Alien Predator (1986)

... aka: Alien Predators

... aka: Cosmos mortal

... aka: Drapieżca z kosmosu (A Predator from Outer Space)

... aka: Falling, The

... aka: Mutant II

... aka: Uhka avaruudesta (Threat from Space)

Directed by:

Deran Sarafian

Interesting casting decision here to lead with Lynn-Holly Johnson and Martin Hewitt, not because both stars are any better or worse than others who'd probably be appearing in something like this, but because both had been mercilessly savaged by critics just prior to being cast. Hewitt bizarrely started out his career simultaneously on the top and on the bottom. While his breakout role in the teen romance Endless Love (1981) paired him up with a then-popular Brooke Shields, was made for major studio Universal under the guidance of respected Italian director Franco Zeffirelli and did well at the box office, both the film and the performances were absolutely ridiculed by most critics. Hewitt, who had to beat out over 5,000 other actors (including Tom Cruise) for the part, then ended up earning his first acting award nomination. Unfortunately, that award was the "Worst New Star" Razzie. After the one-two gut punch of Love and the all-star comedic misfire Yellowbeard (1983), he was pretty much done for in big budget Hollywood films and it was TV guest spots and B-movies from then on out. Hewitt capped things off by appearing in a number of erotic thrillers in the 90s before calling it a day as an actor. He now runs a home inspection business.

Unlike Hewitt, who basically face planted out of the gate, pretty blonde Johnson's career started out on a high note. She was a competitive figure skater, moved on to the Ice Capades and received a star vehicle soon after in the popular ice skating romantic drama Ice Castles (1978), which netted her some surprisingly good critical notices and a Golden Globe nomination. However, poorly-received roles in Disney's The Watcher in the Woods (1980) and the Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981) knocked her back a few pegs, and then a Worst Supporting Actress Razzie turn in the God awful Where the Boys Are (1984) knocked her down the rest of the way. Johnson's acting career was never able to recover and her film and TV appearances grew sparse starting around 1990. She's now also retired from film acting.

Completing the trio is Dennis Christopher, a former child actor whose career has also had ups and downs, though it's certainly more notable that the other two stars regardless. As a young teen he appeared in the sleazy drive-in horror film Blood and Lace (1971). By the end of the decade he landed the lead role in the Oscar-winning bicycling drama Breaking Away (1979). His performance earned him a BAFTA win and a Golden Globe nomination for "Most Promising Star" plus he was selected as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1979" in John Willis' Screen World. He then took on the lead role in the mediocre horror film Fade to Black (1980) and a supporting part in the Best Picture Oscar winner Chariots of Fire (1981).

Seeing how his career wasn't exactly in the toilet in 1984, I was initially perplexed as to how Christopher ended up in this thing. It wasn't until I connected a few dots that it all started to make sense. Director Sarafian, who was first employed doing uncredited jobs for Roger Corman's company, is the son of director Richard C. Sarafian (Vanishing Point) and Helen Joan Altman, the sister of acclaimed director Robert Altman. Christopher had appeared in Altman's ensemble comedy A Wedding back in 1978, so this looks like just another case of an aspiring young director simply having the right family connections to land an established actor. Similarly, Johnson was dating the director at the time, though I'm not sure if they were dating before this was made or started dating during filming.

The opening text scroll reads "May 14, 1973: NASA launched Skylab Space Station into orbit around Earth. Objective: To perform a series of highly classified experiments that could not take place on Earth. July 11, 1979: Skylab's orbit decays and re-enters the Earth's atmosphere." The film then cuts to flaming Skylab debris scattered in the deserts of Duarte, Spain. In reality, Skylab was an occupied space station for less than a year and, upon re-entry into Earth's orbit (which was a huge media event in '79), debris was scattered in the Indian Ocean and Western Australia, not Spain. But I suppose historical accuracy isn't a chief concern here so we'll just brush all that aside and get on with the movie...

Best friends Damon (Christopher) and Michael (Hewitt), along with gal pal tag-along Samantha (Johnson), are on a cross country trip through Europe in an RV when they cross over into Spain. As far as characterizations go, Sam has basically designated herself as den mother to the guys and has inadvertently been terrorizing them with her awful cooking (example: pork tartar), which the guys suffer through in silence because they're both smitten with her. Before you can say "I'm so hungry I could eat a..." we cut to bunch of wild dogs feasting on the guts of a disemboweled cow, which means they're not only going to be infected with whatever killed the cow but they're also still probably eating better than Damon and Michael. After stumbling upon the bloody scene, the trio basically shrug and then venture on to Duarte. Experiencing some car problems, they set up camp on the outskirts of the town.

