It Came...Without Warning(1980)d/Greydon Clark

An alien has descended from the heavens unto Earth to hunt man with the help of small,living,flying toothy discs that suction to their victims and eat their flesh.The film is loaded with B talent(Martin Landau,Jack Palance,Neville Brand,Cameron Mitchell,Larry Storch,and an early David Caruso appearance) and features creature and make up effects by Greg Cannon.Sound cool?It isn't.The single glaring reason I can drum up on why this film reeks like dog shit,is the all-too familiar director.Greydon Clark,the hack who brought us "Skinheads:Second Coming of Hate" and "Greystoke:The Legend of Tarzan",is the man responsible for this film's total failure.The one sheet for this waste of 89 minutes hung for years in my bedroom,and is probably the only good thing about it.The story,what little there is,goes like this:

You think CSI:Miami's David Caruso(middle)ever mentions this film? Me neither.
A hunter(Cameron Mitchell) takes his liberal namby pamby son out into the wilderness to prove his manhood by shooting wildlife.He never gets the chance to do his old man proud,as he and his father are overtaken by wobbly hairy discs with teeth that fly awkwardly out of the dense underbrush.A troop leader(F Troop's Larry Storch)is lost in the same woods with his scouts,when the same discs wobble out of nowhere and dispatch the man in front of his terrified troop,who run screaming towards the river.A pair of couples(Caruso is one of them)planning a lake date,stop for gas at what seems to be a deserted station,when they are surprised by a kooky old man(Palance) who warns them to steer clear of the lake during "hunting season".They don't.Two get disc-sucked.Two escape.

Newsflash!B movie actors terrorized by hairy tentacled flying personal pan pizzas with teeth.Story at eleven.
In the midst of the couple's escape,they stumble upon a shack in the woods,chock full of dead bodies.This is where the alien stores his "kills".They flee to a diner,inhabited by a bonkers Vietnam vet(Landau),Leo(Brand),and Joe Taylor(Palance),among others.The sarge still thinks he's knee deep in rice paddies,but Taylor demands that the terrified couple lead him to the alien's shack.Nothing happens for about forty minutes.The young girl's boyfriend eats it.She comes face to face with the alien,who stalks her back to Palance,who's set up explosives outside the shack.Landau,who shot the sheriff Bob Marley-style during a flashback,confronts the two and accuses them both of being aliens(!)before the real alien covers him with frisbees.Palance runs screaming at the alien,shouting,"ALIEN!ALIEEEEN!ALIIIIEN!"and the girl blows up the shack with the alien and Palance both in the scope of the blast.That's it.

What's that on Christopher S. Nelson's face? An acting-sucker. What's it doing? Starving.
I'm thoroughly convinced that NOTHING Greydon Clark ever directed was any good,this sci fi/horror(?)cheapie being no exception.Clark builds zero tension,paces the film terribly,utilizes piss-poor lighting throughout most of the scenes,wastes a cast of able actors on awful dialogue,scrimps on effects shots,the list of fuck ups here is dismal and long(sort of like this movie).Thankfully unavailable on DVD as of this writing,let's hope it stays buried for another 28 years.Boots are highly sought after,but I can't recommend paying up to thirty dollars for a copy of this to even my worst enemy.Sandy!Push the plunger!ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!Yeah.This gets:

Kevin "Predator" Hall earns his paycheck in the last fifteen minutes of the movie.Sort of.

Alice Cooper:The Nightmare(1975)d/Jørn Winther

This television special cemented the Coop in my personal "Hall of People Who Will Remain Cool Forever"(visit it the next time you're on the Blackhorse Pike between Philly and Atlantic City) back in 1975,and it's easy to see why.Giant cyclops,black widow spiders,dancing skeletons,witches submerging the Coop into a simmering cauldron,the legendary Vincent Price tying the whole theatrical production together with his inimitable hammy interludes;it was like Christmas for a creepy little six year old kid like me.The original Alice Cooper band had called it quits the year before,and the "Welcome to my Nightmare" album was Alice's premier solo effort,backed by Bob Ezrin's Hollywood Vampires,and an ambitious concept album it was,overbrimming with bombastic orchestral pieces and incendiary guitar riffs in the same four bars.So naturally when it came together as an ABC special that fateful April 25th,1975,yours cruelly was glued to the big woodgrain floor model television in our living room.

A nocturnal vacation,unnecessary sedation...
The Coop is Steven,in the midst of a terrifying(maybe if you thought "Cats" was terrifying)nightmare.He is led through by the "spirit of the nightmare" as aptly portrayed by maestro Vincent Price,who pulls our rock hero around on a short leash(!).Alice performs "Welcome to my Nightmare" in a signature top hat,then is poked and lowered into a bubbling cauldron by a witch and her cronies as he sings "Devil's Food".He then tapdances with skeletons through "Some Folks" before slowing it down with the ballad "Only Women(Bleed)".In between songs,Price reminds him that everything he sees and experiences are creations of his own mind,and that he will be fine...so long as he reminds himself he cannot escape.

