Xtro (1982)

Man Xtro was a pretty wild ride I thought. The basic premise is that Sam is abducted by aliens in front of his kid, and everyone just thinks he ran off and left the family. He returns three years later in pretty epic fashion—an alien beams down to earth and then rapes some lady and then Sam is born, all in the same evening! He then returns to his family. His wife, Rachel, is seeing a new dude, Joe, and she's all sorts of emotionally mixed up since Sam says he has no idea what happened to him.

Sam then tries to get his family to come with him (he knows he's an alien) and all sorts of wacky shit starts happening. It was kind of like Phantasm for me with it's wild mindfuck sort of events happening. It was kind of slow in the interesting way most older films are, not like BAM BAM BAM hollywood thinks viewers needs to stay attentive. I dug this quite a bit, unlike it's horrible horrible two sequels. Both were also directed by Harry Bromley Davenport, but carry none of the visceral and interesting qualities the first has. They're both rips of Aliens and Predator! But with awful aliens! The alieb in Xtro 3 is especially ridiculous, and I can't even bring myself to review those two, but I'll include some screens. And despite however intriguing these may look to you, please for the love of all that is holy and blessed in this world, avoid them at all costs.

Jan Michael VIncent! Boom!

Nope, not as bad ass as Predator

Davenport has claimed recently that he's begun work on Xtro 4, saying it will be more like the first in terms of mind bending. Everyone has been saying the problem with parts 2 and 3 are that while Davenport kept copyright over the name Xtro, he did not retain any rights to the characters or story. I say hogwash, that doesn't give you the right to make a shitty movie!

The original Xtro had a few alternate endings, the first being cut because producers weren't in love with the special effects, the second being cut because Davenport thought it was kind of dull which brought us to the one used in the film. Here's the original for those who have seen Xtro or if you're interested in this kind of thing.

Aw Hell! and Ole grandday Caruthers ain't forgotten about how you like some old forgotten scores! I cannot for the life of remember where this is from, but here it is, thanks goes out to the cosmos! TRIVIA: The score is done by none other than Harry Bromley-Davenport himself! Exclamation point!

Xtro score

PS PS BONUS BONUS AGAIN:

Here's a sweet interview I found with Davenport on making Xtro, really cool stuff. Followed by the Siskel and Ebert review, SPOILER: They're not huge fans of it, but don't let that stop you from seeing this! Love the RCA video disc commercial at the end. I had recently researched a bunch of those for a separate post and boy do I just love old technology!