Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995)

Marines are ordered to clean up an abandoned military island, but a cranky alien creature terrorizes them.
Starring: J. Marvin Campbell, Andrew Divoff, Andrea Lauren Herz

Link to IMDB

Remember how the first Xtro movie was bizarre, awesome and hilarious? (And then remember how Xtro 2 totally sucked ass?) Well, part 3 is another winner, but for different reasons.

Marines on the go.

Lieutenant Martin Kirn has been hiding in a crummy motel, paranoid and scared for his life, but he has a story that needs telling so he gets a reporter to visit him and hear his tale. A few weeks earlier Kirn received orders to head to a deserted Pacific island and dispose of old bombs that have been sitting there since WW2. He has no problems with the job but is not pleased with the team that's been assigned to him, they are all young, violent and untrustworthy soldiers.
It's a bit slow as they just defuse bombs for awhile, but soon enough they start discovering odd things. There's a mass grave, spooky sounds, and even an old man that survived alone on the island for 50 years.

Believe it or not, there's an alien hiding in this picture.

The big discovery comes when they blow open a bunker and find all sorts of slimy things and one angry alien! Turns out that the government hid a UFO here years ago and now wanted to send in some disposable soldiers to investigate it. After being stranded on the island, Lt. Kirn and his team have to defend themselves as the alien begins to hunt them down.
The old survivor man shows them a film about what really happened on the island decades ago. The alien's backstory is pretty intense and disturbing, and once we understand the alien's motives everything changes. It's some very effective storytelling, and the last 30 minutes has all sorts of alien action. Although borrowing heavily from Predator, it still has ideas of its own to keep it feeling original.


The special effects are actually pretty awesome and creepy, but still silly enough to keep me laughing too. It doesn't have the insanity of the first movie but this helps keeps the story focused so that stuff actually gets done, and it's way better than the disaster that was part 2.

Be sure not to miss:
- The island is infested with rabbits and I was sure it would be important to the plot... nope.
- The alien sound effects are clearly a cougar. Couldn't they come up with something a bit better than that?
- The film projector works without electricity because "it's German."

Internet review:
"It made me think... i don't know WHAT it made me think, but it made me think." - nikovich

Should I watch it?
Yes, it's a good sci-fi B-movie once you get past the slow start.

Where can I find it?
Two links here, others via google.

Xtro 3 gets...