, and then turns the middle of the day into the blackest windiest night ever.  That happens to me every time I play with my dog (this is unlike what happens every time I play with my ‘dong’, which normally ends with me naked in a field crying).   A series of lights appear in the sky, and Sam yells for Tony to run and hide inside, while Sam gets sucked up into the air and vanishes.  This all takes place in around a minute.  I was concerned this would be one of the slow horror movies where the first hour just sets up the last 20 minutes or so, but nope — right out of the gate we’ve got exploding sticks and an abduction.

Three years later, Tony is obviously a little fucked up over the whole “dad was taken by aliens while he watched” fiasco, especially since nobody will believe his story that his dad was sucked into the sky because of an explosive stick.  Even his mom believes that Sam just abandoned them for whatever reason, and so Tony currently lives with his mom and her new boyfriend, Joe, and their ridiculously hot au pair, Analise.  Tony has recurring nightmares about that night still, and is sure that his dad will be coming back for them someday.  Unlike most abandoned kids who say this, Tony is actually correct.  That night, as Tony is having another nightmare, something crashes down from the sky, setting a forest ablaze, and something begins to stir at the crash site.

Whatever the fuck this thing is, at least it’s not another creepy Asian kid.

This four-legged alien dog/man/thing actually looks pretty creepy, and it immediately made me forget the shitty box art.   We’re not really sure what it is yet, but no sooner does it show up than it immediately sets out hunting.  It wanders out of the woods and is hit by a car, driven by an unnamed couple (we’ll call them Mr. and Mrs. Oblivious Meat).  Luckily for us and the dogmanthing, Mr. Meat is not the smartest person in England, and so after he sees some four-legged thing just standing by the road looking terrifying, he does the reasonable thing and gets out of his car and wanders through the woods alone and unarmed looking for it.  Mr. Meat dies almost instantly, and Mrs. Meat dies pretty much right after that while she blissfully sits in the car listening to her favorite talk radio with the damn door open.

After a short unnecessary scene where Tony walks in on his mom and John having what sounds to be unenjoyable sex, we watch the alienthing stalking around some woman’s house while she is conveniently getting out of the shower.  As she hears something outside the house, and is suffering from the same lack of general common sense as the Meat couple, she puts a robe on and goes outside to see what it is.  The thing manages to sneak into the house, and then surprises her by knocking her down and then raping her face.  Yes, the alien-thing has some sort of prehensile limb that comes out of his midsection, and then he moans and shoves it into her mouth while she is unconscious.

Back in Tony’s life, he wakes up covered in blood, but nobody really thinks it’s more than Tony just playing a prank.  Tony’s life is a constant parade of misery apparently (much like all of us here at OMGJeremy), and therefore nobody really gets overly concerned that he is covered in someone else’s blood, because it’s never discussed again.  Besides we’ve got more important business back at face-rape-lady’s house.  Oh no… after getting faceraped by an alien who has apparently dissolved into a mass of goo all over her carpet, what else can go wrong with her night?

Alright… that does seem worse.

Why, she gives birth to a full grown man, who looks exactly like Tony’s missing father, Sam.  This scene alone is most of the reason that XTRO was considered controversial when it was released.  It’s a fairly graphic scene, especially considering it was released in 1983 and the rest of the Asian shock-horror market hadn’t already filmed 200 movies where this happened.  In 2010, this still seems like a pretty violent version of a full-sized manbirth, and is full of ripping flesh and bodily fluids.  I’d also like to point out that we are still only about 20 minutes in, and already we’ve seen facerape and a woman giving birth to a 180 pound man.

To think I was concerned that this would be a boring movie.

Now that Sam has returned to Earth, he immediately sets out to find Tony and Rachel (stopping to get the clothes of the completely unmissed Mr. Meat from earlier) and resume his life prior to being abducted by aliens and ripping himself out of a vagina.  After an understandably awkward family reunion, Sam goes back to stay with Tony, his wife, and his wife’s new boyfriend.   This coincidentally could describe roughly half of the wacky sitcoms that bombed in 1983, especially since Sam appears to have no recollection of the last three years since he vanished.

