Why does this movie exist?

Xtro is the touching tale of the reunion between an English man (Sam) and his son (Tony) three years after he was abducted by aliens, transmogrified, and then returned by the same aliens…to get more victims. Namely his wife (Rachel), her asshole fashion photographer boyfriend (Joe) and their live-in…I-don’t-know-what (Maryam D’Abo).

As the director and co-writer, Harry Bromley Davenport, explains in the featurette on my DVD (What’s that look for?  Of course, I own it), “the movie is dreadful” and they were really just trying put in as many revolting things as possible in 84 minutes.  You’ll see that, among the alien tentacle porn, pseudo-incestuous necking, and an overabundance of bodily fluids that shouldn’t come from any body, they do an outstanding job.

This film cannot be reviewed through conventional methods.  So forgive me if I abandon journalistic standards, and instead provide the stream of consciousness as I attempted to watch this movie again.

And drink.  A lot.

• Ah, New Line Cinema, we have you to blame for so much pain in life.
• Playing the part of Julie Delpy is Maryam D’Abo in her first film role.  Nowhere to go but up.
• The 80s, a miraculous time when anyone with a Casio keyboard could be a film composer.
• Who wears short shorts?  Little English boys!
• Generally, one shouldn’t play fetch with high explosives.
• It’s hard to mime being sucked into a space ship on a low budget.
• We should all be so lucky as to be creative enough turn a father’s abandonment into a sweet alien abduction story.
• Fee Fie Fo Fum, I hear a bad American accent done by an Englishman.
• “I don’t what I’m looking at” Incident No. 1.
• Well don’t you have a purdy mouth?
• Now that’s an English mullet.
• That’s what you get for caring about the person you just ran over.
• Once again, a dog is trying to get its master killed.
• It would appear that the alien’s rape tentacle is coming out of its stomach vagina.
• Oh look, our Tony’s finally becoming a woman.
• “Snuggle right down, sweetheart” just sounds wrong with an English accent.
• “Nobody asked you, Joe” incident No. 1.
• There has to be a morning after…..
• Now that’s a spontaneous belly expansion.
• Oh good, she just gave birth to Tony’s fully grown father.
• Well how else would you cut your own umbilical cord than with your teeth?  Honestly…
• Of course, Sam leaves the dead girl in the front seat?
• For those keeping track, Tony’s annoying traits include: night sweats, delusions, spontaneous bleeding, and snakes.
• And now for a change of pace: consensual sex.
• Direct quote: “Think of that foot as your face and smile.”
• It’s a fact: all English children are one bad day away from being the kids from Village of the Damned.
• No matter what the problem, alcohol is always the solution.
• “Nobody asked you, Joe” incident No. 2.
• Raw Snake Eggs: a tasty treat that’s good to eat.
• Perversion wears a cable-knit sweater.
• Rachel just can’t keep track of the men in her life.
• Time for a father/son bonding moment when Sam places his lips gently on Tony’s bare shoulder and projects his mouth fluids inside.  Which give Tony superpowers.  Seriously.
• “Nobody asked you, Joe” incident No. 3.
• Like alcohol, violence solves many of life’s problems.  See: marital issues and snakes in the salad.
• Well, now Tony is angry.  Not to worry though, it’s not like has telekinesis … oh s***.
• Of course, Sam breathes propane.
• The words hypnotic, midget, and clown are just a bad combination no matter what the order.
• “When Toys Attack!” a recurring horror movie theme.
• He’s mortally wounded the couch!
• That’s a leather tie.
• Goes well with the extra tight blue jeans.
• Who’s the grown-up in this situation?
• Oh sweet Jesus, the hypnotic, midget clown is also a ninja.  Game over, man.  Game over.
• Tony has inherited his father’s mouth fluids.
• Rachel just doesn’t get what movie she’s in.
• Maryam is so much sexier as an alien egg incubating device.
• Uh oh, Manimal is p***ed.
• Of course, Sam is peeling apart.
• Burning hair always sets the mood just right…
• Tony’s refridgerator is one of the lost portals from Time Bandits.
• That’s right, Maryam now lays giant black jelly beans out of her utero-tube.
• And now, sparkly yo-yo death.  Wait, which movie is this?
• If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to apologize during sex…
• Ah, so this was an extended Oxy 10 commercial this whole time.  Makes much more sense.
• And that’s what you get for that haircut, Joe!
• Hard to tell if Sam looks better or worse now.
• Rachel is not seeing the upside of having every annoying man out of her life all at once.
• Why would you pick the pulsating alien egg out of the green goo?
• And that’s the moral of the story: touching something you shouldn’t and you get a tentacle in the mouth.

