Alright hear me out: an alien comes to earth to hunt people and faces off against a group of people in the woods. Sound familiar? Well this isn’t Predator, it’s Without Warning, a cheesy early 1980s movie that definitely inspired Predator. Even though it is not as good as Predator (not really in the same ballpark, actually) I still enjoyed this cheesy and quite violent sci-fi horror movie. The cast is largely made up of young people you’ve never heard of, save for a pre stardom David Caruso, yet the flick does have some heavy hitters to assist with the kind of flimsy plot.
You have Jack Palance as a gas station owner who in typical horror movie cliche fashion warns the young people to go home. They ignore him of course. Martin Landau plays a crazy veteran who ends up being just as dangerous as the alien-I feel his character wasn’t necessary and could have been cut from the movie. Ralph Meeker, Cameron Mitchell and Neville Brand appear as movie veterans who aren’t a big part of the movie yet offer it some character actor gravitas.
Funny enough Kevin Peter Hall also played the alien in Predator and he does so here as well, and I liked that the movie only bothers to show the alien later for mass effect. Despite lagging a bit in the middle, this is still a solid and entertaining killer alien movie. The alien sucker things the alien throws at it’s victims are creepy to me, and the movie wisely does its job and concludes. This was part one of a triple alien feature I decided to do via Shudder a month ago.
Down The Rabbit Hole 
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