WITHOUT WARNING
US, 1980, 89 minutes, Colour.
Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Sue Ann Langdon, Neville Brand, Cameron Mitchell, David Caruso.
Directed by Greydon Clark.
An experimental science fiction horror film. It is post-Alien horror as it focuses on someone coming from another planet and wreaking havoc as a hunter. He terrorises people in the forests, the young couple and finally is stalked by veteran hunter played by Jack Palance. The film has quite a number of veteran actors including Martin Landau as a highly wrought maddened captain who served in Vietnam.
There is quite some suspense, some ugly and gory scenes especially with the parasite the alien uses. The film is in the vein of explicit late seventies' horror. Some of the dialogue and the acting seem strained and artificial but overall the film achieves what it set out to do - fascinate and horrify.
1. The appeal of science fiction? The present and the future? The possibilities of change? Safe space exploration and aliens visiting earth? Hostile aliens? The link between horror and science fiction - menace, violence and death nightmare?
2. The tradition of the B Budget movies of the forties and fifties? this film as an example of B Budget horror in the seventies? The appeal to basic conventions of the genre, lack of explanation, the audience supplying the imagination and details? The film fulfilling expectations?
3. The focus on aliens and space exploration in the late seventies? The menace of aliens? The hunting and conservation themes?
4. The establishing of the mystery - the father and son and the scout master destroyed by the parasite creatures? 'The building up of suspense - the use of shadows, Jaws-like music and subjective shots? Frights and shocks? The final chase and confrontation? The ugliness of the hunt?
5. The father and son out hunting, the establishing of characters, macho expectations imposed on the son by the father? Their suddenly being killed? The scoutmaster and the scouts? The young group buying petrol, being ominously warned against going to the lake by Taylor? Their picnic, the death of the two and the horror of the other two?
6. The mystery of the shack and the ugliness of the stored bodies? shack for the aliens' prey? The ultimate siege of the shack? The night sequences for the filming of the shack?
7. The inn and the men there, the arguments, Sarge and his madness, the men and their comments, Taylor and his authority, the woman at the counter? The young man and his appeal for help? The girl and her fright? The blackout, the police?
8. The character of Sarge: the background of war, his madness, his attack on Greg and Sandy, pursuing them and picking them up in the car, the chase and his believing they were aliens, the confrontation and Greg’s bringing him along? His final arrival at the shack and the brutality of his death? The film's comment on the madness of belief in aliens?
9. Taylor and the mystery of his garage, his comments on hunting, the importance of the game being in the hunt not the killing? The need for killing when one was pursued? His allowing the alien to hunt him while he hunted it? The confrontation, the parasites and his saving himself, his final confrontation and giving his life for the others?
10. Greg and Sandy as an ordinary young couple, Greg’s ability to cope, the inn, Sarge, Taylor, going back to the shack, the escape from Sarge in the river, finding the house, his staying awake to guard Sandy, her nightmares? The horror of Greg’s death? Sandy as the survivor?
11. The ultimate revelation of the alien - make-up, horror, his hurling the parasites? The lack of explanation about the hostile alien? The final confrontation and his death? The possibility of more aliens arriving?
12. Suspense, chases, night sequences, shocks? The impact of the film as horror? As an exercise in science fiction horror?