Sam also has no recollection of the rules for Connect Four, apparently.

The new boyfriend, Joe, is not as stupid as everyone else in Sam’s life because he knows something isn’t quite right with a man returning from nowhere with no memories.  Tony picks up on Sam’s weird behaviors when he catches his long-lost father eating his pet snake’s eggs for nourishment.  Thankfully, Sam manages to catch Tony before he tells anyone else with half a brain cell about the snake egg thing, and explains to Tony that he was actually taken to another world and had to change so that he could survive there, and that he has returned to the Earth to bring Tony and his mother back with him.   Then, after regaining Tony’s trust, Sam bites him on the shoulder and begins to spit some sort of genetic soup into his son.

That night, Tony begins to realize he has new inhuman powers when he makes his toys play by themselves.   Sam explains that he now has some sort of psychic powers and if he thinks something hard enough it can happen.  I’m not really sure how that makes any sense, since Sam doesn’t appear to have any specific powers, but that doesn’t matter– just know that Tony does have these powers, and that Tony’s powers are where this movie loses its shit completely.   Maybe we saw a man-birth and gross alien sex earlier, but young Tony is a pretty damaged kid after the last three years, so his powers manifest themselves in a completely unexpected way.

What is going on-- wasn’t there a face-fucking alien or something around?

Tony’s first act of alien powers is to make a wooden figure of a ringmaster turn into a living midget clown who will help Tony get revenge on all the people who have done him wrong.   I don’t even know what else to say about this, except that this was the point in the movie that I smiled and knew I had a review to write.  If a midget clown is introduced before the halfway mark, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the rest of the movie will be well worth watching, and Xtro does not disappoint in that aspect.

Tony’s first victim is the downstairs neighbor, a nosy old woman named Ms. Goodman.  Tony’s pet snake somehow managed to escape his cage, and somehow got into the old woman’s apartment.  As she wasn’t expecting to find a living snake in the middle of her dinner salad, she grabs a meat tenderizing mallet and smashes it to death.  She then does the sensible thing and puts the mashed snake into a plastic bag and brings it back to Tony, to guarantee the death of his pet is as scarring as possible.  Tony and his new clown playmate decide they need to get even.  Looking around his room of creepy toys, he notices his army man action figure laying on the floor… hmm… what could he do with that…

Lifesize man in creepy plastic outfit? Yep, it’s an OMGJeremy article.

I bet you didn’t think he could make it lifesized and extremely creepy, because that’s what he does.  Creepy army man goes downstairs and bayonets the old woman to death rather unceremoniously.  This picture doesn’t do this scene any justice, because looking at it doesn’t make my skin itch.  Seeing it in motion however is far more horrifying– it’s a grown man in a latex outfit (including his hands) slowly moving in jerky bursts and with a semi-mechanical sound.  I think it’s the face really, an expressionless mask slowly searching through your house to kill you that does it.  The actual stabbing is more or less offscreen (he stabs a mattress she’s hiding under), but the plastic face itself would be disturbing even if the army man just went downstairs just to ask her out to dinner.

It’s at this point that Tony’s mother begins to suspect that Sam isn’t being completely honest with his reappearance and lack of memory.  She finds a picture of a random woman and a wad of cash in Sam’s suit pocket that he can’t explain (I can — he was wearing Mr. Meat’s coat, and that is Mrs. Meat although this is never pointed out in the movie, so I earn a few points for actually paying attention to the plot, I might be the first person ever who can claim this).  Sam and his former wife decide to go back to the cottage he vanished from to see if the visit will help him regain his lost memory, leaving Tony with his au pair, Analise, and her boyfriend.   Tony has decided that he needs Analise for, let’s say a project, and so he convinces her to play hide and seek with him so that he can get her alone in the elevator so that his midget clown friend and he can take her back to his room and fill her with some sort of alien seeds.

Pretty much nothing good comes from a midget clown with a rubber hammer.

