Not all extra-terrestrials just want to phone
home, is the apparent moral of this bizarre, low budget, British-made 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, Sam returns to earth as a 4 legged crab-like monster, that 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 reminisce with his son and former wife over 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, before turning 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 when it gpt caught up in the old "video nasties" furore, 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".
