Franchise Frights: Xtro
The Xtro franchise is one of the most fascinating in the horror genre — nowhere near one of the best, mind you, but fascinating. There are only three installments in the series, but each is pretty drastically different than the last, despite all being directed by Harry Bromley Davenport and all featuring an extraterrestrial of some kind. Now, most of the intrigue stems from the bizarro experience that is the original film. I’m not sure there’s a sci-fi horror flick that is more distinct in its strange audacity. In one movie, we’ve got a damn creepy backwards-crawling spider alien, a woman giving violent birth to a fully grown man, human-sized toy soldiers, toy tanks with flesh-tearing firepower, an evil clown, a panther, and morphing eggs. And yet, despite that bizarre concoction and the robustness of the director’s imagination, both sequels are almost shocking in their willingness to steal from genre hits. (Granted, even the original Xtro was birthed as a cash-in on Ridley Scott’s Alien, though it ended up as something entirely different.) I guess Bromley Davenport needed money and still owned the rights to the Xtro name, but you’d think sheer osmosis would have resulted in films that more closely resembled one another. The director himself, in various interviews, credits the original’s uniqueness to accident and circumstance, so perhaps the circumstances never properly aligned later in the series — and, indeed, he was contractually required to make Xtro II: The Second Encounter completely different from the first one. But, regardless, each movie brings a distinct creature that looks rather striking (if sometimes cheap). Purportedly, Bromley Davenport and original producer Mark Forstater are working on the next entry, Xtro: The Big One, but it’s been in pre-production for a decade now, so who knows when or if it will come to fruition. I hope it does, though, because for all this British series’ flaws, it’s a lot of fun for monster movie fans.
3. Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990; dir: Harry Bromley Davenport)
This entry is clearly just an Aliens rip-off, and replicates many of the same sequences: a chest-bursting fledgling, an air duct chase scene, a vertical climb featuring a dramatic foot grab, and even the weaponry here bears a more than passing resemblance to the hip-mounted canons used by Vasquez and Drake. The score, too, is stealing from James Horner’s militaristic music. The alien actually looks really cool, I think, despite being an obvious and clumsy play on the xenomorph queen. Xtro 2 is the worst of the series but it’s entertaining in its idea-theft. It’s tainted a bit by the involvement of Jan-Michael Vincent, whose substance abuse was reportedly at its worst during production and who was generally a pain in the ass who couldn’t remember any of his lines.
2. Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995; dir: Harry Bromley Davenport)
Not content with ripping off only one sci-fi franchise, the Xtro series this time leans fully into Predator, with an alien that can cloak itself hunting down soldiers in a jungle. Again, the extraterrestrial looks different, this time resembling a more menacing version of the popular “little green men,” but with a Jim Henson Muppet twist that I think that adds to its surprising creepiness. The alien attacks here are suspenseful and well-directed and the movie briskly goes about its business, but the very limited budget shows up in areas like sound design and acting. But all in all, it’s not too terrible, but again makes one ponder why so little of the peculiarity of the original made its way into this sequel.
1. Xtro (1983; dir: Harry Bromley Davenport)
The first film has the distinction of being one of the weirdest horror movies ever made, and certainly neither of the two sequels came close in that regard. It’s sort of amazing how slavishly plagiaristic parts two and three are, despite being directed by the same man who made this craziness. Everything about this movie stands alone, and it even features one of the scariest alien designs put to film. Bromley Davenport’s eccentric synth score is also notable. Xtro isn’t for everyone, but for the people who dig it, it’s something special.