The following day, after having a truly embarrassing "comic" encounter with an Indian couple and their young daughter talking about diarrhea, they head into Duarte and discover there's something seriously wrong going on. Not only is the village almost completely uninhabited, but those who remain are all behaving in a Body Snatchers-style manor. After a zombie-like café waitress shows up with huge hair, a bloody nose and a decided lack of both professionalism and basic hygiene, they split and are then almost run over by someone in a van on their way out. They return to their campsite and Sam, angered by a blowjob joke (!?), runs back into town all by herself to do some grocery shopping. Yes, this is in spite of the fact they'd just been attacked there. To no one's surprise but her own, she finds herself getting attacked yet again and eventually kidnapped.

We also meet a few other characters along the way. Investigator Wells (J.O. Bosso, who's dubbed over by the director's father) shows up to inquire about a series of other Americans who've disappeared there after coming to check up on surviving scientist Dr. Tracer (Luis Prendes). The two analyze a bloated corpse of another scientist in a hotel before heading out to the "NASA Research Center" (in BFE Spain?), which is run out of a huge castle (!) with five underground levels (!!) Curiously, every other staff member who's been working there has vanished.

What's eventually revealed is that Skylab wasn't just doing regular old space experiments, but instead analyzing alien microbes that were found on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission. Alan Shepard, what were you hiding from us all that time? Said microbes were then unleashed on Earth after the Skylab debris returned. A five year period of dormancy followed but now we've reached the end result: infection, madness and death just 48 hours after exposure. The microbes feast on human DNA, which enables them to rapid-grow into small alien creatures that leave the host body after being fully formed.

As a creature feature, this has some mild pluses, namely a budget sufficient enough to have passable production values, scout for good locations, create a few sets, throw in a few explosions and car chases and include a couple of gory special effects by Mark Shostrom. Otherwise, this is a great example of what happens when any bit of good you have going in your favor gets squandered because of a terrible screenplay and poor direction that allows the film to come to an almost complete halt during the final half hour. You know, when it should be exciting. There's also major anticlimactic disappointment that the actual formed alien is only visible in a single scene and all we get of it are very brief flashes. I couldn't even get a clear screen grab of the damn thing!

Not only is the pacing awful and the plot not particularly interesting, but this tries so aggressively hard to make its protagonists witty and personable that the exact opposite ends up happening and everyone comes off obnoxious and annoying as hell. The dialogue is consistently awkward, the friendly competition for the chick shtick grows tiresome after a short while and the casting is also bizarre, with the geeky Christopher cast as the studly, popular, outgoing ladies man and the hunky Hewitt playing the "homier" one filled with self doubt. After sitting through all kinds of dumb nonsense, this then expects us to actually care about their friendship, and find it all charming and heartwarming. No sir. That did not hit at all.

As for Johnson, she's perky and cute at times but her line deliveries are even more stilted and awkward than the guys' forced banter. I could go into the numerous illogical moments and stupid plot points in more detail here, but there's really no point. The only other thing really worth mentioning is the large quantity of blatant Twilight Zone jokes / references littered throughout, which are here because Sarafian Sr. had directed the famous "Living Doll" episode of the series back in 1963.

Filmed under the title The Falling in Spain in 1984, this was made at the same time as Monster Dog (1984) for the same production company, Continental Motion Pictures, which was founded by Eduard Sarlui and his sister Helen Szabo. The two would later go on to produce better genre films like Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) and I, Madman (1989). Carlos Aured was another producer and did not have very nice things to say about the filmmakers nor the experience in general. In fact, the film pushed him into early retirement!

After completion, this was shelved for several years before finally being released. Given a very limited theatrical run, it first turned up on home video in the UK with the bogus sequel title Mutant II. Here in the U.S., eventual distributor TransWorld re-titled it Alien Predator to obviously cash in on two popular big budget sci-fi blockbusters: Ridley Scott's ALIEN and John McTiernan's PREDATOR. The latter was getting a lot of press beforehand and was still in post production whenever this hit video stores. Strangely, TransWorld used the plural Predators on the advertising materials and video box, yet the singular Predator for the title screen. Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray in 2018, which comes with a director commentary.

★1/2

I'll be returning next weekend.

Glad to report I'm back to reviewing next weekend (should be on Feb. 9). Long story about my absence - let's just say a lot came up in the past few months - but maybe I'll get into that in a bit more detail in one of the reviews. Now I have a lot of ground to makeup (life kept me from hitting my quota last year dammit!), so see everyone next weekend!

