onsdag 15 januari 2014

Xtro 2: The second encounter (1990)


I love Alien clones, it is my favorite guilty pleasure. Xtro 2, having nothing at all to do with the original other than making money for Harry Bromley Davenport, is truly and well a giant rehash of Alien and Aliens, bringing nothing new to the genre except... Well, except nothing. We have seen everything before. Everything. The only thing that Xtro 2 has that Alien or Aliens doesn't have is a visibly shitfaced Jan Michael Vincent looking bored as hell. That must count for something, right? Oh, and motiontrackers. Xtro 2 does not have motiontrackers. But it compensates with a central computer with a female voice.

It has gathered quite a few really bad reviews over the years and I can't really understand why. It is a monstermovie by the numbers with flashing lights, a countdown before everyone dies and a monster that gestates inside a human host but Davenport is a decent director and maintains a good pace and some not too bad camerawork. The editing can be quite erratic at times but I suspect that was due to having to salvage Mr Vincents footage, the few lines he didn't flub. It has a bit of gore and the giant monster is pretty cool as it roams the underground bunker, sometimes changing size (mostly due to laziness from the filmmakers) so that it can fit in the ventilation shafts. Yes, there are ventilation shafts. With flashing lights. Every decent Alien clone has to have flashing lights in a ventilationshaft.

No, this is not a good movie but believe me when I say I have seen a lot worse than this. It does its job, brings an alien monster from another dimension into an underground facility and kills people in semi-gory ways. Sometimes you don't need more than that. Maybe some nudity. There should have been nudity.


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