WITHOUT WARNING (1980)

DIRECTED by Greydon Clark

SCREENPLAY by Daniel Grodnik,  Lyn Freeman, Bennett Tramer &. Steve Mathis

STARRING - Jack Palace as Joe Taylor, Martin Landau as Fred "Sarge" Dobbs, Tarah Nutter as Sandy, Christopher S. Nelson as Greg, Neville Brand as Leo, Ralph Meeker as Dave, Cameron Mitchell as Hunter, Darby Hinton as Randy, David Caruso as Tom, Lynn Theel as Beth, Sue Ane Langdon as Aggie, Mark Ness as Bill, Larry Storch as Scoutmaster, Kevin Peter Hall as The Alien

PLOT - A group of teenagers on a hiking holiday into the local mountain forests realise that something is stalking them. 

Something deadly. Something ruthless. Something not of this world.

Before long only two teens are left alive - Sandy and Greg - their only hope of survival is by siding with Taylor - a hard living truck stop owner.

As well as the alien menace and it's living parasitic weapons, the two teens also have an insanely paranoid Vietnam veteran who also wants to kill them, to contend with.

Looks like this is one hiking holiday where they should have stayed at home instead...

PERFORMANCES - Without Warning has the dubious distinction of featuring the two dullest central protagonists I've ever seen in a horror film.

Sandy (Tarrah Nutter) and Greg (Christopher S. Nelson) are just such generic teen characters - in any other horror film they'd be the first to get picked off by the killer but here they're the main bloody characters.

The worst thing about them is their terrible dialogue - there's an ancient rule in storytelling in any medium -SHOW. DON'T TELL. It's bad enough when any film falls short of this single golden rule. What's worse is when you break the rule with the dialogue you've given your characters to speak. Without word of a lie - practically EVERY line of dialogue they speak is more or less a running commentary about what's happening on-screen at that precise moment.

You want examples? I'll give you examples - at one point when Sandy and Greg are looking for their missing friends they decide to walk down a specific route - "Let's walk over this way" says Greg. "OK, I'm following right behind you" says Sandy, and off they go on their merry little way - Greg leading and Sandy happily following him.

At another point the two are picked up by a police car - "look - a police car" says Greg (yes Greg - we can see it's a bloody cop car - it's got lights and sirens and everything). They get in the car - "Thank God, you're the police !!!" Greg helpfully informs us, just in case we'd missed the glaringly obvious precisely two whole seconds ago. Basically - you could organise a drinking game around this pair.

Nutter and Nelson are...ok...ish. You get the impression that with a better script and dialogue that Nutter could have at least made for a halfway decent final girl. Nelson just comes over as wooden though.

Far better are the two "big name" guest stars. Jack Palance plays Taylor - the grizzled truck stop owner who's helps the two kids fight the alien. His character is basically as hard as nails. Martin Landau plays Sarge - a shell shocked Vietnam veteran who goes even more crazy when he sees the alien and starts taking pot shots at Sandy, Greg and Taylor. He adds an extra element of danger to the story and Landau makes for a good crazy redneck type. Weirdly, both actors seem to be channeling their inner Clint Eastwood - they both talk is this deep Eastwood style macho drawl. 

Oh and look out for David Caruso in one of his very first roles as Tom. He looks about twelve and doesn't last very long before getting horribly killed. Everyone has to start somewhere.

SFX - Some pretty decent practical effects in this. Before we see the main alien we get these weird things which are basically flying Facehuggers.

They hurl themselves through the air and feed on their victims by attaching themselves to various parts of their victim's anatomy. They're quite nicely designed and throb and pulsate in a pretty gross manner. The only thing that lets them down is when they fly - you can see the fishing rod line that they're attached to.

Then we get the main alien himself.

He looks like a cross between your common or garden grey alien (except he's blue) and that creepy looking thing that used to crop up on the end credits of the original Star Trek TV series (you know the one)...

He was also played by Kevin Peter Hall who would eventually go on to play the Predator. In a way this is a bit of a dry run for Hall, even though this alien looks bugger all like the Predator they ARE both alien creatures that hunt humans in forests for the sport of it.

Anyway - the alien in this film is AWESOME !!!

VIOLENCE - Lots of nice gory scenes where the flying Facehuggers kill thier various victims. It usually plays out like this - flying Facehugger swoops towards victim. Flying Facehugger attaches itself to victim's face, neck, back, whatever. Flying Facehugger then proceeds to suck the life out of/dissolve the victim's body leaving behind a bloody, gory mess in the process. Of course, we get to see this close up in lingering, loving detail.

We also get some close-ups of some nicely messed up corpses.

The alien gets up close and personal with Taylor and Sarge - snapping Sarge's neck with his bare hands.

The alien gets shot a few times and seems to bleed watery yellow liquid that looks a bit like dog piss. In the end the alien is blown up by dynamite - which is a bit anti-climactic really.

RATING - A weird film this - equal parts brilliant and equal parts utter crap. The alien/s are very well done and the gore is top notch, but the central characters are dull and unengaging. 

There's also way too many scenes in the first half of the film of people just wandering around the forest looking lost. These just smack of filler - if these where edited out you'd have quite a nice tight brisk paced little movie, but as it is - all it serves to do is slow proceedings down to a veritable snail's pace.

There is a good film lurking in here somewhere but as it stands this movie doesn't do its concept justice. Luckily Predator came along a few years later and took the basic concept of this movie and did it right.

3 proto-Predators out of 5. A missed opportunity which still has it's moments.

ART -