Berserker (1987)

... aka: Berserker: The Nordic Curse

... aka: Ôkami Otoko Basâkâ (Werewolf Berserker)

... aka: O Vale Assassino (The Killer Valley)

Directed by:

Jef (Jefferson) Richard

"A true pioneer of the independent film movement..." opens the late director's self-penned IMDb bio. He goes on to state his credentials as a graduate of the Cambridge School of Broadcasting and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, frequent collaborator of Matt Cimber and George "Buck" Flower, employee of Park City Utah's Sunn Classic Pictures and top indie film producer. While patting oneself on the back, especially when most people have never even heard of you before, can come off as delusional and arrogant, this guy more or less has the credits to back himself up. Usually as a production manager, assistant director or line producer, Richard worked on a whole host of films over a 30+ year period, starting with sleazy 70s offerings (ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS, The Witch Who Came from the Sea), then moving up to medium budget genre films (Maniac Cop, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat) and finally graduating to to bigger budgeted productions starring the likes of Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Benicio del Toro, Jack Nicholson and Kurt Russell. He also mentions meeting and working with Orson Welles, whom he considered an inspiration, and being part of Flower's touring repertory company The Inspiration Players, who put on "morality-based classical theatre in churches and schools;" a far cry from all of the exploitation film work the two men would later find themselves involved in!

Listed almost as an afterthought toward the bottom of the bio are his two directorial credits; the PG-rated family adventure In Search of a Golden Sky (1984), which he co-wrote and co-produced with Flower (who also stars in the film) and this one, described as a "campy horror cult classic," which has become a synonym for "shitty" as of late. Flower is, unsurprisingly, also in this one and is pretty much the closest thing to a name draw in the mostly amateur cast.

You know the supposed horror movie trope that black people always die first in older slasher films? Well, let's put aside the fact that isn't even true (I personally think the real issue was black people being underrepresented in the genre) and focus on another group: Old folks! If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that far more seniors, regardless of skin color, died first in 80s horror / slasher flicks than any other group. Why? Well, there's probably more than one correct answer here...

I'd say the most obvious reason would be that producers usually wanted teenage or early 20-something leads because they assumed the primary audience was also going to be teenagers and early 20-somethings. And then there's the eye candy factor, as a lot of these films were expected to showcase photogenic, younger, up-and-coming actors. Older folks may be used as early cannon fodder so often because they're viewed as being weaker, more fragile and more physically compromised (poor mobility, hearing, eyesight, etc.), which makes them easy early targets. And then, granted the audience was indeed typically younger, they may get a laugh out of seeing an older person, perhaps a generic stand-in for a repressive authority figure or one with an outmoded or uncool way of thinking, die first. I'd say it's most likely a combination of all of the above.

So the moment we see ol' Homer and Edna (played by real-life couple Oscar Rowland and Beverly Rowland) trudging around at a campsite, we pretty much know they won't last too long. Celebrating their 40th anniversary with a camping trip, the two take a wrong turn while out walking, get lost in the woods after nightfall and are then slaughtered by what appears to be a bear. This 4-minute scene perfectly illustrates why experienced older performers should have been given more to do in these things. There's a moment when Mrs. Rowland breaks down into tears because she's so scared at being lost that's the single best bit of acting you'll see in the entire film. And then she's gone. And then they cart in a bunch of unlikeable, untalented younger actors we're stuck with for the rest of the film.

Trust me when I say that no cliché is left unturned in the introduction of the teen characters. There's awful hair metal music, lots of "dude" this and "dude" that, discussions about beer, pot and "humping" and the same stock teen characters we almost always see in these things. Receiving the most screen time is Josh Winter (Greg Dawson), a cocky, smart ass, obnoxious, jag-off-jock who counts belching, drunk driving, suddenly blaring his radio to startle others out of their sleep and losing his shit over the dumbest, most insignificant things among his favorite pastimes. Mike Stone (Joseph Alan Johnson, who was also in the slashers ICED and THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE) is the nice, level-headed, popular one, while Larry Fishman (Rodney Montague) is the nerdy "bookworm" who naturally brings along a book about the history of the place they're about to spend a week at. Someone needs to relay important plot information when the time arrives, eh?