Her boyfriend gets a little antsy just sitting in her room with no shirt on, so he heads off to find Analise.  Tony can’t just let Analise get rescued– so he sends out a toy tank to chase her boyfriend around the house and into the bathroom where he finds Analise and then gets attacked by a fucking panther. Yeah, I can’t really explain that too well either, but it happens, and it’s completely matter-of-factly.  Now that Analise is all Tony’s to fool around with, he and the clown begin to turn Analise into some sort of alien egg-breeding machine.

Meanwhile, Sam and Rachel arrive at the cottage where Rachel starts to realize that Sam is different from before, and they then inexplicably start a cozy fire and begin to make out.  Remember that before they went to the cottage that Rachel was living with her new boyfriend and that she had found that photograph and the money?  Ok, now forget all of that, because Rachel sure did.  She begins making love to her estranged husband while he slowly begins to fall apart like Seth Brundle will do (although notably this is a few years earlier).  No explanation is given as to why this is happening, but I don’t really want one.

Well, who wouldn’t make out with that guy...

Joe (Rachel’s new boyfriend) and Tony show up at the cabin, because Joe has finally decided that letting his new girlfriend just run off with her estranged husband is probably a poor life decision.   Tony showed up at Joe’s work out of nowhere, so don’t think I left something out.  Trust me, I had to watch this a few times just to make sure I had the timelines down.   Maybe Tony’s new alien powers let him teleport, that at least makes some sort of sense unlike his previous powers to summon the world’s creepiest midget.

Sam, now practically falling apart more and more each time we see him, can sense that Tony is coming to meet him, so he knocks out his ex-wife Ike Turner style and hides in the woods near the house to lure Tony out into the woods so that he can bring him back to his hidden spaceship in the woods.  After killing Joe literally by yelling at him until he falls over (making Joe’s the saddest and lamest death in any movie I’ve seen in 2010), Sam and Tony reach their spaceship, which looks like a neon light with fake snow blowing around, and they assume their final alien forms– Sam looks sort of like a skeleton with eyes (I assume that is what that cover-box alien is supposed to be) and Tony… well, Tony becomes one of the most disturbing creatures ever caught on film, which I will dub “Candleface”.

Imagine this thing screaming. Now have a pleasant evening.

So, now that Sam and Tony have returned back to planet… wherever the fuck Sam was for the prior three years, Rachel has been left all alone.  Her son and ex-husband gone off to space possibly forever, her new boyfriend Joe is laying face down in a field, and her Au Pair is some sort of egg-shitting cocoon in her bathroom, there is a panther loose in her house… really, she has nothing to do but go home and I guess cry herself to death.  However, on returning home she finds that the refrigerator has become some sort of egg incubator, with all the eggs now calling her “mommy” over and over in her sons voice.  Committing one final act of stupidity, she decides to hold one as if it was her baby and it shoots a tentacle into her mouth– which essentially means a movie that starts with face rape and man-birth ends with a woman getting impregnated by her son.

Well played, Xtro.

This is one of the finest surprises I’ve had in the past few years.  Not only was it well worth watching, but this is one of the few movies I’ve seen that involves aliens that I didn’t find to be amazingly boring, be some sort of Star Trek ripoff, or follow the standard Alien plotline.  Instead, this movie fits right in next to other early 80s slasher and horror films, which at this point in time is a rare situation that I find one I haven’t seen.  At the same time, it makes absolutely no sense.  It’s like they just had all these ideas for two or three different movies, and just threw everything in together — and based on the “Making of” featurette that was included on the disc this is exactly what happened.  The quote of choice from the director (Harry Bromley Davenport) is about the panther, which he claimed made absolutely no sense (it didn’t), and that the film is “rubbish.”  Also that he made the sequel solely because he needed a job and was written by people who defined “artlessness,” which might not be a word.

Davenport said that the whole point of the film was to do the most disgusting things that they could possibly get away with, which is pretty much exactly where this film sat in 1983.  Sure, in today’s world maybe none of this is shocking anymore, but then it would have been an instant staple of my movie viewing– had I not been 6 at the time.  Then again at 6 I probably would have had constant nightmares from Candleface and the midget clown… but now, this will be one of my highest recommendations for a night of bad movies and your recreational drug of choice.