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DIRECTED BY: Greydon Clark

FEATURING: Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Tarah Nutter, Christopher S. Nelson

PLOT: An alien hunter is on a killing spree in a small western town, but a pair of teenagers finds they must contend with a sinister truck stop owner and a shellshocked army veteran as much as the murderous monster.

COMMENTS: Greydon Clark is a self-professed bargain-basement moviemaker. There’s a reason he titled his autobiography On the Cheap: My Life in Low Budget Filmmaking. (For that price his paperback is going for on Amazon, he probably could have made a whole film.) But that doesn’t set him apart from the many B-movie honchos who ply their trade. No, Clark’s superpower was that he knew how to cast stars. Faded stars, but stars nonetheless, who were willing to put in a couple days work in exchange for a small paycheck and one more moment as the biggest name on the set. In return, Clark got to use their reflected glory to give his movies a sheen of credibility and Hollywood glamour. Such Tinseltown luminaries as Joe Don Baker, Alan Hale, Jr., Jim Backus, Peter Lawford, Pat Buttram, and John Carradine answered the call of a Greydon Clark production at one time or another. So when it came time for the monster-in-the-woods cheapie Without Warning, you could count on a cast list just as lavish: Larry Storch, Ralph Meeker, Neville Brand, and Cameron Mitchell all signed on for a day or two. It’s that special touch that separates Clark from his contemporaries.

Two of those casting coups are actually the marquee attractions here. Jack Palance and Martin Landau, more than a decade away from taking home Oscar gold, are here to chew up half of the budget and all of the scenery. Once on the set, they clearly weren’t directed so much as unleashed. Palance has his particular brand of discomfiting fun, shouting down his scene partners with wide-eyed, raspy mania. You can’t point a flashlight at your face and tell the kids with a mad laugh, “Hey, I ain’t the crazy one” and not take some joy in your work. Meanwhile, Clark deliberately named Landau’s character Fred Dobbs after Humphrey Bogart’s paranoid fortune seeker in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Landau has clearly decided to adopt that mania and ramp it up to the 4th power. The film is giddy fun whenever the two men share the screen, and the pairing has the unexpected effect of making Palance seem cool-headed and grounded in comparison to Landau’s bubbling cauldron of PTSD- fueled mania. 

I’m talking about the actors a lot, and frankly, it’s because the story isn’t all that much. You’ve got a series of mildly gory killings, and you’ve got a pair of teen couples who march blindly into harm’s way. (One of those doomed horny teenagers is none other than David Caruso in one of his first film appearances.) It’s very much your standard horror flick. Clark does try to make the movie a little less by-the-numbers with some savvy choices. The fact that the killer in the woods turns out to be an alien hunter out to collect pelts is novel for its time. (Clark joyfully notes not only that his tale precedes the strikingly similar Predator by seven years, but that they hired the same actor–giant Kevin Peter Hall–to play the equivalent role.) He also gifts the hunter with a sci-fi weapon that looks like a street taco with oozing tentacles, an organic-looking prop that introduces a gross novelty to the proceedings. (Palance carves into the mustard-spewing little creatures with gusto.) And he even manages a neat bit of misdirection with Nutter’s Sandy, a Final Girl with a rare sense of logic and self-preservation. She’s not exactly a feminist icon, but she faces down her boyfriend’s machismo and Palance’s aggression with surprising determination.

There’s a lot of genuine behind-the-scenes talent slumming it here, too, including cinematographer Dean Cundey (future Oscar nominee for Who Framed Roger Rabbit), makeup artist Greg Cannom (future 4-time Oscar winner), and most notably, legendary monster-maker Rick Baker as the uncredited brains behind the alien hunter’s mask (which bears a striking resemblance to this guy). And it is their work that helps the film float a few feet above its humble origins.

Without Warning is by no means a hidden gem. It’s almost entirely devoid of suspense, extremely predictable, and the parts that once reveled in the grotesque now feel almost quaint. But this plucky little film punches above its weight class, succeeding at enough things to be pleasantly diverting. Greydon Clark may not have had a great film in him, but all things considered, this one’s not bad at all, and that’s something.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This cult favorite isn’t a particularly good movie but it has enough wacky elements and a few moments of genuine tension that have made it a lovable low budget gem… easily the best movie about an alien trophy hunter bagging human prey with the use of flying, plasma-slurping alien flapjacks.” – Brian Bankston, Cool Ass Cinema

(This movie was nominated for review by Brad. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Without Warning (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

• From Greydon Clark, the legendary cult director of Satan’s Cheerleaders, Angels Brigade, The Return, Wacko, Joysticks, Final Justice and Uninvited

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