beast me up.

Picked up the sequel to this t'other week so thought I'd rewatch the original before diving in.

As an aside I hope Fede Álvarez has seen this cos he could do much worse than use this gem as inspiration for his new Alien movie.

 

The Terror Within (1989).
Dir:  Thierry Notz.
Cast: George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreeff, Terri Treas, John LaFayette, Yvonne Saa and Tommy Hinkley.

Sometime in a post-apocalyptic future (oh go on then a week next Tuesday), the few survivors of a particularly nasty bout of space rickets are scattered around the planet eking out a meager existence squatting in caves whilst dodging the amorous intentions of a group of horny mutants known as Gargoyles.

These creatures live only to have 'the sex' with any females they find in the hope of perpetuating their race.

So there's hope for your sister after all. 

Anyway that's the back-story out of the way so lets get on with the plot good and proper.

Somewhere in the Mojave Desert hunky army types Michael Killedsoon and John Soontodie are busy looking for survivors and/or food when they come across strange activity in the distance, well far enough away as to not have to show it obviously.

Radioing the rest of their team back at the originally monikered 'Mojave Lab' the pair are attacked by an unseen assailant (how much cost cutting can you put in your opening scenes?) leaving the base commander Hal (Airport star Kennedy) no choice but to send out team hunk David (former 'soap' star and future director Stevens) and delicate flower Sue (Falcon Crests Andreeff) to investigate.

Oh and to take the base dog Butch out for a walk and a pooh too.

Wandering aimlessly whilst filling in even more plot detail the pair soon come across John and Michael’s bodies, or at least what's left of them before hearing what sounds like a girl screaming in the middle distance.

Dave primes his crossbow and heads off to investigate and is surprised to find a tight-shorted dirty faced girl named Karen (Saa in not too surprisingly her only film role) being chased by a massive chinned rubber monster with a hard on.

Which makes a change from counting rocks and bagging dog shite I guess.

"I can see your house from here Peter!"

Being a square-jawed hero type Dave shoots the beast dead before taking Karen back to the base.

But all is not well.

You see on return our dishy duo discover that not only have they lost contact with the Rocky Mountain base (which means no more Friday night pizza) but that poor Karen is pregnant.

And quite possibly with a gargoyle baby.

Which obviously means that the pizza they do have will have to be shared out even more.

Base doctor Linda (the oh so yumsome Treas from Alien Nation: The Series) being a nice lady is less worried about the upcoming birth and attempts to explain away the Ultrasound pics of babies massive head on it being from Dudley and decides that the crew should stop fretting about monster infants and concentrate on building a crib and playroom for the wee fella.

Which is nice if a little naive seeing as within a matter of hours poor Karen has gone from appearing 3 months pregnant to almost full term meaning that Linda has no choice but to deliver the baby right there and then.

I say she has no choice but obviously she does, I mean she could just get pissed and let nature take its course I guess.

Anyway, whilst under anesthesia (as in she's unconscious not being sexed up by a foreign sounding bloke with a baby bump fetish) Karen does indeed give birth to a gargoyle which promptly escapes into the air-vents leaving the crew at a loss as to what to do with the hastily constructed playpen they've just built.

Waking from a slow plot induced coma Hal comes up with a sure fire plan to capture and kill the beastly baby which involves sending the bases expendable comic relief engineers Andre (LaFayette from your mums bed) and Neil (Hinkley who later went on the try and assassinate Ronald Reagan) into the bowels of the base armed only with a firelighter and a joy-buzzer and see what happens.

Who ya gonna call? He might not be afraid of no ghost but the thought of a violent fisting from Ernie Hudson scares the shite out of the man.

Not too surprisingly the gargoyle (which has now grown to giant size) kills the pair before giving David a particularly nasty hickie, attempting to mount the dog and finally dragging Sue off into the hold with the sole intention of sticking it in her.

Which goes to prove that you should never let anyone who's ever appeared with OJ Simpson on film (or who has a combover) formulate a plan that may involve the deaths of one or more people involved.

Feeling a wee bit guilty for the amount of carnage his plan has caused Hal leads David and Linda into the hold in an attempt to rescue poor Sue who, by this point has been stripped down to her vest and is being forced to look mildly uncomfortable whilst an overweight stuntman encased in a threadbare rubber suit gyrates clumsily on top of her.

Suffice to say this is one of the most erotically charged scenes to ever appear on celluloid since the worm shagging bit in Galaxy of Terror.

