By happenstance, I got to see an excellent social drama, The Child Stealer (1979), followed shortly by a gross, semi-pointless horror movie I’d almost watched as a kid – Xtro (1982).

By Emad Aysha
The two surprisingly have a lot in common, and I only made sense of Xtro because the older movie was on my mind. Child Stealer comes off as a very humdrum divorce, child abduction drama, but there’s much more than meets the eye.

I’ll confess that the only reason I watched it was that Blair Brown was in it, a woman who exudes fragile strength. The dope ex-husband is played very appropriately by Beau Bridges.

PRETTY IN PINK: Blair Brown as the soon-to-be Jackie Onassis [left] in the 'Kennedy' (1983) miniseries and as Jan Rodman in 'The Child Stealer', the working girl extraordinaire.

Jan and David Rodman separate, and then, typically, the ex-wife makes plans to skip town without telling her ex first. She’s technically in the same state, but it’s still inconvenient if not downright rude, if you ask me. And, in the process, she gives up her lovely (ill-got) house and safe neighbourhood in exchange for a better job.

The two adorable girls are left with unreliable babysitters in a cramped apartment, and their proper father only has access to them one day a week. To really rub it in, Jan hitches up with some beefcake who, by pure coincidence, makes more money than David.

At first, the little girls call him Uncle Jack, and then daddy, and right in front of you-know-who. That’s what pushes David over the deep end: kidnapping the two girls and making a run for it with his new love, the very accommodating Karen (Cristina Raines).

He skips town himself and has to lay low, not using his credit card or getting a proper job with references lest the authorities nab him, even though they couldn't care less. Karen eventually leaves David while Jan gets her private investigator to finally kidnap the girls back, with the aid of professional (scary-looking) criminals.

As I said, it seems like a run-of-the-mill drama, but it’s handled with such precision and tongue-in-cheek references that you have to love it. The writing is exquisite, the casting and acting are excellent, and the cinematography is luscious for a TV movie. And it’s got Blair Brown in it.

That’s the whole point. You feel they got her, with her buck teeth and dimples and her elegant, delicate frame to force you to sympathise with her. Otherwise, you would have been entirely on the side of Beau Bridges, he and his overcast bushy eyebrows, which also beg for sympathy.

Jan struck me as a selfish character who wants it all, her independence and a new hubby with a proper income and desk job, all at the same time. Note that she’s a redhead with creamy white skin. By contrast, David's love interest, Karen, has dark hair and warm skin, and a very maternal quality.

BRIDGES TO CROSS: Karen (Cristina Raines) and David Rodman (Beau Bridges), painted warmly but 'still' on the run from the law as well as themselves.

David’s learned from his initial mistake and wants a steady, homely wife, and the poor woman does put up with way more than she should. And the man, to his considerable credit, sacrifices it all for his daughters. He breaks up with Karen and stops being a wandering salesman.

He gets a foreman job at a textile factory, hires a responsible landlady, and dedicates his time to taking care of his little girls. And as a salesman, he’s no threat, someone who likes to please people.  Don’t think Jan caught on, and she probably got pregnant to force him to sit still. Twice over!

It pains me to say this about a woman who once played Jackie Kennedy to perfection. At least they didn’t demonise Beau Bridges in this, which is more than I can say for Xtro.

This sci-fi horror pastiche opens with a boy and his father in the idyllic countryside, only for an alien abduction to nab the dad.

The man makes his reappearance 3 years later, after his wife has hitched up with someone else – a Yank photographer – and he wants back into their lives.

I won’t tell you how he returns to earth, since it makes Alien (1979) look tame. After transforming back into alien form and taking his son with him, the (stupid) wife goes back home and gets herself infected with the alien eggs her (now transformed) son left there.

But it’s the little subtleties that kept me going. The mother’s boyfriend has a complexion similar to her husband's. Then there’s the nosey, self-indulgent neighbour and the nonchalant janitor, for the apartment block she’s now in, and also the poor (single) woman in the countryside who gets impregnated by the alien monster.

They seem to be saying that real England is in the countryside and foreigners are polluting the British national character in the cosmopolitan city. The janitor himself complains about the cheap foreign lightbulbs. At the same time, the son’s nanny (Maryam d’Abo) is, by pure coincidence, French in the very stereotypical mode – disorganised, wakes up late, and invites her boyfriend over for sex.

Even the nosey neighbour is French herself and gets herself killed while eating Belgian chocolates. The annoying little brat of a boy, moreover, is constantly playing with his toy soldiers – looking for a male role model.

The only one available, of course, is the Yank. Talk about the 'special relationship'. More like reverse colonisation. And it seems he does some naughty photography too, so he's hardly a model for anybody.

BODY OF HORROR: Maryam d’Abo as the negligent nanny in 'Xtro'. Notice the sickly green tones in the background and foreground? Perfect for the biology premise of this sci-fi non-feature.

Something else culturally significant about the movie is that the alien imagery owes more to the Dark Ages than modern science. The monster has a gargoyle look to it; the impregnation scene, and the boy's persona all have the words ‘demon seed’ written all over them.

Even the father’s kiss has a vampiric quality. All this exists in the American subconscious, mind you, just in over-scientised form. (Check out my review of Dark Skies).

There’s just no place for fathers anymore on this dustball of a planet, is there? Where’s Knox Goes Away (2023) when you need him? It’s either that or hiring a flying saucer to get ‘visitation’ rights!