Harry Bromley Davenport's notorious Xtro, the best (or worst, depending on your point of view and moral standing within society) British alien-rebirth-clown-panther-hot-naked-French-chick movie ever made finally saw a Region One release thanks to Image Entertainment and now has been re-bundled with the first of the two sequels, Xtro II starring a very drunk Jan Michael Vincent. While those who bought the Xtro-only release that came out in September of 2005 might be irked that it's been re-released three months later with the sequel, for those who haven't already picked up the first film, this is a pretty solid package.

The movie begins when Sam Phillips (Philip Sayer) disappears right on front of his young son Tony (Simon Nash of Terry Gilliam's Brazil). Three years later, Tony is still dealing with his father's disappearance and he tells his mother, Rachel (Bernice Stegers of Lamberto Bava's Macabro) and her new boyfriend – a high fashion photographer, that his father didn't leave, that he was taken by aliens. Things start to get strange though when Sam is reborn as a full grown man in fairly graphic detail through a woman who gets impregnated by an alien being that lands on Earth. While all of this is going on, the lovely French babysitter (the lovely Maryam D'Abo of The Living Daylights in her big screen debut) is getting it on with her boyfriend from time to time, unbeknownst to her employees.

When Sam picks up his son at school one day, his mother starts to become very concerned and for good reason. Where has he been all this time? Is it really him? She soon finds out that this isn't the same Sam she was once married to, as he has a strange tendency to kill people at random intervals and to leak greasy, oily fluid out of his arms and wrists. This strange behavior doesn't stop Tony from expressing his joy at Daddy's return, however, and soon, despite the fact that Sam has very obviously morphed into something very, very alien, he's put him up on a pedestal once more.

Full of completely gratuitous gross out effects, some entirely unnecessary but very welcome nudity from D'Abo, and a plot that makes little to no sense most of the time, Xtro is a complete and utter mess from start to finish – but that doesn't mean it isn't a whole lot of fun. Citizen Kane it might not be but the movie does have a whole lot of quirky and exploitative charm that makes it very easy to sit through. The special effects, which are basically the centerpiece of the film, are completely budget looking but somehow manage to be a little unnerving at the same time, particularly the still gross birth scene in which Philip Sayer crawls out of his host mother's crotch covered in slime and goop and blood.

The score, which sounds like something John Carpenter might have done if he had found himself with a lot less talent in the eighties, adds an otherworldly feel to the movie that actually works in spite of itself. It somehow manages to make the gore scenes gorier and the really dumb and completely nonsensical dialogue even dumber and more nonsensical than they really are. Throw in a scene with a clown, a scene with a black panther, and a really bizarre looking alien and you get a movie that accidentally resembles, at times, some of David Cronenberg's work, even if it is obviously completely accidental that it happens that way. High art, Xtro is not – but it's good stupid fun.

It's a rare occasion that a successful horror film doesn't spawn a sequel, and thus was born Xtro II. Though it's really only a sequel in name only and doesn't rely on the continuity of the first film at all, it still holds a special place in many people's hearts thanks primarily to riveting performance from an obviously intoxicated Jan Michael Vincent.

In a top secret underground laboratory, two scientists named Dr. Alex Summerfield (Paul Koslo) and Dr. Julie Casserly (Tara Buckman), are experimenting with inter-dimensional travel. They send three test subjects on an expedition into a new dimension to figure out if their theories are correct but only one of them makes it back alive and to make matters worse, she's hosting a parasite that seems to be growing inside of her. Before long, the creature has erupted from her inner stomach into the outside world and it wreaks havoc in the laboratory, killing its host during the 'birth.'

Summerfield and Casserly know what they need to do – lock down the lab and destroy it before that creature gets out and destroys the world – but they're going to need help. Luckily, help arrives in the form of one Dr. Ron Shepherd (Jan Michael Vincent), who has survived incidents like this in the past and knows how to handle situations like this. He and his two scientist buddies team up with a couple of disposable soldiers to try and stop the beast in hopes that they'll be able to prevent it from running rampant and killing off more innocent people.

Wow. Just…… wow. Xtro II is awful. Where do we start?

Though the second film in the series is directed by Harry Bromley Davenport, the man who helmed the original, it doesn't reference that film at all and instead expects us to understand the back-story without really filling us in on it. It's almost as if this is a sequel to a completely different film… like Alien. This movie borrows so much from Aliens and does it so obviously that it's amazing that they weren't sued by 20th Century Fox for copyright infringement. Monsters burst out of chests, bug like creatures curl their lips over shiny, slimy teeth, and a small squad of soldiers with big guns and constantly changing accents are called in to put a stop to it – it really is Aliens for and by the mentally challenged.

If the blatant theft weren't bad enough, there's the acting. Jan Michael Vincent has been good in the past, just check out his work with Charles Bronson in The Mechanic. By the time that this movie was made, however, he was a drug addled drunk with some serious problems and his pasty, shiny complexion and the fact that he's unable to utter anything intelligible in this film make it painfully obvious that ol' JMV was pretty loaded on this set. While it does make for some seriously funny unintentional humor, the sad fact is we're laughing at him and not with him. He's got about as much charisma here as a bowl of dog food, and he's unfortunately he's matched ever step of the way by Paul Koslo (who oddly enough also worked with Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk and Love And Bullets). Nicholas Rea of The X-Files is alright in a supporting role and Tara Buckman (who was the hot chick in the Lamborghini from Cannonball Run) is kind of fun to look at, but it's not enough to save the film considering just how powerfully bad the two leads are.

That being said, there's enough cheesy dialogue and grisly gore effects here that the movie kind of works just because it's so horrible. Davenport makes no qualms about going for the gore whenever things slow down and there's plenty of bloody and gooey effects throughout the film to keep it entertaining. It's not a good film, by any stretch, but it's fun in a completely stupid way, especially if you enjoy laughing at Jan Michael Vincent.

Video:

The anamorphic for 1.85.1 widescreen transfers for both films are fairly heavy on grain and contain some minor print damage throughout. Colors look okay but a little faded in some spots though the black levels come through nicely and don't tend to bury the detail present in the image. The skin tones look lifelike and natural and there are no problems with mpeg compression artifacts, though some mild line shimmering is present throughout the duration of both movies at any given point in time.