Review of Xtro (1982) by Paul J — 20 Jun 2010

This is the alien movie that makes Ridley Scotts birthing scene look as painful as a puppy's licking assault. Lets look at Harry Bromley Davenport's Xtro.

A young boy, Tony and his Father play outside their country home when a space ship suddenly appears and abducts the father. Tony wakes with a start and we are suddenly three years later and we find that no one believes his story. His mother has moved on and believes her husband ran off. The alien returns , setting fire to some countryside and after bumping off a young couple it attacks and impregnates a woman who then gives birth to a full grown man, Tony's father. Meanwhile Tony awakes covered in Blood during the night and after a visit by the doctor is suspected of an attention seeking prank.

A psychic link of sorts seems to be forming between Sam and Tony and one thing is certain, Sam is very much a changed man.

After a shock reunion with his wife he claims amnesia and moves back in with her. However Racheal is now understandably conflicted about her feelings for him and lacks trust of him and his motives.

As Sam tries to get back into family life whilst pushing Racheal's boyfriend out of the picture he exhibits ever stranger behaviour. When Tony discovers Sam eating his pet snakes eggs Sam explains how he was changed to survive in the alien environment and soon he begins to change his son as well. Tony develops strange powers that realise his imagination and he soon starts to use these powers to take revenge on the old lady downstairs who killed his pet snake.

Racheals suspicions are aroused when she finds a photo of a girl and a huge wedge of cash in Sams jacket. Sam denys any knowledge of who she is and they head to their cottage to try to jog Sams memory. While they're away Annalise is left to look after Tony but understandably is more interested in shagging her boyfriend. Tony takes issue with this and does away with both of them, making Annalise into his own personal breeding pod, lucky bastard.

As Rachael and Sam get reacquainted at the cottage Sam start to fall to pieces, literally. As his true nature becomes apparent to racheal he takes the only too willing Tony and leaves in Spielburgian fashion leaving Rachael with an apartment full of spawn who make Rachael a mother again.

Ok so what we have here is a low budget 1983 homage fest but what can be said about it....

Firstly we'll get the obvious criticism of this film out of the way. Yes it is derivative of several films and even some TV series but for once it is not exactly a rip off more a response. Most notably there are many comparisons to ET in this film and indeed not only does the film make for being a dark reflection of Spielberg's kids classic it pokes fun at it in many ways. The wholesale destruction of phones throughout this film is a cheeky jab at ET and what does Sam do as soon as he's got himself together....he phones home... Many of the advertisements tag lines and the likes allude to ' not all aliens are our friends' and of course we have the final scene that plays like a cross between ET and Close Encounters. I shall point out some of the other titles that seem to be influential in this movie as I get to them.

Charges of being incoherent have been leveled at this film but I disagree. There is an air of the surreal to this film which cam make it seem confused or confusing but the story is essentially quite simple, the absentee father returns but is a very different person to the one who left. Indeed we don't really know how much, if anything, of the original man remains. He has come for his son and exploits the child's vulnerability, turning him against those who cared for him during his absence so he can take him away with him. There is a suggestion that Tony has already been in some way partially changed by the UFO experience given his 'link' to his father and the physical manifestations of this that occur when he returned to the planet so its almost a completion of what happened at the original abduction. The more odd moments of the film come when Tony uses his powers to conjure up a killer mini clown and a 6 ft tall living action man. The shots in these sequences become incredibly dreamlike, a nightmarish perversion of childish images that feel nonsensical in the visual flow of the rest of the film. I was reminded in some respect of the TV series 'the Prisoner' with the unsteady almost drunken quality to the shots.

This film has a strangely uncomfortable feel about it, there is a nightmare quality that becomes more potent as the film progresses. The sense of something very bizarre comes from the very beginning in the abduction scene when Sam throws the stick into the air which explodes suddenly creating a night time darkness, The shot reminds me of 2001 when the bone is thrown into the air and there's a cut to the spaceship matching it almost perfectly. The theme of rebirth and change in this film is quite strong and maybe this was a nod to 2001 in that respect.

Despite its low budget the film is quite effective in creating a disturbing series of images. The special FX are at times a bit shaky, the first alien is obviously a man, spider walking, with a mask on the back of his head, but it doesn't matter, the odder elements of the film help even these fit in anyway and most of the FX are reasonable enough anyway, particularly good is the birth scene that is so outlandishly bizarre and brutal that any shortcomings in the FX are lost to the spectacle which really makes the chest burster in alien seem rather tame in comparison. The parallels between this and alien are obvious from the oral conception, the similar bio-mechanical look of the alien, to the fatal birthing of the creature and although the effects work in Alien are far superior it has to be said that there is a deeper story going on here. The father/son relationship is an aspect of the story that is far more important than may be appreciated at first. This central plot strand is something that can stand separate from the whole alien plot device and this is why it catches my attention. The fact that Aliens are involved is in many ways not actually important. This is the same with Ridley Scotts Alien in that the extra terrestrial protagonist is not integral to telling the story. Its a plot device and no more, it can be replaced by any manner of substitute, the choice of using an alien is simply an artistic decision not a narrative necessity . The commentary on father son relationships is quite interesting. As bizarrely otherworldly as Sam is, his son is a chip off the old block. Like father like son.

The sexual elements of Xtro are more overt than Ridley Scotts Alien. Xtro makes less effort to disguise or metaphorise the forceful nature of what the alien does. The initial impregnation is carried out with a obviously phallic appendage although they did stay with the oral method of conception, presumably because it resonates with Alien and because it is a suitably xenomorphic thing to do.

Sex plays a major part in this film. The mother is having sex with a man she doesn't love as a substitute for her long gone husband, the au pair is neglecting her duties to steal time to shag her boyfriend in what seems to be a rather shallow fuck buddy arrangement and in each of these instances the act of sex seems to be a purely functional process as it does with Sam and with the only exception of when Sam and Rachael get together at the farm. Even Tony, via the au pair and his spawn, in an Oedipal moment, impregnates his mother. The aliens it seems though are the only ones with purpose to their sexual behavior however they pursue it with deadly results.

So now for the rating. I'm going to give this film 7 out of ten. Despite its low budget feel and occasional performance shortcomings this is quite an adventurous film that steps into some surreal territory whilst maintaining an adult and interesting storyline. While it does compulsively borrow from its contemporaries it does so effectively and with a certain reverence for where it came from. Where many equated this to be an adult ET take off with Alien's imagery I felt it more closely reflected a cross between close encounters and 2001, certainly thematically, but the underlying plots and themes stop it from becoming a cheap knock off of any of them.

This is a very interesting film that has plenty going on, It avoids just being the sum of the parts it borrows and while reflecting its contemporaries it also manages to have substance of its own.