MY CALL: This isn’t very good, and there are better bad movies out there. So, I’ll suggest that fans of 80s horror set their expectations low and this early “quasi-Alien–Body Snatcher hybrid rip” a chance. This is more for the horror fans who pride themselves on seeing everything in their favored subgenres. MORE MOVIES LIKE Scared to Death: Alien (1979) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) seem the obvious choices. Although things like The Terror Within (1989) are much closer in quality.
The opening scene features a metallic-skinned monster dragging a screaming woman to her doom and leaving behind a thick, gooey ooze—so this feels a lot like a xenomorph from Alien (1979). For whatever reason, almost all of the monster’s victims are young, attractive women. So at first, I feared this was a classic 80s monster rape flick. Thankfully, it’s not.
The monster attacks are quite weak. The camera shakes a lot, there’s a blood splatter here, some dripping blood there, and that’s your death scene. One person is killed by a “head squeeze” between its hands—it’s pretty lame. The monster seems to kill one victim by inserting its tongue down her throat. When we later learn exactly what was happening there, I feel like there was a less SVU way to depict that on screen.
This movie is slow… very slow. And since the monster attacks and death scenes show so little, those scenes really don’t help the pacing. We see more and more of the monster later in the movie. For a low budget 1980 film, the creature effects are actually pretty solid! The big-headed monster design is a rubber suit with external striations and veins. It’s just that the monster isn’t doing much worth watching. A point of satisfaction of the movie is simply “seeing” the monster lumber through throwaway attack, death, and victim-dragging scenes. And for just that, this wasn’t really worth the price of admission.
The most interesting aspect of the movie is in its exposition: the history and spinal fluid-feeding behavior of genetically engineered creature. And in the finale sequence we see that it reproduces like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), with webbing-covered comatose victims connected by a feeding tube of sorts to a gestating monster chrysalis. Now I’m not saying these factors make up for the super slow first hour… but it’s actually pretty cool.
So would I recommend this? Hmmmm… it really isn’t good, and there are much “better at being bad” bad movies out there. But still, I’m tempted to suggest that fans of 80s horror set their expectations low and give William Malone’s (Creature, House on Haunted Hill) early “quasi-Alien–Body Snatcher hybrid rip” a shot. This is more for the horror fans who pride themselves on seeing everything in their favored subgenres.
