Xtro
When Tony grows up, he's going to be just like Daddy!
Year of Release: 1982
Genre: Horror/Science Fiction
Rated: R
Running Time: 84 minutes (1:24)
Director: Harry Bromley Davenport
Cast:
Philip Sayer ... Sam Phillips
Bernice Stegers ... Rachel Phillips
Simon Nash ... Tony Phillips
Danny Brainin ... Joe Daniels
Maryam d'Abo ... Analise Mercier
Peter Mandell ... Clown
David Cardy ... Michael
Tim Dry ... Monster
Sean Crawford ... Commando
Summary:
Sam Phillips, an ordinary family man, disappears from home one night without a trace. Only his young son, Tony, witnesses the strange and terrifying departure amidst brilliant white lights. Rachel, Sam's young wife, struggles to restore their once tranquil life, but her efforts are plagued by Tony's recurring nightmares about his father's mysterious disappearance. Lately, Tony has been dreaming something else - that his father has come home.
Suddenly Sam appears on their doorstep, with no explanation and seemingly no memory of where he has been. But Sam's family knows that he has changed. His secret is soon revealed as his once human body begins to deteriorate revealing a hideous alien form within. Sam has returned from a distant galaxy to claim his son for his new homeland. He must act quickly before he is discovered. His mission is to implant the millions of microscopic larvae within his blood into living hosts on Earth, thus spreading the seed of his new planet.
As those around him gradually discover his horrifying secret, they make every effort to stop him, but it is too late.
Review:
Xtro, remindin' all the kids whose fathers went out for cigarettes in 1982 and never returned to keep an open mind.
And speakin' of children destined to stab trash along the side of the highway, you ever notice how the guys who rail against participation trophies under the guise of advocatin' for hard work and learnin' to accept defeat gracefully are the same ones who run out onto the field in the eighth inning and start throwin' punches at the umpire when their kid gets picked off on 2nd 'cause they're distracted by the short stop's muscular buttocks?
Guess you know where I'm goin' with this - it's baseball season again in Chickawalka County, and as you probably know I try to get down to the ballpark a few times a year to watch Jeannie Bigelow blow fastballs by the opposition to find out who the closeted homosexuals are based upon their reactions to seein' their sons struck out by a girl. Don't get me wrong - I got nothin' against people livin' a lie if it suits 'em, I'm just in it for the $5 per name I get sellin' my observations to an interested party who has trouble meetin' locals of the gay persuasion.
I missed the top of the first inning 'cause I hadda pay Tucker Washburn $1.50 to use his dirty-faced kids to surround Apollo so the grounds crew wouldn't see 'im, but once we were in the clear we grabbed a coupla seats between Roxanne Bigelow and Bambi Mastrude. Roxanne and Bambi have managed to move beyond the roller derby makeovers they gave each other a few years back ever since Jeannie and Harley started datin', and even though most of us understand that Harley's gonna get dropped like a Boeing bomb from a 747 when Jeannie goes off to college and meets a guy who uses a bottle opener instead of his molars, they're still kinda cute in a Lady and the Tramp kinda way.
Fortunately, Jeannie and Harley're on the same team now that they've moved on to high school, and this seems to have helped Roxanne and Bambi reach an uneasy truce given that nothin' brings people together like the bond created by the introduction of a common enemy.
"Jesus Christ! Somebody test that kid for steroids!" Bambi hollered as the catcher from Snoochflunk County stepped up to the plate.
"Oh be nice, Bambi, his kids might be here watchin'," Roxanne asserted loud enough for the next five rows to hear.
"Ladies, Bambi," I said, usherin' Apollo down onto the footrest where he'd be outta sight.
"Poor baby! They still mad about that whole 'interfering with a ball in play' thing?" Roxanne sympathized while leanin' over to give Apollo a kiss.
"Yeah, buncha dicks. Ya know, someday I gotta find me a woman who looks at me the way you look at that dog," I grumbled.
"You found 'er," Bambi purred, grabbin' me in a place that'd getcha thrown in jail in 28 states and elected to Colorado's 3rd congressional district.
"No, that's more like how Shankles looks at a bag of fish heads. Besides, ain't you got Edgar with you?" I stammered, lookin' around nervously.
