Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Lance Henriksen is the name actor in this Wes Craven produced horror film. Set in an underground desert facility, it follows the events that happen after some government scientists inadvertently create a humanoid monster when they inject a virus into a dying man in order to save his life.I have a bit of an immediate dislike of any sci-fi or horror films that fall under the category I can best describe as 'corridors underground (or in outer space)'. These low budget genre films feature characters running away from a deadly enemy in confined locations with lots of corridors. The reason so many of these types of movies are made is that the sets required can be cheaply knocked together. The issue, however, is that the vast majority of them turn out to be very tedious and highly unoriginal. Mind Ripper is another in this line of not very good movies. This one throws some highly uninteresting family melodrama into the mix and needless to say it doesn't add much value. The best moment for me was probably the part where the monster suddenly killed all the sympathetic characters in a frenzied attack; I was thinking at the time that this was quite interesting and a nicely unexpected turn of events. Turned out it was a dream sequence from the monster's perspective. Sigh.

Okay, stop me if you've heard this one before. Your usual bunch of scientists doing morally dubious and ill-advised experiments in a secret subterranean laboratory create a super-strong brain-eating mutant named Thor (handsome, muscular Dan Blom, who's actually quite good) who gets loose and goes on a destructive rampage. Fortunately, the always reliable Lance Henrikson as a bitter, cynical doctor who quit the project a few months ago arrives back on the scene to help save the day. Strangely enough, Henrikson brings along his estranged, rebellious smartaleck metalhead son (a then unknown, pre-stardom Giovanni Ribisi, who's every bit as obnoxious as you think), lusty hottie daughter (the luscious Natasha Wagner, looking mighty fine in skimpy shorts), and the daughter's libidinous tool of a boyfriend (the supremely irritating Adam Solomon). Swell dad, eh? I think you can basically fill in the blanks as to what happens next.All kidding aside, this nifty little low-budget direct-to-vid horror item manages to be a great deal of enjoyably cheesy fun. It's directed with considerable rip-snorting verve by Joe Gayton, with a spooky, rousing, rattling score by J. Peter Robinson, dark, claustrophobic cinematography by Fernando Arguelles, funky make-up f/x by Image Animation, a cool lethal humanoid creature that's both scary and pitiable, and a nonstop breakneck pace. The solid cast do their best with their stock roles: tall, leggy, statuesque brunette beauty Claire Standsfield tackles her Ripley-like two-fisted tough chick heroine part with tremendous lip-smacking gusto while ubiquitous character actor John Diehl jerks it up nicely as the overbearing team leader. Bonus points are in order for the freaky and startling unexpected monster nightmare sequence. Granted, we're not talking work of art here, but this snazzy B-horror flick does the trick just the same in a pleasingly brisk and efficient enough manner.

Call me easy to please, but I actually kinda liked THE OUTPOST (aka MIND RIPPER). The movie is just average in every sense of the word. It's not original and it never rises above mediocrity. But hell, I'll watch any movie with Lance Henriksen in it, because he's always decent.Once again a military science-project has gone wrong (when will they ever learn?). On a desolate underground outpost in the desert a human is injected with an experimental virus (in order to create the perfect soldier). He then slowly mutates into a killing machine with a craving for human brains. Stockton (Lance Henriksen), who once abandoned the project when the military took over, gets called in to fix the problem. He decides to take along his son, his daughter and her boyfriend.What we get then is your basic ALIEN-plot: a lot of running around in tight hallways, systematically killing off all the scientists and a final battle with the mutant outside the complex. Why did I like it? Ehrr... Lance Henriksen is in it... and the mutant-man's spiky tentacle coming out of his mouth to suck people's brains was kinda cool. The make-up effects were all quite good, actually. And then there was the mutant's dream-sequence (I gotta hand it to the film-makers: they got me there!). And what about Giovanni Ribisi? Well, he looked stoned throughout the whole movie (in fact, he always does, even in TV's FRIENDS). But he and Lance were the best actors of the cast. And Natasha Wagner and Claire Stansfield are always nice to look at. Come to think of it: there weren't actually many actors in this movie. Strange, when you consider that it all took place in a scientific/military facility. No security, no dumb soldiers running around, nothing.Whatever, to me this was a nice 90 minutes time-waster with some gory brain-sucking action. Nothing special.

I don't like it that much, but overall I did enjoy it. In fact, I like it a lot better than any of Wes Craven's later stuff (yes I am referring to "Scream"). Though in the end this is just a different take on the hit horror movie "Alien". People in a facility hunted down by a strange demented beast (in this case an altered human who is seemingly indestructible). It worked for me the most part when I caught it late at night on the television. Lance plays a scientist who goes back to the facility after being away for a bit and the experiment has gone berserk. If that is not bad enough he has brought along his daughter (or was it his son?). There is a lot of claustrophobic scenes, and a lot of kills...nothing original, but it was applied nicely here.