Oct 101990
 
1.5 reels

In an underground laboratory, two scientists (Paul Koslo and Tara Buckman) send three subjects to another dimension.  Only one returns, and she is infected by an alien lifeform that bursts out of her body and terrorizes the lab.  With the facility locked down and set to self destruct, Dr. Ron Shepherd (Jan-Michael Vincent), who was the only survivor of a previous test, along with the two scientists, one aid, and four soldiers, must defeat the monster and find a way out of the lab.

The sci-fi monster film, Xtro II: The Second Encounter, is directed by the same person,  Harry Bromley Davenport, as the sci-fi monster film, Xtro.  So, two genre films with the same director, and the second one bears the title of the first with the Roman numeral “II” after it.  I made the jump that Xtro II was a sequel to Xtro.  I’m not one for rash decisions or wild speculation, but I think that’s a pretty reasonable conclusion.  But it’s wrong.  Yup, this film has nothing to do with Xtro.  Instead, this is a sequel to a film that was never made.  In that nonexistent film, Dr. Shepherd, operating a dimensional portal machine somewhere in Texas, brings a monster to Earth, and destroys the facility to kill the creature.  He then tells no one what happened.  And that brings us to Xtro II: The Second Encounter, which would be the second time humans met a monster from this other dimension.

Don’t you just love marketing?  Although if I was going to play this game, I’d have picked a more popular film than Xtro to pretend to be a sequel to.  How about Independence Day II, The Second Encounter With a Monster That Wasn’t in Independence Day?

Forgetting about the name, what you have here is a rip-off of Alien and Aliens.  Perhaps you’d get the feel of the film better of I called it a rip-off of a movie that ripped-off Alien and Aliens.  That better expresses the freshness of the material.  Some day I’ll have to make a list of films that copied those two.  It would be a long list.

So, instead of an alien world, the creature is found in an alternate dimension, that is seen through b&w monitors and appears creepy and filled with fog.  The monster pops out of the chest of an explorer, though mainly off camera, and crawls around in the duct system of a very claustrophobic location.  Then most of the cast run around as the computer counts down to self-destruct.  Are you seeing Alien?  One of the scientists is a traitor, and the four soldiers, with a lot of attitude, fight the monster using a cool gun that needs a harness.  Are you seeing Aliens?

For a low-budget copy that can’t afford a decent monster nor enough fast action combat, Xtro II: The Second Encounter isn’t horrible.  It actually has some engaging acting from some of the secondary characters, though both Paul Koslo and Jan-Michael Vincent are inept in poorly written parts.  Whatever small virtues it may have, there is no reason to pick it up with so many Alien/Aliens clones to choose from.  Better yet, just re-watch the originals.