HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE Movie #30 - WITHOUT WARNING (1980)

WITHOUT WARNING (1980)
D. GREYDEN CLARK
Full Frame

Of all places I watched this sci-fi cum monster mash on You Tube. There are plenty of full length horror and exploitation films there now through both individuals and company uploads. So the quality on this was pretty poor but that didn't stop it from being highly enjoyable. 

The film revolves around a small camping town where hunters and other people are turning up missing. The opening scene has a Father and Son hunting duo bickering their way through the woods. When suddenly tiny, spinning fleshy little flying discs land on the Father and stab him with tendrils that ultimately kill him. A few more attacks happen to a cub scout troop and a group of camping teens. Finally two of those surviving teens hole up in a tavern with a couple of old coots (Played by Jack Palance and Martin Landau both of whom went on to Oscars in the next twenty years) and put a hunt on to find what is killing everyone. What they find is an intergalactic hunter that looks like the alien puppet that used to appear during the end credits of STAR TREK.

Everything about this is fun, from the recognizable faces in the cast like David Caruso as a teen. To the very low rent special effects. A lot of people have made a point of the plot similarities to PREDATOR and there is no mistaking them. But both films seem to be operating on very different wavelengths.

This is not on DVD or BLU RAY just badly cropped VHS editions. So watch it where you can. I have heard rumors of it coming out on Digital but nothing has happened as of yet. 

Review © Andrew Copp

HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE MOVIE #15 NIGHTWISH (1988)

NIGHTWISH (1990)
D. Bruce Cook
Vidmark Ent. (Available on Netflix Instant)
1.33

Surprisingly good late 80's sci-fi/horror potboiler with decent acting, tight direction and fantastic special effects by the then just getting started KNB Effects. It starts out with a zombie/slasher scene in which Elizabeth Kaitan is threatened and stalked. Turns out she is part of an experiment at the local college  in which the students go into a deprivation tank and have their dreams studied. The idea being they can effect their dreams with enough energy. The teacher heading up the experiment is a genuinely psycho old man who is going to lead them into more trouble. 

They are a little supernatural investigative team and the teacher sends them to an old farmhouse. The legend of the surrounding area talks of contamination, inbreeding and how the people that still live around there are mentally handicapped. Buffed out Brian Thompson (later on the X-Files) drives the kids out and is clearly loose in the screw dept. But it doesn't take long before things are going crazy. the kids are kept prisoner by the teacher and the haunted house starts taking over their minds. Soon Aliens are thrown into the mix. 

The last third of this movie breaks out some unexpected plot twists and some seriously unsettling special effects. This is one of those movies that is actually really creative and has some nasty stuff to offer. Why it doesn't have more of a following than a lot of stuff from that era is a mystery. I had only vaguely heard of it and that was because of some documentary on KNB I had seen years ago that showed some of the effects. 

It also was competently unplanned to watch another movie with Elizabeth Kaitan in it. It was just some weird synergy that two movies in a row had her as the start (and I was clueless about either one). 

This is on Netflix instant so it doesn't even cost much to take a look at it.

Review © Andrew Copp

Italian Alien Rip Off From The Deep or Deep Eco Message Film?

ALIEN FROM THE DEEP (1989)
D.Antonio Margheriti (Anthony Dawson)
One 7 Movies
Full Frame 1:33
92 Minutes


This Italian genre mish-mash is basically advertised in the artwork as an ALIENS rip off, but it is actually just barely that, yet in reality is so, so much more. A Johnny come late in the Alien falls to Earth sub-genre by 1989, with by that year what would be primitive special effects, this movie has a whole lot to love. It it had been made even ten years earlier I could imagine it playing drive-in double bills, or urban theater afternoon matinees for quite some time. This is the exact kind of movie I used to sit glued to cable TV mid-day and watch while playing with my toys as a kid. Movies like SPACE RAIDERS, YOR THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (also directed by Margheriti) or Luigi Cozzi’s really shitty, but terribly entertaining HERCULES movies. If I had seen ALIEN FROM THE DEEP at ten years old it would have been on of my favorite movies of that year. But by 1989 I was about to enter college. I was well aware of so bad their good movies and would have loved it for different reasons.

