Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1983 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
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We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1983 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1983 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s January 7, 1983, and we’re off to see Xtro!
Quick side note: Since we launched this series this year, we’ve discovered that Vintage Video Podcast is doing the exact same project with two differences: First, it’s audio (naturally), and second, they are doing every major film. We’ve listened to numerous episodes and it’s fun checking off their thoughts against my own. Check them out over at Vintage Video Podcast.
Xtro
We closed out 1982 with Dark Crystal which was just a great way to say goodbye to the year. But Karma is getting us back as we start 1983 with Xtro.
A UFO shows up over a house in rural England during the day (and somehow makes everything dark as night instantly) and we’re off to the races in one of the weirdest alien invasion films I think I’ve seen. It involves a man disappearing for three years, but coming back as a rapey alien? He kills a woman by returning to human form in her womb overnight, and… honestly, it just gets weirder from here.
Sam, the man who returned, goes on to infect his son with alien DNA that will let him go to the alien world with him. This leads young Tony to become a telekinetic murderer until his transformation is complete. Oh, and he kills his au pair and fills her with alien eggs that will kill his mom at the end of the movie.
So, what I’m saying is it’s a really uplifting family film.
As I watched this, all I could think was, “Why am I doing another year of this to myself?” Luckily there are a lot of great films coming up later in the year that will make all this worthwhile, but for now, we have to get through the January garbage of knockoff horror films.
Oh, and don’t watch this movie. It’s not worth your time at all.
1983 Movie Reviews will return on Jan. 14, 2023 with Lianna!
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