"He's gone to the concession stand, we've got PLENTY of time," she grinned like a thirsty pitbull.
Thankfully Edgar came lumberin' around the corner about that time with enough food to feed the swing shift at Stumpy's Lumber Mill & Renderin' Plant, and I barely had the presence of mind to get off the bleacher and pull Roxanne up with me.
"The hell're you do... ball?! I had no idea the umpire's exam came in braille!" Roxanne screamed, abandoning her momentary confusion.
"Sorry, I don't trust the bolts in these things. He coulda sent us to the moon, Alice," I explained, pointin' to the aisle seat where Edgar'd just deposited his 400lb bench buster.
Edgar made a remark about my virility that I'm not gonna repeat here, but after that things settled down and we all enjoyed the game.
It was a good one too - Harley went 2 for 3 and drove a run in off a double while Jeannie pitched 7 and 1/3 innings and only gave up three hits. Unfortunately, the last one was a 2-run homer that evened the score at 2-2, but her relief kept things tied until the top of the 9th when the game got a little dicey.
The odds against what happened next musta been astronomical, but with one out and a man on 1st, The Potato Gunners' right fielder popped a foul up behind the backstop, and damned if it didn't come down directly into the concession stand's exhaust chimney and splash down into the deep fryer. Prolly shoulda had the screen on there but there's no sense cryin' over spilt grease.
Anyway, from what I understand Ester Boehm was workin' the fryer and in the process of scoopin' a basket of onion rings for Satchel Gast when it happened, and the splatter scalded 'er so bad that she accidentally slung the basket onto the grill where the paper liner caught fire and spread to the cheeseburger grease runoff before eventually ignitin' the back wall. The loss of beef was staggering. By the time the fire was doused we'd lost 60lbs of Grade-A grass-fed free-range hamburger after the blaze spread to the fuse box and burnt up the stand's chest freezer.
That concession stand'd been in service in 1952 and still had all the original asbestos, and when faced with the loss of a historic local landmark you'd THINK that the decent thing to do would be to postpone the final inning to a later date once we'd been allowed to grieve. You'd think that, wouldn't ya?
"You bitches ready to play ball, or what?" the pork shoulder and visiting coach who called 'imself Les Kunkle demanded the moment the fire had been extinguished.
"Now's not the time," Edgar managed through a flood of tears, the memories of countless ballpark beef franks flashin' before his eyes.
"Fine. Then forfeit," Les persisted.
"We'll finish this another time," Coach Skinner reiterated, his players clearly in no condition to continue.
"No, we'll finish it now," Les wheezed as authoritatively as he could manage.
"You heard the man," Bambi snarled, grabbin' Les from behind and lockin' 'im in a full nelson.
"Fine by me!" Roxanne growled before uncorkin' a right that folded Les up like a lawn chair.
I'm not gonna go into the specifics because if you've seen one bleacher-clearing brawl you've seen 'em all, but by the time we were able to pull Roxanne and Bambi offa Les he looked like a banana that'd been sittin' in the bottom of a lunch box for eight months, and because it was largely a hometown crowd nobody ever would tell Deputy Dahl who was involved so nothin' ever came of it.
On the plus side, Apollo got his ballpark privileges reinstated for draggin' Ester outta the fire when she'd slipped on a mushy pickle and cracked 'er head against a can of nacho cheese sauce, and I think the kids all learned a valuable lesson about respect and sportsmanship - namely that the adults who espouse those virtues are completely fulla shit.
It's moments like this that remind us to take a moment to be thankful for all we have, 'cause even though the concession stand at the ballyard's gone we've still got the artery annihilation champion of Chickawalka County out at the Grime Time, and 'soon as Apollo and I got home I nuked a bag of leftover drive-in corn dogs and ran an extension cord outside so we could watch Xtro under the stars like God intended.
Xtro kinda got a bum rap after E.T. came out and put everybody in touch with their feelins to the point that nobody wanted to see glopola space aliens givin' people the goobonic plague anymore which created a pretty pitiful showin' at the box office. Some people'll tell ya that happened 'cause the movie didn't make a lick of sense and the filmmakers were completely ripped on mind-altering substances, but those people have no appreciation for art or just how difficult it is to make a movie while everything on set is leavin' a cosmic trail of hallucinogenic motion blur behind it.
