I too remember this film from my youth. I think I saw it on HBO in the early 80s - some thirty years better. What did I remember from the original? I remembered the flying alien discs. Aside from that nothing else except Larry Storch. As I watched the credits roll recently, I kept saying "Larry Storch is in this! He is some kind of boy scout or something." Indeed, he was - and still, for me, the best thing about this movie. He has one of those humorous cameos that steals scenes as he talks about Guapo Indians trying to impress his scouts. Well, let's backtrack. The film opens with a man(Cameron Mitchell in need of some bucks and bad!)out to hunt with his, in his words, "sissy" son when both soon find these aforementioned alien discs attack. What does such an attack look like? It looks like a disc being thrown at someone then sticks its tentacles into the flesh and soon the victim dies. We then go to Storch meeting the same fate and then we get a group of teens going to the lake to have fun. Are they aware that something is not quite right at the lake? Of course they are as they have been warned both directly and indirectly - but go nonetheless. Two die and two fly. Well, the film looks and feels very cheaply made. The actors over-act madly. Martin Landau plays a Fred Dobbs(yes, it is Bogart's name in Treasure of the Sierra Madre - and yes, he is crazy too!) Landau really looks like he took an overdose of acting pills, which is good because Jack Palance must have finished the bottle! These two are so far off the chart as to turn this from any serious vehicle to something of a parody nature - though unintentional I assure you. The film is not all bad. There are some nice scenes in an abandoned house toward the end of the film. The master alien is cool looking and the final part of the film FAIRLY effective. There is also a host of character actors given little to do such as Ralph Meeker and Neville Brand. The young foursome are decent at least. But what the film has going against it is quite ponderous: dark lighting throughout, over-acting - did I mention over-acting?, a novice-like feel for the direction of the film, etc... This is a hard movie to find. I watched a horror convention DVD - it took forever just to track that down. Once I watched it I was like - okay, I saw it again. I probably won't for another 30 years again.
Review of Without Warning
