You know; wartime dramas, Agatha Christie mysteries, those Carry On films. THAT'S their comfort zone.
When it comes to science fiction, however, they really shouldn't be put out at the concept.
They have all those Doctor Whos, Blake's 7s, Thunderbirdses, Captain Scarlets and a whole bunch of Quartermass movies to fall back on for a building block to their latter-day projects. It's not like the idea of making a science-fiction film should be alien (sorry).
In spite of all this, I've just seen a movie that makes me believe whole-heartedly not only should the British NOT make science fiction movies, they should probably not be handling cameras altogether.
I don't really know what to make of Xtro - oh, I know it's sci-fi but it's also such a mish-mosh of other film types that the parts don't really add up to a whole. In fact, all that it does add up to is a psych evaluation... which the audience (as well as the director) fails.
Before you go too far in, take a moment and realize that this movie - being post-1982 - tried for everything to ride the already-loaded coat tails of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Yep, this is another example of E.T.sploitation...and instead of awe and wonder, Xtro goes for ick and yuck. While, in and of itself, this kind of thing can be entertaining, when done right, just have a few too many problems here to make it work.
And why is that? Oh, we'll get there, don't worry - but we have a lot to cover now. Like the plot: Tony's father Sam Phillips (Phillip Sayer) was abducted by aliens three years ago, and the lives of his son Tony (Simon Nash) and his wife Rachel (Bernice Stegers) were shattered, but they moved on. Now, suddenly, Sam has returned to Earth to seek out his wife and son. Unfortunately, Rachel has moved on with hr life and is living with Joe (Danny Brainin) and the reunion is awkward, to say the least, what with Sam attacking various passers-by and seeping unexplained liquids from hsi wrists. That kinda thing happens, I guess. Joe doesn't trust Sam, and Rachel can't quite decide what her feelings are for her two men. Sam is not the same as when he left (duh), and he begins affecting an adoring yet severely messed-up Tony in frightening ways....
For as straightforward as that sound, it isn't. And blame for that rests squarely on the Limey heads of director Harry Bromley Davenport and his co-writers Iain Cassie, Michel Parry and Robert Smith. They have a standard E.T.sploitation storyline, yes, but they also have uptight British drama, slasher movie mentalities, kiddie fantasy/dream sequences, killer toys, exploding women, drooping hammers and children covered in blood. The shifts in tone and storytelling clash so much and so often that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense - and not in a good way, either.
Juxtaposition of story sometimes works in a movie if you're trying to get across a sense of disorientation and confusion in the characters, but only if you have a linear storyline to hang thing son. With alien abductions, forced impregnation and infiltrations of humanity, you kind of expect to know what to follow from Point A to Point B. In Xtro, it all just kind of happens. Just not as often as one would like. Or expect. Or want.
The evil alien story is good, but that's a different movie. The disappearing/reappearing husband bit is fine, but that's a different movie. The scenes with clowns, toys and childhood fantasy sequences are cute/creepy enough, but that is a different movie., And when Davenport and company try to mix them all into one cohesive strip of celluloid, they go together as well as oil and water. Politics and honesty. Uwe Boll and respectability.
Maybe this would all have been pulled together by decent actors. Nope: instead father Sam is played by Sayer about the same pre-E.T. as he is post-E.T. - bland and oh-so-proper. Mom Rachel is essayed by Stegers as a woman with only two speeds: complacent and hysterical. No middle ground for mom here. And our kid Tony is given to us by Nash as a lad who doesn't really show us much on the emotion scale - even when covered in blood in his own bed. Even when he's possessed by an alien spirit and we expect something along the lines of The Exorcist, we get Exorcist II: The Heretic instead.
In fact, Xtro plays like a bad sequel to a movie you've never seen nor heard of. A movie so bad, in fact, that they just skipped the first movie altogether and released Part II , hoping audiences would "get it". And if there's anything worse than a movie that makes suppositions, it's a movie that makes unfounded suppositions.
I guess we should blame Davenport, Cassie, Parry and Smith for all of this cut-and-paste nonsense masquerading as alien horror. When you get right down to it, there's such a thing as "following-through" you have to consider when you write, produce and direct something that's supposed to convey horror, alien wonder and otherworldly intent. To say that Xtro doesn't follow through is only a small part of what's wrong with it in whole, right down to an ending that may be expected but still doesn't give us much in the way of closure. If anything, we just get the feeling that it's seting up a sequel no one in their right mind would ask for.
Oh, but we got 'em - in fact, eight years down the road we got Xtro II: The Second Encounter then, four years after that, we were subjected to Xtro 3: Watch the Skies. I don't know who was asking for a sequel to a movie like Xtro but whoever they were, I'm guessing they are the kind of people who thought that a few years down the road the people involved HAD to have gotten it right.
They didn't.
In fact, the only thing Xtro did get right is the special effects. Tom and Ray Harris, John Webber, Richard Gregory and David Anderson gave us effects that do indeed realistically give us a hideously fleshy upside-down walking alien can impregnate a woman, who gives birth to a full-grown human male (ouch) almost immediately in a rupture of flesh, blood and placenta, and later variations on aliens who look nothing like the alien we saw in the first place. No matter; I didn't expect a movie like Xtro to be consistent in anything but its inconsistency.
And while this movie was successful enough to warrant sequels and a fervent-enough following that if you get a big-enough crowd of people together and yell out to them "Xtro!", a few of them will pump their fists in the back of the room and scream back , "Whoo, yeah!" - that still doesn't mean this is a good film.
Edward D. wood movies have cult followings too. I think we agree that Ed Wood's movies aren't good. But at least they are endearing.
Which is the LAST word anyone would use to describe Xtro.