She's cool in bed...yeah,she oughta be,cos Ethel's dead.
Out of a refrigerator comes Alice's dead lover, (Cold) Ethel,who dances around a frozen stage as he sings to her.Price then shows the Coop his spider collection,becoming sidetracked when he comes to Lycosa Raptoria,the Black Widow,which Alice sings as he's harrassed by dancers in goofy black widow costumes on a giant spider web.The nightmare becomes nostalgic,as Alice rides a merry go round to the tune of "Years Ago".He's then superimposed over his own newspaper clippings and magazine articles as he sings "Department of Youth".He reprises "Years Ago",then sings "Steven" and "The Awakening",before harkening back to the Love it to Death album for the memorable track "Ballad of Dwight Frye" which he croons sinisterly in trademark strait jacket.The show ends with "Escape" and Alice being chased by a giant cyclopean monster with a spotlight eye,and Price's minions dragging Steven out of bed back into the nightmare to strains of "The Awakening".

The bedroom is only a temporary safe place from nightmares...
This Emmy winning special never gets old to me,but has yet to be released on DVD,lucky fans having had to pick up the VHS or Beta(!)tape way back in 1983.The Coop has always been a master showman,and here he shines amidst his own creepy theatrics for the tv audience.The producers had Alice change the "Man's got his woman to take his seed" line for youngsters watching at home,but Cooper has always been notorious for flubbing his own lyrics live so it doesn't really matter anyway.If you can get your hands on this classic,do so,as I bestow upon it,my highest rating:

Man has ruled this world as a stumbling,demented child-king LONG ENOUGH!

Abominable(2006)d/Ryan Schifrin

With Hollywood's creativity indefinitely out to lunch,it's no wonder we've been pummelled with a myriad of low budget horror flicks concerning everyone's favorite cryptid,Bigfoot himself.And where the wild man of the woods raises cinematic hell,Lance Henriksen can't be far behind.If there weren't any direct-to-home-video releases of putrid Pumpkinhead sequels or Bigfoot flicks,the guy would have fallen off the radar ten years ago,ferchrissakes.Luckily for horror fans,this particular entry ambitiously aims for the heavens,weaving a "Rear Window" meets "Night of the Demon" symphony of savagery around a cast of solid B-movie players,with deliciously demented old fashioned red stuff by the bucketful.One gore effect in particular is especially choice,but I'll touch on that later.Composer Lalo Schifrin's son Ryan's second outing in the directorial chair features the late Paul "Breakfast Club" Gleason,Dee Wallace,Jeffrey "Re-Animator" Combs,scene queen Tiffany Shepis,and of course,Lance Henriksen,while boasting of a soundtrack(which won the 2006 Jury Prize,mind you) laid down by the director's Grammy winning dad himself!

What's Steve Carell doing in a wheelchair?And why does Sasquatch want to eat him?
Preston Rogers(a Steve Carell lookalike named Matt McCoy)manages to cripple himself in a mountain climbing accident,and six months later during the process of rehabilitation,finds himself dragged out to a cabin in the woods by his therapist,Otis(makeup FX artist Christien Tinsley).Staying in a cabin across the way from Preston is a gaggle of hot broads letting their hair down for the weekend.Out in the woods around both the isolated cabins,is a big,angry sasquatch with a penchant for human flesh.Hmmm,methinks trouble lies in the not-so-distant future for some of these people...

Jamie Lee Curtis never had to bend herself in half backwards for a movie...
Preston,left to his own devices in the lonely cabin while Otis rides into town,takes a shine to a nifty pair of binoculars,and begins harmlessly peeping at the cabin of curvaceous cuties next door.I'd do the same thing even if I wasn't a hapless wheelchair gimp.Well,during his hot eyeballin' session of vapid airheads,he notices something big and hairy snatch up an unsuspecting stonata as she talks on her cellphone in a clearing.Otis returns much later and doesn't buy his horny,hungry hominid story for a second,forcing Preston to sedate him with his own meds,and take matters into his own hands.He tries firing off e-mails to the police,who naturally think it's a joke.Meanwhile,out in the forest a trio of biggie hunters(which includes Combs and Henriksen)is on the cryptid's fresh trail of spilled blood when the giant pays their campfire a visit and dispatches them all off-camera(boo!).

Otis(Christien Tinsley) closely inspects Bigfoot bicuspids.
Before too long,our ravenous yeti is going through sparsely-dressed dingbats like your humble narrator with cigarettes,much to the dismay of our invalid hero,who desperately tries to warn the chicks from his window,but not before 'Squatch yanks one bent the wrong way through a window,bites out another one's pulsing throat,and steps on and squashes another frantically fleeing floozy.Finally there's only Amanda(Haley Joel)retreating to Preston's cabin,and the two try to repel from the back porch to the car below before the missing link can munch them both.At this point Otis wakes from his med-induced stupor and takes the yeti on himself,only to get his head bitten in half by the brute(nice effect!).There's a desperate struggle between the two star-crossed survivors and the savage 'Squatch,police intervention,and a dim-witted denouement that'll leave you shaking your head for a few minutes after the dvd returns to the screen saver menu.But you'll have to check it out for yourselves!

Amanda(Haley Joel)and Squatch share a pensive moment together.
Though its no "Creature from Black Lake",this little dittie certainly surpasses Boggy bottom fodder like Ivan Marx's "Legend of Bigfoot" and recent CGI toilethon "Sasquatch Hunters" with ease,even though that's not really saying a whole helluva lot at all.I enjoyed the inventive gore and retro-style creature effects,the cast was a cult crowd pleaser,and despite a botchjob of a twist ending that packs more cheez whiz than a Pat's steak,it was an adequate midweek screener,and these days that merits:

"Namnamnamnamnam!"says our hungry hominid.