Following the strange grunting noises our intrepid heroes soon come across Sue (unlike the Gargoyle who is too busy holding back to maximize her pleasure) and after taking a few minutes to get a crafty look at her milky sweat covered thighs come up with another totally safe and danger free plan to rescue her.

Hmmm...what makes me think that this wont end well?

Hal strips to his waist hoping that his massive wobbly man-tits will entice the creature over whilst Dave and Linda disguise Sue under a dirty blanket and drag her to safety, a plan which does indeed work.

But also ends in the death of Hal, killed as the Gargoyle attempts to give itself an unnecessarily violent tit-wank.

Billy Dee Williams, up the casino, Las Vegas, 1982. YESCH!

With the creature having a relaxing smoke after all its sexual escapades, Linda and Dave manage to get to the medical suite unmolested and give Sue and ultrasound scan which reveals that she too is now pregnant.

The question is tho' is it Dave's (who has been having some sex with her for a few months) or is it the beasts?

Unable to face the prospect of having Jeremy Kyle do a DNA test and becoming a laughing stock to TV viewers everywhere (aaah, those were the days) Sue takes an overdose and promptly dies, which is a wee bit fucking ungrateful if you ask me seeing as Hal sacrificed himself so that Linda and Dave could rescue her.

I mean had they known she was going to do that they'd have probably left her.

I know I would have.

"OI Gargoyle! Put something on the end of it and step up to the mark at the end of the day and so on..."

With time and budget running out Linda and David desperately try to find a way to kill the beast or at least find a weakness (well one that doesn't involve female genitalia obviously) that they can use against it (photos of the dirty whore fucking someones gran might be an option) and are almost about to give up when Linda remembers how the gargoyle reacted to Davids dog whistle.

If you must know it covered its 'ears' in pain as opposed to trying to have sex with it.

Searching the bases record library for a copy of Now That's What I Call Dog Whistles 6, Linda reckons that they could kill the creature by forcing it into the ventilation system and chop it up with a big fan.

David, by this point  fairly pass remarkable about the ever more ludicrous plot turns agrees and heads off to confront the gargoyle one last time....

"Excuse me...I have my womans period."

Will our heroes beat the beast or will evil prevail and Linda live out the rest of her days on all fours being pleasure in every orifice and in every conceivable way by the randy mutant?

Will Butch recover enough to appear in this years One Man and His Dog competition?

Will the creature costume look even more laughable than it already is when shown in glorious close-up?

And will David actor Andrew Stevens ever work again?

"Laugh now!"

From the director of Watchers II comes the final nail in the coffin of Roger Corman's collection of Alien rip-offs, the laugh a minute shagfest that is The Terror Within.

With a budget that could be sued under the trade descriptions act for being called tight, Notz and write Thomas M. Cleaver save cash by transferring the originals space bound terror to an underground car park decorated with empty cardboard boxes and egg cartons and swapping Ridley Scott's nightmarish alien vistas for the waste ground behind the directors house, freeing up more money for that all important monster suit.

Unfortunately the head of FX got mugged on the way to the shops and ended up being left with a pocket full of fluff and an old penny meaning that in place of Giger's terrifying xenomorph we have this:

Is it so surprising that absolutely no screen time is spent explaining where this monstrosity comes from?

Aliens from beyond space?

Mutations?

Carnie folk gone bad?

Who knows and who cares cos we've got endless walking around identical corridors and wandering aimlessly around the desert scenes to film!

At least Cleaver was clever enough to realize he couldn't beat Dan O'Bannon's frankly magnificent script which is probably why he ended up copying most of the dialogue exchanges practically verbatim alongside most of the important bits of the plot.

I'm convinced that the only reason there's a dog in the movie is that he didn't know anyone with a cat.

Beware the beast mans laser nipples!

 

Slagging aside you have to give kudos to the casting director tho' who by fair means or foul actually managed to get a pretty competent cast together - save Kennedy who you could replace with a bucket of offal and not tell the difference - to appear in this shite.

How?

The photographic evidence he has of their illegal activities that he used to buy their time must be sensational.

Fuck knows what they did.

But in the case of Terri Treas I just hope it involved naked avocado puree wrestling and an eel.

Treas: Less a case of who she has to fuck to get out of this movie as more of a case of what the fuck she did to be blackmailed into it.

Scarily it looks like Andrew Stevens may have appeared by choice, either that or he caught the director fucking someones sister and played them at their own game.

And the proof?

Well not only did he appear in the sequel but he directed it too.

And for that we salute him.