As for the girls, let's just say 80s slashers got a reputation for being sexist for a good reason. And no, it's not because women were often victims (they were also typically the heroes), nor is it because women often appeared nude (what's wrong with showering?), it's because women were often not given actual characters to play. While that's fine in films where their male counterparts are also treated like slabs of meat, it's not fine when a lot of time is set aside defining every single male cast member while every single female is a piece of cardboard. The ladies here may as well be named Blonde #1, Blonde #2 and Brunette but, for the record, they're called Kathy (Valerie Sheldon), Kristi (Shannon Engemann) and Shelly (Beth Toussaint). This even resorts to having the last surviving female literally having to be told what to do and getting yanked around the forest by the guys.

Adventures on their way to their remote destination of Rainbow Valley (also called "Little Norway" because it was settled by the descendants of Norse Vikings [!?]) include getting pulled over by a cop after throwing a beer can out of the truck window and trying to understand what Buck Flower, playing grumpy Scandinavian caretaker Pappy Nyquist, is even saying. After setting up camp, they throw a football, drive a three-wheeler around, pour beer over each other's heads, go swimming and then settle down around a campfire for marshmallows and scary stories.

The nerd plucks an appropriate tale out of his book about vicious Viking warriors called "berserkers," who not only were the most feared of all Vikings but were also rumored to have cannibalized their victims. Typical attire for one of these warriors was a bear-skinned robe with a bear snout mask fashioned from a bear the men killed with their own bare hands as a way to prove their mettle. The warriors who became too unhinged to handle due to their bloodlust were chained, caged, fed raw meat scraps (including human meat) and essentially treated like rabid dogs to unleash upon enemies. Good thing rampaging Vikings are no longer a thing, right? Well, not so fast. Due to all of the massacring and flesh-munching, berserkers don't get to enjoy a peaceful afterlife. Instead, they sit in limbo and occasionally return to Earth by possessing the body of one of their ancestors.

Someone or some thing then starts going around killing the teens, starting with those dumb enough to wander around outside at night alone despite being explicitly told about animal attacks and mysterious deaths in the area. One girls dies after walking a mile into the woods just to take a dump and another is killed after participating in a nude sex scene, yet her boyfriend is allowed to walk away unscathed. As for the presentation of the death scenes, well, you can only see a woolly paw reach into frame to maul a shrieking victim to death so many times before the tedium sets in. And, while we're on the subject of tedium, there are seemingly endless scenes of people walking around in circles in the woods tripping over the same dead bodies over and over again that would be almost comical if they weren't so boring.

From the title and the fact a large chunk of dialogue is dedicated to its mythology, I'm sure you've already guessed by now that a man possessed by a berserker is responsible for the killings, yet each time there's a murder this cuts to an actual bear lurking around doing menacing things like standing up, huffing and growling. Alas, the ferocious forest creature is simply being used as an all-too-obvious red bearing. A scene where Pappy sits down for a chess match with his police officer buddy, Walt Hill (John F. Goff), and they discuss how the father of one of the teens comes from a Nordic bloodline and disappeared in the same area years earlier, is yet another sloppily done diversion attempt. There's a bear vs. berserker wrestling match that should have been a high point but somehow isn't and, while the berserker costume actually looks pretty cool, we bearly (sorry) even get to see it.

I'll give this a little credit where credit is due. There are nice Utah shooting locations and the nighttime scenes are sometimes atmospherically shot (by Sunn Classics vet Henning Schellerup) thanks in part to lots of added fog, but that's about it as far as the good is concerned. Well, the super-hot Toussaint sans clothing isn't a bad thing either. Though it's admittedly not saying much since her co-stars are all dreadful, she's by far the best actor of the younger cast, which also probably explains why she was able to land some roles on known TV shows and films after this.

The biggest star to emerge from the abyss also happens to be the youngest: 10-year old Bart the Bear. This 9-foot-tall brown bear would go on to become something of an animal celebrity soon after, appearing alongside top stars like Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt and landing credited starring roles in The Bear (1987), Walking Thunder (1995), The Edge (1997) and many more. His other roles include Bear, The Bear, The Bear, Bear, The Kodiak Bear, The Bear, The Bear and The Bald-Headed Bear. He was clearly a victim of typecasting.

This was given home video releases in the U.S. (well-distributed on the Prism label), the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Germany. In 2019, Vinegar Syndrome released it on Blu-ray and DVD, which includes on-camera interviews with the director and stars Johnson and Engemann, as well as an audio interview with Mike Riley, who plays the title character. 80s slasher enthusiasts should probably still check this out regardless of my comments. Everyone else can safely give A Norwegian Cannibal Viking in Utah a pass.

★1/2