Without Warning

Fans of low-budget sci-fi horror will undoubtedly enjoy “Without Warning,” produced and directed by Greydon Clark, director of ramshackle B movies frequently brimming with big names: Marin Landau as a Vietnam vet who seems to be channeling the insane Judd from Tobe Hooper’s “Eaten Alive” (1977), Cameron Mitchell as a fervent hunter and a leathery Jack Palance determined to give the monster, a sort of formidable “pre-Predator” predator, a taste of his own medicine. And yes, it’s nearly impossible not to compare this film with John McTiernan’s inescapable cult film (1987) in which we find the cyclopean Kevin Peter Hall in the role of the creature who comes from the dark abysses of space to butcher humans.

The film’s direction seems rather uneven: there’s a decided lack of tension in the sun-drenched first act, but when darkness falls, things improve, in part because the rugged nighttime terrain, constantly enveloped in fog, lends a rather evocative atmosphere. On the special effects front, the obvious lack of budget (in some scenes you can even see the wire supporting the darts the alien uses) isn’t a deal breaker. We don’t see much of the creature, a liquid-swollen humanoid with stiff, wooden movements that make him seem like anything but a skillful hunter, but it still manages to maintain a certain horrific allure.

Like every self-respecting late ’70s sci-fi horror flick, there’s the obligatory environmental message (which, honestly, was thrown in a bit haphazardly in this case), expressed in elegant reflections such as: “The way industrial waste gets thrown around these days… that’s just dumping in this river and polluting the hell out of it.“.