After being abducted by aliens three years earlier Sam (Phillip Sayer) returns to earth and reunites himself with his wife Rachel (Bernice Stegers) and son Tony (Simon Nash). While Sam was away Rachel moved on with her life and started seeing Joe (Danny Brainin) and after the arrival of Sam at the couples flat Joe begins to suspect that Sam is not all that he appears to be.

‘Xtro' is not a bad little sci-fi horror movie in my opinion. While it suffers from bad, wooden acting and a sometimes incoherent plot the film is generally well thought out and capably directed by Harry Bromley Davenport. The biggest complaint I have with the movie was the lack of character development with regards to the alien. While some creatures or villains are scarier when the viewer is unaware of its origins I feel this particular life form would have benefited from at least a slight background story which was sadly lacking. However, though the plot can be sometimes a little confusing, most of the story eventually comes across well despite leaving a few unanswered questions and being slow in places. As I previously mentioned the film was fairly well directed and this really comes through in a few scenes which generally have an extremely trippy and unnerving effect.

The effects in ‘Xtro' are quite surprisingly of very good quality especially considering the budget for this flick. Though one or two of the make-up effects looked rather out-of-place from the rest most of the effects were well produced and made ‘Xtro' a rather gory movie which should keep gore fans happy. This movie found its way onto the infamous Video Nasty list and though it probably should not have been put there one can almost understand why as it features a couple of particularly brutal scenes involving women. Having said that there are far more vile movies out there and it would seem ‘Xtro' was just a poor victim of media propaganda.

‘Xtro' is certainly worth a look in my opinion for sci-fi/horror fans. Complete with a delightfully erratic and haunting 80's soundtrack the movie is fairly entertaining despite its shortcomings. ‘Xtro' is probably not for those who expect a lot of action but instead a good movie for people who like slow-paced movies with various plot aspects to think about. My rating for ‘Xtro' – 7/10.

One of the more arrestingly off-beat "ALIEN" sci-fi/horror variants to materialize in the early to mid 80's, this compellingly uneasy combination of drearily conventional domestic drama and totally off-the-wall sci-fi/horror weirdness starts out fairly mundane, but eventually erupts into all-out credibility-be-damned jaw-dropping surrealism as its oddball plot unfolds. A man who was abducted by aliens returns home after a long absence and makes a faltering attempt at regaining his previous ordinary life with horrifically disastrous consequences for both himself and his family. Acting, direction and narrative coherence take a back seat to an alarming succession of increasingly daft, shocking and gloriously grotesque graphic set pieces: a luckless lady who's been brutally raped by a hideous extraterrestrial crab-like beast gives painful, life-taking birth to a fully grown man (nasty!) in a truly gag-inducing scene, a half-human, half-alien guy causes a pay phone to melt after he touches it, comely French au pair girl and future James Bond movie starlet Maryam ("The Living Daylights") d'Abo gets wrapped up in a cocoon that's located directly above the bathroom shower so she can be used as an incubator for alien eggs (luckily the luscious Maryam gets to do two eye-popping and much-appreciated gratuitous nude scenes prior to meeting this ghastly fate), d'Abo's libidinous boyfriend winds up being mauled by a panther after being chased around the house by a dangerous animated toy tank (yes, you read that correctly), and, in perhaps the film's single most stupendously strange sequence, a GI Joe doll gets blown up to normal man size so it can come to life and take out a snoopy old lady neighbor (I'm honestly not making this crazy stuff up). Amid all this magnificently messed-up lunacy the movie's "you can't go back home" subtext somehow manages to acquire a certain cock-eyed poignancy that's in equal degrees oddly affecting and genuinely unnerving. Alas, this terrifically twisted and authentically outré treat was followed by a couple of dire, scarcely related by-the-numbers sequels which sadly lack the original's startlingly unpredictable free-form approach to telling a story.

Tony's father Sam, abducted by aliens three years earlier, returns to earth and seeks out his wife and son, but Rachel has since been living with Joe and the reunion is awkward. Joe does not trust Sam, and Rachel cannot quite decide what her feelings are for her two men. Sam is not the same as when he left, and he begins affecting Tony in frightening ways.

This is one of the strangest films I have seen. And I have seen many strange films, wading as I do in horror, fantasy and cult flicks. This one is... well, hard to say. Definitely horror and definitely science fiction, but far too strange to be a straight narrative in either genre.

One suspects the budget was zero, as nobody of note was involved in the picture. Bob Shaye produced for New Line, but this was before New Line had really gotten to be a big name. And yet, budget or not, we have some of the finest practical effects and creature designs you may ever see.