AKA Monstromo, Judas Goat

Tag Line : A Brutal Excursion into Terror

Not all extra-terrestrials just want to phone home is the apparent moral of this  bizarre, British-made, low budget 80’s Sci-Fi shocker, by small time director Harry Bromley Davenport.

Somewhat inspired by “Alien”, the film starts off with an alien abduction, as  young Tony Philips sees his dad Sam (Philip Sayer) vanish into a giant ball of light that swoops out of the sky.

Moving forward some 3 years later, Sam returns to earth as a 4 legged crab-like monster who attacks some young blonde haired girl, then comes bursting out of her womb the next day as his former self (and fully grown, which causes a hell of a mess).

Deciding to look up his old family, he heads to London where his unexpected arrival causes much upheaval in the old family home, particularly with his ex-wife’s new boyfriend Joe (Danny Brainin). But, as we already know, there is to more to his sudden re-appearance than wanting to catch up with old times.

After sniffing some gas from the fireplace, and eating the eggs out of his sons snake house, he then turns his son into an alien and the French au pair (played by pre-Bond Girl Maryam D’abo) into an alien egg-making factory (yes I know how bizarre that sounds). Then together they go about bumping off people who get in their way, by manifesting physical objects to do the deeds for them (one hilarious scene shows a full size action man figure, chasing the nosy old women downstairs round her flat).

Somewhat bizarre, disjointed and unintentionally funny in places, it’s kind of hard to know whether or not to take this film seriously. This title gained some notoriety back in the early 80's for its inclusion on the governments "video nasties" hitlist, but was never actually banned. One for lovers of cheesy British horror efforts, the film has to date spawned a couple of completely unrelated sequels which were considerably more "Americanised".

Overall marks : 4/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate tag lines "A new dimension in fear", "Some extra-terrestrials aren't friendly", "This Alien is Pure Evil", "When Tony grows up, he's going to be just like Daddy".

• Myriam D'Abo, who plays the French Au Pair Analise, went on to become Bond girl Kara Milovy in "The Living Daylights".

• There were 2 completely different endings filmed. There's a seldom seen "happy" ending (sort-of) in which Tony's Mother returns home to find her flat full of exact copies of her son, presumably hatched from the eggs seen earlier in the film, all saying "Mummy!". The other version, which at the time of writing is the more common, has a downbeat ending in which she returns home to find the bathroom full of the aforementioned eggs. As she bends down to look at them an alien "sucker" (like the one seen earlier that attacked the blonde woman) bursts from an egg and attaches itself to her mouth.

• The film gained some notoriety in the UK back in the early 1980's when it was listed on the government's "Video Nasties" hitlist. However the film was later dropped from the list and no-one was prosecuted. The film has subsequently been re-issued on video and shown on TV uncut.

• 80's "Robotic" dancers Sean Crawford and Tim Dry, AKA Tik and Tok, had respective roles as the crab-like monster and the life-size action man. They also appeared as aliens in "Return of the Jedi". Co-incidentally, Robert Pereno who plays Ben, used to be a member of their former Techno band "Shock"

• The UK cinema release featured the "happy" ending, but the subsequent video release featured the downbeat ending. The "happy" ending has also been used for the German release and has been shown on the UK Sci-Fi channel.

• A German DVD released by "Marketing film" in 2003 featured both versions of the film, but some scenes were in German language only as they didn't have all the original source material. A so-called "UK" version which appeared on the same disc just cut-out the German language only scenes, which produced several awkward "jump cuts" and was not the true UK/US version which originally featured these scenes intact and in English.

• Both the current US DVD by Image and UK DVD box set by Film 2000 use the same truncated print as the German DVD, which omits a 2s snippet of the nosy neighbour answering the door to the giant "action man" figure and misses a scene after Joe leaves for work, showing him arriving at his studio. Most notably the scene where Sam and Rachael visit their old country home deletes the scene of them finding the front door has been forced and going inside to investigate, producing a noticeably awkward jump cut as they go from walking towards the house to suddenly appearing inside.

Cast & Crew.

Theatrical trailer (1.52MB).

German theatrical trailer (1.69MB).

Missing Scenes
(scenes missing from all current DVDs) (1.86MB).

Buy the UK DVD box-set (parts 1-3).

Buy the US DVD (parts 1 & 2 spec-ed).

Notes on affiliate sites.
 

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