Regardless of who's right I'm gonna leave it up to you to decide while we've still got a functioning democracy, but before you come to any concrete conclusions regarding the film's artistic value, I'd like to submit into evidence a few exhibits to make sure everybody understands what a touchstone moment it was for the 19 people who got to see it on openin' night.
First, for a population that willingly ingests creamed eel, the Brits get awful upset about snakes slitherin' around in their salads. Second, when a kid asks what you brought them following a lengthy absence telekinesis is always the wrong answer no matter how guilty you may feel. And third, there's irony, and then there's bein' eaten by a panther moments after havin' your face forcibly removed from your girlfriend's crotchal region.
The movie begins with a father (Sam) and son (Tony) playin' fetch with their pooch until the ole man throws the stick so high that it tears a hole in the ozone layer and sends the sun flyin' around to the backside of the planet where it has the unintended consequence of ruinin' the drive-in theater experience for everyone in Brisbane and leavin' all the vampires in New Zealand lookin' like the inside of a hobbit bong. The more immediate concern, however, is the flyin' saucer that appears in the sky and sucks Sam up like a line of cocaine in the back of a border patrol van, leavin' Tony with irreparable abandonment issues. Next thing, it's three years later the kid's still wakin' up in the middle of the night sweatin' like Richard Simmons at a Liberace concert even after his mom (Rachel) tries reassurin' 'im that aliens aren't real and that his dad probably had a mid-life crisis and ran off with some tramp with a trick pelvis 'cause she could do the spinarooni from the reverse cowgirl position. Then a plasma blob crashlands a coupla miles away and sets the forest on fire while this gooey glopola alien comes walkin' outta the woods like Linda Blair down a flight of stairs and just about gets totaled by a coupla yuppies who stop their car to investigate before bein' blasted in the face with projectile space mace vomit. 'Course, the Xtro-Testicle didn't travel fifty billion lightyears to get smooshed into interstellar Spam on the backroads of Westminster, so it goes rootin' around in the woods makin' noises like an old man hawkin' up a glob of nicotine till it comes across the home of a blonde fox and proceeds to ram a jellied eel down 'er throat.
Elsewhere, Tony wakes up covered in SpaghettiO slop but when Rachel calls a doctor he can't find anything amiss other'n the fact that the kid's livin' in a house with a British mother, an American stepfather (Joe), and a French nanny (Analise), and promises to refer Tony's plasma attack to the Boyardee Division at the Ministry of Defense. Then the blonde gal wakes up to find 'er dog chowin' down on a chunk of Grey matter but she's in no condition to perform the Heimlich 'cause pretty quick her stomach starts swellin' up like she just made the management at Olive Garden rethink the Never Ending Pasta Bowl before givin' birth to a fully-grown Sam and developin' stretch marks that her Dermablend cream is simply not equipped to handle. The next mornin', X.T. tries to phone home only to have the receiver melt in his hand like a bag of bootleg M&Ms, and so he decides to pick up Tony after school which forces Rachel make like Gloria Gaynor and explain that she woulda changed that stupid lock if she'd known he'd be back from outer space to bother 'er. 'Course she can't just leave the guy alone to wander Trafalgar Square rantin' to Belgian tourists about how the Chunnel is actually a secret front to conceal an illegal Video Nasty smuggling operation, so she invites 'im home where Joe struggles to adjust to his new position within a thruple. Then Tony freaks out after catchin' Sam snackin' on the eggs that his pet snake laid that mornin', and so Sam hasta gnaw on the kid's trapezius and inject some Xtrocy into his bloodstream to calm 'im down and give 'im telekinetic powers he can use to summon a dwarven psycho circus clown and a full-sized GI Noel to sic on the chairperson of the Committee to reelect Thatcher livin' downstairs after the old hag bashes his pet into snake tartare for crawlin' around in 'er crumpets.
