Xtro (1982)

Directed by Harry Bromley Davenport. Starring Bernice Stegers, Philip Sayer, Maryam d’Abo, David Cardy, Danny Brainin, Simon Nash, Anna Wing. [R]

A few years after witnessing his father get abducted by an alien entity, a British child reunites with what looks like daddy, but it sure ain’t daddy. See, in between the abduction and the reunion, a “hybrid creature” arrives on the planet and implants its seed into a woman through rape, which quickly gestates into a full-grown man that rips her apart while being birthed like Ace Ventura out of a fake rhino. As you can probably guess, that “newborn man” is the spitting image of the kid’s father; as you probably wouldn’t guess, the kid is bitten by Pops, vampire-style, and the child then discovers he has supernatural powers, which he uses to bring human-sized toy soldiers and clowns to life to kill, kill, kill. A bleak nightmare of a movie, disjointed to the point of bewilderment, held together only by a parade of bizarre and bloody special effects. It’s very gross and nasty, to the point where au pair Maryam d’Abo’s gratuitous nudity feels just as uncomfortable as the repellent violence, and if there was any kind of a story or sense of suspense and discovery to it all, it might have worked as a sleazy exploitation flick. But instead it’s a big, dispiriting mess, one in which even the director admitted he was just throwing random things together without consideration. A couple of in-name-only sequels followed in the 1990s.

33/100