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, it’s just that awful. Even the director hates it.  I own it almost solely to add to my collection of hideous films.  The other reason is to watch it when I forget how disgusting it really is.  Like I did before I put in the DVD.  It’s like when you forget how miserable your life was with that one ex and call them up again.  I need to take a lesson from Xtro, and apply alcohol to my brain problem.

The members of Wild Zero are the Ramones of Japan, however they also have the divine calling to kill zombies with a thick gooey coating of Japan’s Rock and Roll Spirit. This movie is just that goddamn awesome. As such, we’ve decided to resurrect one of our dead features, the live stream event, and rock it out-jingle style-on this Christmas evening. However, as opposed to just having one of us here tonigh, we’ve got a full cast of characters who are going to be offering input across the twitter-verse

(Oh. Yeah. Keep your eyes peeled for the Japanese Steve Buscemi)

Standard rules apply here, everything here is something shouted out during the course of the movie. By the way, it had its own drinking game, so things became kind of incoherent near the end as all the participants started slurring their words a bit. The lines in quotes are actually taken straight from the film. So don’t blame us.

Enjoy!

• Why are all Asian zombies blue?
• Hubcaps…in SPACE!
• Japanese Rockabilly hair combing!
• We should mention that Wild Zero ships with its own drinking game as a special feature
• WHY CAN’T I SHOOT LIGHTING OUT OF MY GUITAR?!?
• “There’s a wallet on my ass with a rock and roll license!”
• Did we REALLY need the POV shot of him peeing in the urinal? SQUEEEEZE it out, SON!
• Seriously, how many f***ing times do you need to comb your hair in a day?
• What’s with those shorts. . oh, that’s a woman.
• Why. Does. his. underwear. tie. up. on. the side? And did the actor REALLY have to have an erection during the ENTIRE scene?
• Because cocaine in the milk is like a protein shake?
• ZOMBIES!
• And…uh…why is that zombie holding sandals?
• Big. Giant. Hearts? on the screen? WHAT?
• Stick your penis in it, the zombies go away.
• That tiny bike says his penis is at LEAST a full pinky length in size. No overcompensating there!
• never. Ever. Faint in front of the zombies.
• The zombies are going to east Asian Moby! We won’t hear it though, because his shirt is too goddamned loud.
• Mop against zombies= WIN
• At some angles she looks like a man, at other angles she’s a very cute girl? Winona Ryder?
• Why do zombies go straight for the panties?
• Naked Marksmanship FTW!
• Who has fire shooting out of their MICROPHONE?
• They’ve wandered into some sort of building and um. . . SHE IS A MAN!
• It’s the crying game all over again!!! AGGGHHHH! *Runs away to the bathroom*
• “LOVE HAS NO BORDERS NATIONALITIES OR GENDERS!! DOOOO IT!”
• Atheism Limit Break CROWBAR ENGAGE!!!
• God, Guitar Wolf is like this sexy Terminator-alien-thing-man-beast. . .
• That gun’s not a penis. No. Not at all.
• His package has luster. Billy Mays here for the package buffer. . . Giggity.
• Every time they f***ing back-fist Asian Steve Buscemi, take a drink.
• Why are they naked . . . and blue. . . and wearing. . .cod. . pieces?
• They’ve just found ALL the guns. . .
• charred barring hips. . . . . . charles brawlin’ herps. . . charlz broilin hips. . . she’s got ‘em. . .
• Ok. Higgins is apparently tweeting everything I’m failing to say during the drinking game.
• Guitar Wolf has got so much rock n’ roll he can kill zombies just with Guitar Picks. . .LIGHTNING GUITAR PICKS!
• Let’s do a bunch of drugs and kill some zombies. Yep, sure. That’s what I’d do.
• “THERE ARE NO BOUNDARIES IN ROCK N’ ROLL! BELIEVE IN ROCK N’ ROLL.”
• He still has an erection. . .
• Gosh he is cute. Wait. That’s not right. . .
• Nipple twist! Tune in Toyko!
• Oh, that’s right, because he’s a wolf. He’s a Guitar Wolf. STILL A MAN!!!
• He took off the wig and he’s EVEN GAYER, how does that work?!
• Well, If this going to be that kind of party, I’m gonna to stick my dick in the mash potatoes.
• ZOMBIE LOVE CAM!
• “I swear by my leather jacket, and by rock n’ roll, I swear, I love you.”
• “Courage and Rock n’ Roll, that’s what he taught me that night.”
• Ladies and Gentlemen, this concludes this mass of the Church of the Cavalcade, we thank for your attendance and my penis is not that big.
• The previous is what happens when you leave the twitter window open for random people to type. BAD Christmas guests! BAD!

