Xtro II: The Second Encounter

The Nexus Program, behind the idea of transportation through parallel universes, is what we are introduced to. A scientific research facility is visited by a bureaucrat who believes after “the fiasco in Texas” that the Nexus Program maybe shouldn’t be wasting tax payers’ money. The Defense Secretary might just shut the program down if he isn’t impressed with what the scientists have to offer. A breakthrough is promised him, but a *slight snag* occurs when three volunteers “teleport” to a coordinates, encounter “something”, don’t return to the “embark location”, and seem lost at the parallel universe transported to. So who do you call when a rescue operation is necessary? Dr. Ron Shepherd (Jan-Michael Vincent), of course.

*½

Jan-Michael Vincent. He had a glimmer of star early in his career with the television series, Airwolf, and the excellent Charles Bronson/Michael Winner flick, The Mechanic, but eventually as his career entered the 90s a series of softcore smut pictures came. Xtro II: The Second Encounter was right there in the middle of his career’s downturn. Look my uncle said it best, “You have to keep the lights on, and you have to eat.” I don’t fault Vincent for doing what he had to do, but when you cast an actor like him in a role like Xtro II, expecting him to “be all in” might be pushing it. Director Harry Bromley Davenport commented on the actor and his performance when interviewed for the first film, not appreciative of Vincent’s lack of care while those involved in the making of Xtro II put forth all their efforts. Low budget sci-fi horror of the B-movie variety suffers from a degree of familiarity and often more than not the production values show how little the filmmaking crew had to work with. The monster is rarely that particularly impressive, often hidden as to conceal how fake it is. The 80s/90s monster/alien movies were, to me, very similar to those in the 50s, and I think you sense that those filmmakers of the more modern fare were paying homage (and admired) the earlier sci-fi drive-in/theater schlock so popular during the McCarthy/Universal Studios era. He has that gravel voice, but I have to admit Vincent has screen presence. Don’t know what it is, some guys just have it even when they don’t give a shit. Even when the films are just “Paycheck Movies”, a guy like Nic Cage just has that something.

Shepherd is supposed to lead a called-in strike team to go after the trio of volunteers missing in the parallel universe. If the rescue operation to retrieve the “explorers” in unsuccessful, the Nexus Project will be terminated.

There are films that scream Late Night Cable Television: Xtro II is what I consider to be one of those types. You might have insomnia, and perhaps on syfy at 2 a.m. Xtro II will be on. I thought Xtro II was very similar to those Charles Band B-movies like Shadowzone that wear their budgets during almost every scene. Like the 80s Roger Corman New World flicks that hit the video market hot and heavy. Syfy has kind of taken up the mantle in regards to churning out the no-budget monster junk populating cable television these days. Of course, rubber monsters of the past are substituted by CGI monstrosities nowadays.

Bringing out the Big Guns

Hmmm...

Sick 'Em Up!

I didn’t realize this was your facility…mortgage must be a bitch.

Paul Koslo’s Dr. Summerfield is an absolute rival of Dr. Shepherd. Shepherd’s “wild maniac” antics in Texas nearly cost Summerfield the Nexus Project’s close, blaming him for the destruction of the facility. Something happened when Shepherd teleported to the parallel universe that he hasn’t shared with others, keeping it to himself. Summerfield would prefer to send his own men into the machine to go get his explorers who are running out of oxygen. So you have this tug of war going on with Shepherd’s former lover, Dr. Julie Casserly (Tara Buckman), just as much an authority over the Nexus Program as Summerfield, having to enforce her will because of the animosity potent and alive. This is as much her baby as it is anybody else’s.

It’s well documented that those behind Alien had been inspired by sci-fi horrors of the past, so I’m not about to complain when others copy the formula of Ridley Scott’s film. There was a giant spherical egg, barely visible on the monitors for Summerfield and Casserly to study, caught by the explorers while “on the other side”, that obviously contained a creature that impregnated or implanted an offspring inside one of the members. She brings it back, the only member of trio to momentarily survive, and it bursts from her torso, into a ventilation duct, and is now loose in the facility. Shepherd tried to use a hypodermic obviously containing poison to inject and kill the young woman, but Summerfield would have none of it, scratched by this explorer during an outburst. Why Shepherd was so loose-lipped and destroyed the Texas facility is understandable in that if he did tell others what was living in that parallel universe, they’d think he was bonkers. There’s a cool scene where we see the remains of this victim in a state of total dehydration, the creature having done something to her physiology. It was as if she suffered total combustion. So the creature traveling throughout the ducts, picking off any human in its vicinity.

You could basically put this in a triple feature with The Terror Within (with Andrew Stevens, George Kennedy, and Starr Andreeff) and Dead Space (with Marc Singer), because they are all the hellspawn of Alien. Working from what made Alien successful but without the vision and budget Scott had to work with, these minor blips on the radar still gave us an alternative to retreat to when we just wanted something inconsequential to waste 90 minutes on.

Not only does those in this facility have to deal with a runaway human-hungry lifeform but there’s a computerized contamination bio-containment concealment underway that will lock them in, not to mention, in 6 hours a lethal dose of radiation will flood all floors and areas to help prevent danger to the outside world! Of course, first and foremost, those left will go on a search and destroy mission to find and kill the creature, later concerning themselves with somehow getting out of the facility.

Nicholas Lea, better known as Alex Krycek on The X Files

I thought, while watching Xtro II, that the film looks like it was shot in some power or chemical plant, lit dark and murky, with pockets of light here and there to give a type of foreboding mood; the monster could be lurking in the dark, that sort of thing. Director Davenport even runs some smoke into the darkened corridors and around corners as the strike force, and their giant cannons (with those  flashlights at the nose), move about looking for the monster. What would a sci-fi monster movie in the 80s/early 90s be without air ducts? Miles and miles of air ducts perfect for plenty of travel. I admit that I normally jettison all hope of anything remotely original in these sort of movies, like a monster that is a bit convincing (the one in Xtro II is too funny not to giggle a little) or characters that rise above the clichés (the scientist in favor of keeping the creature for study, the gun-toting soldiers who serve as fodder for the creature and offer little more). And the stoic hero who cracks wise. Though Vincent’s behavior seems baffling, like when he sticks his head inside a torn open hole where the creature had put its sharp-clawed hand through a head (Casserly even tells him to get his head out of there!), and when Vincent walks calmly in a hall as the creature’s presence is clearly mere feet from him. When he delivers lines, it seems like he's almost pained to recite them aloud. Nicholas Lea, in an early role, has a ton more passion in a rather nondescript part (I imagine there's nothing in the script much to give life to..) than Vincent. He goes out with a *bang*as well. Vincent, because he's the name hero of the film, does get to let free a missile from his machine gun that explodes the creature into bits, but unlike Aliens at the end, Xtro II feels anticlimactic and blah. And the ending with the survivors having averted certain death, thanks to getting rid of an infected member of the group still hanging around through the teleport parallel universe machine, just kind of ends. Just overall a groaner.