This film really messed with my head as a child. I watched it on video when I was about 8 years old, felt very queasy and disturbed within the first 10 minutes and had nightmares for weeks afterwards. Large portions of the film's imagery remained with me during my childhood. I've seen Xtro two or three times since then and I'm happy to say I still find it a creepy, unnerving experience.
The director Harry Bromley Davenport has openly admitted that he made Xtro for shock value, that he set out to make a sickeningly ugly, nasty, hardcore piece of sci-fi horror, and he certainly succeeded. The notorious scene that nearly got Xtro on the video nasty blacklist in the early 80s occurs about 10 minutes in: the Xtro alien, an ugly quadruped who looks like a cross between a lizard and a grasshopper, rapes and impregnates a woman who quickly gives birth to a fully-grown man, who then proceeds to chew through his own umbilical cord! Another H.R. Geiger-style nightmare image is when the family au pair (future James Bond girl Maryam D'Abo) is turned into an alien breeding chamber, incubated in this cocoon wrapped in spiderwebs and churning out these alien eggs into a bathtub of green slime. You get the idea
For some reason I found the horror in Xtro all the more effective for being counterpointed against this grim, kitchen-sink London council estate setting and tinny 80s synthesizer score. It isn't for everyone, but there's no denying that a lot of bizarre imagination and creativity went into this film, and that the film has a potent shock value. It's possible that fans of David Cronenberg's early so-called "biological horrors" Shivers, Rabid, The Brood might be more appreciative of Xtro than most others.
The director Harry Bromley Davenport has openly admitted that he made Xtro for shock value, that he set out to make a sickeningly ugly, nasty, hardcore piece of sci-fi horror, and he certainly succeeded. The notorious scene that nearly got Xtro on the video nasty blacklist in the early 80s occurs about 10 minutes in: the Xtro alien, an ugly quadruped who looks like a cross between a lizard and a grasshopper, rapes and impregnates a woman who quickly gives birth to a fully-grown man, who then proceeds to chew through his own umbilical cord! Another H.R. Geiger-style nightmare image is when the family au pair (future James Bond girl Maryam D'Abo) is turned into an alien breeding chamber, incubated in this cocoon wrapped in spiderwebs and churning out these alien eggs into a bathtub of green slime. You get the idea
For some reason I found the horror in Xtro all the more effective for being counterpointed against this grim, kitchen-sink London council estate setting and tinny 80s synthesizer score. It isn't for everyone, but there's no denying that a lot of bizarre imagination and creativity went into this film, and that the film has a potent shock value. It's possible that fans of David Cronenberg's early so-called "biological horrors" Shivers, Rabid, The Brood might be more appreciative of Xtro than most others.
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