"Maam I resent you saying I dress like Wil Wheaton. You need to put some clothes on before I throw you off my boat!"

Pretty Marina Giulia Cavalli stars as Jane a Greenpeace investigator heading to a remote island in tow with her lovelorn and trusty cameraman Lee (Robert Marius) (who only shoots with a VHS camera!) to look for the shady doings of corporate criminals E-Chem headed by baddy Charles Napier. Turns out these dunderheads have been dumping all their toxic waste into the local, very active volcano! Along the way they meet some local witch doctors and have some various jungle adventures. In fact the whole first half of the movie is an action/adventure movie about this couple trying to get the goods on E-Chem and evading capture. I kept checking the dvd box and wondering if I had been misled about this whole Alien/monster business.

"Goddammit! I used to work for Russ Meyer! I was around titties til Tuesday! How'd I end up on this helicopter with you?!"

Not that it isn’t entertaining and well handled. It all has a sort of ROMANCING THE STONE vibe going on as Jane meets Bob (Daniel Bosch) the local snake wrangle (wink wink!) who helps her out of a jam and into his heart. He gets a glimpse of her in his shirt after a shower and he is sucked into her whole scheme. Even the fact he keeps a pet cobra that roams free in his pad, doesn’t deter her from his wiley ways either. They play house while her friend Lee is being tortured for information by those evil E-Chem bastards!

"He's the "snakecharmer" hardy har har..."

Then finally about the 50 minute mark a meteor falls into the lake by the volcano and a monster crawls out into the water. The E-Chem scientist a kindly old man named Dr. Geoffries (Alan Collins) explains it came from space attracted to the power of the toxic waste and is using it to gain power and grow! See the movie threw you a curve ball! You thought some monster was going to be born out of the volcano or some prehistoric dinosaur or something! Nope! it came from space to stomp their asses! From here it gets right down to it, biting the head off a diver and burrowing into the ground heading towards the factory.


Jane and Bob are heading back to the factory because Lee hid a VHS tape of the toxic dumping there as well, so all is on a collision course for CRAZY! The creature is stopping along the way to pinch people in half with the giant claw or melt their face off with his radioactive touch, or slimy residue. All we see of the big guy for the most part is that big ass lobster claw bursting out of the ground or through walls until the big finale when he stands upright. He looks like a two story bio-mechanical car engine with lobster claws mixed with a transformer toy. Which is to say he looks FUCKING AWESOME. 

"Beat this shit Michael Bay!!!"

A couple of other highlights include a character having his leg melted by radioactive goo while he still walks around, Dr. Geoffries running around with a huge retrofitted flame thrower, and best of all Jane having to be “decontaminated” from the monster goo, which means she ends up in a wet T-shirt and underwear for the entire climax of the movie. That’s some good thinking Right there. The effects are of the old school blowing up miniatures variety. Which adds a real charm to the proceedings as well.

For all the shooting and monster chomping and some splatter action, the movie is surprisingly non-offensive. The gore is not really lingered on, and there is no sex or nudity (wet T-shirt not withstanding). Only the occasional F-bombs really land this with the R-rating. Hell if I had kids I’d probably let them watch it. Like I said, if I saw this when I was ten years old I’d have loved this. 

"Apparently the monster farts glass."

The DVD is sparse on extras, only a “image gallery” that is images from the actual film, and a grainy ass many generation away copy of the Italian credits sequence. I would have loved some interviews or even just a trailer. This is a full frame presentation but it seems like it may have been shot that way as it never feels like the frame is tight or missing information. 


Overall quite and enjoyable pulp sci-fi flick that I feel no shame in recommending to fellow aficionados of this sort of thing. 

Review © Andy Copp