The next mornin', Rachel decides to take Sam back to the scene of his planetary defection, only by this point Tony's got extraterrestrial genomes roamin' around in his veins that make 'im order his Killer Klown from Inner Space to club Analise so they can inject 'er with space microbes that make the veins in 'er stomach bulge out like she's got the Mark of Cthulhu. Once they have Mary Snoggins bound up in a moon cocoon Tony loads his Tonka tank with HESH shells and goes after Analise's boyfriend until he gets tired of its poor maneuverability and unleashes the panther the family's been hidin' in the utility room since the government enacted the Dangerous Wild Animals Act in '76. Then Analise's pupa starts pupin' out placenta-scented jelly beans until Rachel calls to check on Tony and ends up havin' to ring the super, who goes upstairs and gets his neck sliced open by Dink and his kaleidoscope rave glaive. When the guy fails to call back she has no choice but to phone Joe whose been poutin' ever since he found 'imself playin' second diddle to Sam's solar schlong, only then Joe notices the similarity between the subject of a photo that turned up in the jacket Sam stole after becomin' a born-again Tentacostal and the picture of a murdered motorist in the newspaper and goes tearin' off toward the family cottage to try headin' off Sam before he can colonize Rachel. I dunno that it'd be possible to spoil the ending since tellin' you about it would be about like pourin' sour milk down the drain, but if you wanna stick around to watch Joe set the bar for what it means to be a Beta, I promise you won't be disappointed.
Alrighty, well, that was certainly a series of events. Can you believe the director later confessed to partaking of illicit substances with his writers and kitchen sinking the script with ideas that seemed brilliant while gettin' totally Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Never woulda guessed. He would also admit to being "embarrassed" about the finished product, which is kinda sad given that he went on to direct two sequels that never came close to reaching the semi-cult status of his original feature. I wouldn't call the flick an embarrassment, but I suppose that's what you do when you're participating in an interview that could be seen or heard by people you may one day want to seek financing from. You won't get any argument from me concerning the unfocused dumpster fire of a plot or the bizarre atmosphere spawned from the infusion of a synthesizer score that bypasses "cheesy" and moves straight into "clown shoes" territory, but to suggest that there's nothing salvageable is rash and unjustified because its failures are not the result of technical inadequacy, but rather, from ideas that fail to gel with one another. My biggest objection has nothing to do with the series of seemingly random events because such things can be explained away by the introduction of cosmic powers.
I would argue that the shotgunning of bizarre imagery without occasionally letting up to flesh out the characters or explore the events that occurred between Philip Sayer's departure and return to provide some explanation of what's happening. The things that can occur when you give a child absolute power shouldn't be especially surprising no matter how insane they turn out to be, but there needs to be a cooling down period between incidents to examine them and the motivations of the characters involved if you're gonna have any chance of turning your "stuff happens" montage into a movie. Xtro is a rare instance of a B-movie that's just too short for its subject matter and probably would have benefitted from an additional seven or eight minutes of runtime dedicated to exposition or character expansion to break up the insanity being levied at the viewer, and I would challenge anyone who believes all its problems lie with the absurdity of its admittedly random sequences to revisit any David Cronenberg film of their choosing; because as long as the story flows smoothly, there's no volume of strangeness that can derail it.
Now that I've finished splitting hairs, let's autopsy this alien and see if it's got enough heart to withstand the exertion placed upon it by all the cocaine its benefactor ingested during its conception.
The plot is, as mentioned, unfocused, random, and feels rushed during every moment of its runtime, and while there are a few explanations for how this came about - only the screenwriters can clarify them with any definity. It's not unusual for writers to become married to an idea to such a degree that they often rearrange their story to ensure its inclusion, and if the idea (and the writer) are good enough, this restructuring often goes off without a hitch. I mention this because the writers of Xtro were whacked out on crackballs as its details were coming to fruition, and as a result, the ideas they sought to implement were neither worthy of inclusion, nor were their authors capable of writing suitable circumstances that might clarify why they were occurring. Rarely is there anything resembling a transition, and the script jumps from one insane scene to the next in a manner that might make it the ideal film for children suffering from ADHD, but which is not likely to endear it to genre fans who expect a coherent story. I still maintain that the problem comes not from the content itself, but from the pacing and lack of segues, but the cause is ultimately irrelevant, and as a result, the story comes across as disjointed and amateurish.