The Fourth Kind begins with the comely Milla Jovovich informing us, PSA-style, that she will be portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler (a fictional person) and that the events we are about to see are based on some sort of fact, and apparently Nome, Alaska is this hotbed of alien abduction.

Furthermore, we are treated to the ghostly pale waif of the “real” Dr. Tyler, who narrates her story with heart breaking certainty of the events. She’s all eyes and lank hair; nothing like Jovovitch, giving the film this weird deconstructionist bent. We’ve all seen TV and entertainment, and we’ve seen a few alien abduction movies as well, so the angle they take assumes you are used to the effects of both. In a way, it’s interesting.

But in a more accurate way, it’s as pretentious as this next sentence:

As  a deeply cynical man who shaves with Occam’s Razor, I must point out that technically everything is “based on a true story.” Good fiction writers tend to derive most of their stories from real life, to inform believability.

And while not really believable, I can’t fault this movie’s construction. Many of the scenes throughout the film, are shown in split screen, with the “archival” footage right next to dramatized version of what we’re watching.

Initially this is irritating, but it grows on you. This dramatic sleight of hand forces you to choose which version you’re going to watch, and because a good deal of the archival footage is in the grainy black and white we usually see on America’s Dumbest Criminals’ convenience store robbery footage, you will probably end up watching the one with Ms. Jovovitch.

Veteran character actor Will Patton plays the town’s “Don’t Trust me no science” sheriff, who believes that Dr. Tyler is causing every single problem the town has with her “brain magicks”. At one point, Tyler’s daughter is abducted, and the sheriff immediately asks her what she did with the tot. Tyler says she was taken through the ceiling by aliens. It’s an odd scene because the audience really isn’t on either side. The sheriff is being a douche, Tyler is rightfully hysterical, but we start to realize that both of them acting like they’re in a community theater audition and it’s not going to get them anywhere productive.

However, they do get somewhere fast though, as movie has momentum in spades. There’s barely a moment where something is not going wrong, people are shouting over each other, or having disturbing physical reactions to hypnosis.

Is this movie schlock? Not in terms of construction of story, but in terms of the “this is totally real!” conceit, oh yeah. To sell its point even further, the film wraps up with UFO sighting calls to local law enforcement, almost all of which are in California, and Utah. One was most disturbingly from Baltimore, Md.

Really? I can deal with the absurd Gotham-before-Batman crime rate in Charm City but Aliens, too?

You are told several times to believe what you want, by people who supposedly hold a Ph.D. in something other than bulls***. After seeing the film, I’ll believe the residents of Nome were disappearing due to the always deadly but far more mundane combination of cold weather and alcoholism.