If there is one thing we humans do well, its steal from each other. Just ask the writers of Xtro 2. After locking themselves in a furniture less room with the script of the sci-fi classic Alien for days and nights, deigning themselves food and water, John A. Curtis and Edward Kovach received two visions. One was a vision of a sci-fi movie with a great script. It would have a great cast, an expert director, and would make millions of dollars at the box office. Curtis and Kovach would be haled as kings of sci-fi movie writing and rake in every dollar of the profits from the great movie they where about to right.

The other vision was Xtro 2.

For some truly twisted reason the two decided to write the latter.

Well. . .credit where credit is due. At least they tried to cover up the fact that they where riping off Alien (unlike the truly horrid movie Creature). Xtro doesn't take place on a ship in space, but in the heart of an under ground lab called The Nexus Project. For some reason Nexus is attempting to transport humans into another dimension. If nothing else, Nexus is probably the most creative way government has wasted our tax dollars in movie history.

Like all secret government projects something goes horrible wrong when they try to test the Nexus. In this case they send three people into another dimension and, after walking around the planet for awhile (in a scene that looks exactly like a similar scene from Alien) they get cut of from the base. Unlike most government projects this one is run by a woman, Dr. Julie Casserly (Tara Buckman) and she wants to call in her ex-husband for help.

Her ex is Dr. Ron Shepherd (Jan-Michael Vincent) who was involved in some incident in Texas that caused the destruction of another Nexus project. Because of that project head Dr. Alex Summerfield (Paul Koslo) is reluctant to even let Shepherd in the door. After some strong arming Julie succeeds and Ron is brought in.

Ron happens to be just in time for the carnage as, when one of the other dimensional explorers is brought back a slime creature explodes from her chest (sound familiar?). Nexus is run by computer and said computer doesn't take to kindly to an alien from another dimension running around, so it seals the base up, trapping our heros and periodically broadcasts a warning that the entire place will be flooded with a lethal dose of radiation unless the alien is kicked out in a "happy happy, joy, joy" voice.

Because Nexus obviously cost a lot of money (at least that's what the elaborate sets say) the government managed to send in a requisite number of gun toting soldiers before Nexus was sealed up. This leads to lots of scenes in which the monster and the humans play and game of "who can kill the other species first" in lots of dark, long hallways. All those hallways look the same and it becomes evident that they are in fact the same set used over and over pretty darn quick. Not surprising when a movie was made for 1/20 the budget of Alien.

But credit is due to Director Harry Bromley Davenport for stretching that budget to the breaking point. When I heard that this movie came in at under a million dollars I was shocked. The sets are elaborate, and the monster looks. . .pretty good. For and Alien rip-off, that is. Like its big budget cousin Xtro uses the novel technique of putting a man in a rubber suit and having him walk around. The suit looks for all the world like the 1995 Godzilla villain Destroyer. In fact Xtro looks at home in any number of Godzilla movies. All he/it needs is to walk around some painted model buildings and he'll be read to have G kick his ass.

I'm glad to say that they're is no really bad acting in this movie. But it ain't good ether. I would describe it as competent with Tara Buckman leading the cast. Horror buffs will recognize her from the 1980's killer Santa flick Silent Night, Deadly Night. From what I can remember of Silent she's better here. Even if she is just doing a Sigourney Weaver impresion.

Jan-Michael Vincent is about as competent as they come. It seams that his only chracter trait is the fact that he sounds like he had a soar throat through the whole movie. I probably shouldn't rail on him about it to much since he talks that way as the result of a car crash. Lets just say he isn't a bad actor and leave it at that.

And then we have our grunts. Against all odds the army guys are almost interesting. Unfortunatly they are so underwritten that I can't bring myself to care about them, not even enough to remember there names. Except of course for Nicholas Lea who all of you X-files fans will remember as Special Agent Krychek. Just in case you where interested in what Lea was doing before the X-files.

Lets talk about that script for a second. It's characters are under written, its set-up is predicable and the entire movie has that "been there, done that" feeling to it. Because of that Xtro 2: The Second Encounter (which has no relation to the story of Xtro, apparently the screenwriters wanted to draw in Xtro fans, whoever they are) hangs on to the ass end of okay. It just shows that, unless your name is Dean Devlin or Roland Emmerich you should try to come up with your own movie before riping off some older, mostly better picture.

RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

THIS IS THE ASS END OF OKAY.

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