The acting is decent if somewhat bland, with the best performance coming from Bernice Stegers as the bewildered mother trying to move on with her life following her husband's desertion, only to be confronted with his return and complete ignorance of his time spent abroad. Simon Nash is surprisingly solid as the obstinate child unwilling to discard his memory of the disappearance, and Anna Wing is effective as the hateful bitch from downstairs who pulverizes the kid's pet snake into pepper steak, but there really aren't any performances that stand out in a positive or negative light. Basically, everyone showed up, did their jobs, collected their checks, and moved on after giving no more or no less than what was required of them. One might well attribute the more stoic performances to a lack of direction from a second-time director whose drug use may or may not have spilled over from writing sessions into filming, but that'd be pure speculation. Just like it'd be speculative to suggest that the British only get particularly animated when there's a soccer game on TV or some chunkhead tries cheatin' at darts, which is why I would never make such a gross generalization.
Here's who matters and why: Philip Sayer (The Hunger), Bernice Stegers (Macabre 1980), Maryam d'Abo (Dorian Gray 2009, Evil Remains, Timelock, Nightlife 1989), Simon Nash (Brazil), Peter Mandell (Willow, Labyrinth, Return of the Jedi), David Cardy (The Keep), Anna Wing (Worst Fears, The Godsend, The Haunting of Julia, The Blood on Satan's Claw), Robert Fyfe (Pride and Predjudice and Zombies), Robert Pereno (Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire), Sean Crawford (Return of the Jedi), Tim Dry (Krull, Return of the Jedi), Susie Silvey (The Urge to Kill), Robert Austin (Morons from Outer Space).
And the lone mainstream credit belongs to Anna Wing, who went on to play Lou on EastEnders.
The special effects are hit and miss but show no lack of ambition as we get to see the creature making its way outta the woods and into a suitable host from which it eventually emerges in human form. The design is unique and imaginative even if we only get to see it in its entirety when it steps out onto the road, although later sequences that utilize tighter shots reveal the puppet to be rather stiff and incapable of fluid movements. The makeup effects are vastly superior to the animatronic puppets and put forth a believable representation of tissue deterioration during the climax of the film where the alien's mansuit begins coming undone at the seams, while the cocoon encasing the housekeeper and amniotic fluid-filled water balloons are surprisingly good. On the flip side, the viscera is suitably disgusting in appearance but looks nothing like anything you'd expect to be oozing out of someone's torso, and the blood is far too thick and oddly tinted to the point of appearing almost orange at one point. The composite shots depicting the UFO's arrival and departure are pretty bush-league, but in all honesty, this is about the only aspect of the flick where its budgetary restrictions become apparent. Probably the second strongest aspect of the flick following the acting, and the best reason to watch.
The shooting locations are fine if largely inconsequential, with the exterior city shots being filmed in Westminster, and the interiors being filmed within the confines of the immortal Pinewood Studio. It's a nice change of pace from Los Angeles or Vancouver, though with so little time and attention dedicated to things like establishing shots the film's location is essentially irrelevant. Atmospherically speaking, the movie is much more successful in the early going where its events take us into the isolated countryside filled with charming cottages and dark, foreboding forests, but unfortunately, these locations are only utilized in the first ten minutes of the film and not seen again until the climax. To be fair, the story works better within a major population center where opportunities for the alien to spread its genetic material to the general population are more abundant, but writers and cinematographers typically have to work a lot harder to establish mood in locations such as these, and in this particular case, they were not up to the task.
The soundtrack starts promisingly enough with a charming, occasionally catchy synthesizer score that manages to convey flashes of menace and foreboding, before eventually shifting gears and becoming too light too often in a way that is frequently at odds with the events of the film. The main title is solid, but even the enjoyable tracks feel dated by the standards of 1982 and sound more akin to compositions from the earliest days of the synthesizer. It was actually composed by the director who, not to be disrespectful, did a better job with the music than the direction of the movie. It's not likely to be rediscovered as a forgotten gem of '80s genre music or make a pile of money for the boutique label that chooses to license and release it on vinyl, but it's not unpleasant to listen to and does have a classic science fiction air about it that keeps it roughly on par, quality-wise, with the movie it accompanies.
Overall, there's not enough entertainment or positive production value to overcome the crater left behind by the incoherent plot, but it's still serviceable thanks to the cinematic style of the era in which it was produced. '80s fanatics will find things to like about it even if it is objectively irredeemable from a storyline perspective, so if you worship at the Altar of Neon Spandex, check it out and bask in its nostalgic charm.
Rating: 54%