Thanks for the memories!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Absolutely Fantastic

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I am taking about "The Terror Within, 1989, A Roger Corman Production. Spoiler Alert. I will be talking about the plot, This movie has the iconic George Kennedy as the senior lead. A role well suited to the veteran Sci Fi ace. Here he leads a scientific exploration group in a post apocalyptic world. Along for the ride are the usual staff: From the grunt workers to the top. The cast,:Andrew Stevens as David, Starr Andreeff as Sue, Terri Treas as Linda, and a handful of others, go through their actions in earnest, Imagining themselves, I suppose, in a bigger budget production, where they are not terrorized by a guy in a rubber suit. Lord they do try, The picture looks good, all production values on the mark, the writers have a tendency to repeat sequences, things are done in pairs, search the lower decks, " is the baby human?" let's split up" Don't leave the control room, The flaws are breath taking, The plot takes a "Ten Little Indian" turn by midpoint, I am sorry, so sue me, but the monster on the soundtrack reminded me of the great Supy Sales's, off stage pet, "Black Tooth" Blarh ! So the crew is wiped out by reason of stupidity, The rubber guy got them and they did not even shoot their weapons or blow their whistles, All very entertaining, Take the kids, they won't get the "pregnant part" anyway. Real popcorn thrower. I give it Three out of Five "short of a hoot." Stars

"The Terror Within" is adequate sci-fi / horror, no more and no less. Still, it's about as good as a low budget Roger Corman knockoff could be; it's reasonably well produced (by Corman himself) and directed if mostly predictable and routine stuff.It takes place in a future world where most of humanity has been decimated by a chemical experiment that got out of control. But the people of the deep underground scientific base Mojave Station were able to administer themselves an antidote, and now they spend their time foraging for supplies and looking for other survivors. When members of their team encounter a crazed young woman (Yvonne Saa), they find that she's pregnant - but not with any human child. The resulting "gargoyle" that emerges when they try to abort it then proceeds to slaughter the hapless crew one schmuck at a time.To Cormans' credit, the sets look decent, and also giving the look of the movie some degree of quality is the work of cinematographer Rohn Schmidt, who's gone on to big things such as the feature film "The Mist" and the TV series 'The Walking Dead'. Rick Conrads' music is actually quite good while the creature effects by Dean Jones prove to be adequate. (In an interesting development, the monsters have super sensitive hearing, akin to that of dogs). However, the movie does so much cloning of "Alien" as to be somewhat groan inducing, right down to its creation of two comic relief characters (played by John Lafayette and Tommy Hinkley) clearly patterned after Parker and Brett from the '79 film. It manages to create some suspense, and come up with a somewhat cathartic finale.A committed B movie cast plays this as well as they can, with Oscar winner George Kennedy lending some credibility to the proceedings. Andrew Stevens (who went on to direct "The Terror Within II") is likable enough, as are lovely ladies Starr Andreeff and Terri Treas. Lafayette and Hinkley are able to generate some laughs, while both Saa and Andreeff supply any eye candy the viewer could want.If you can't get enough of this kind of thing, "The Terror Within" is certainly watchable if not inspired. As has already been said in other reviews, yes, you can do better, but you can also definitely do worse.Six out of 10.

The Terror Within has to be the most egregious and campy Alien rip-off of them all. The film takes place on Earth in an underground facility called the "Mojave Lab." The crew's mission is to exit the lab and explore the Earth's surface searching for survivors in a future where 99 percent of the human population died off from a virus that they now now have a cure for.In the film's opening two crew members are attached by some vicious mutant creatures they call Gargoyles. But in true low budget fashion we do not see the attack we hear it as the crew members do in a control room. The guy being mulled takes the time to cry out "Jesus Gargoyles." And they are referred to as Gargoyles many times as if to make it abundantly clear they are not Aliens, aka we're not going to get sued.The following are what The Terror Within and Alien have in common:They bring in someone from outside that is the host for the Alie- um, I mean Gargoyle to eventually run around and reek havoc inside their compound.The creature busts out of its host the same way. The instant the thing is seen lunging out of its host they resort to a cut away of our hero "David" played by Andrew Stevens looking on from a observation room and exclaims "Oh my God he's in the air vent." They clearly could not show any of that with the special effects set up they had, so they tell us. It was no surprise the creature retreated to the air vent. A fair share of the action takes place inside the air vents, just like in the Ridley Scott film. Two moonshine swigging crew members are modeled off a pair of characters who are friends and comic relief from Alien. This was so clear to the crew that the costume designer on Terror dressed the "Neil" character played by Tommy Hinkley with a Hawaiian shirt almost identical to the one Harry Dean Stanton wore as "Brett" in Alien.The over all look and tone the film is going for is clearly inspired by it's high budget predecessor. Even some of weapons the crew uses are the same.The unfortunate thing is the first 34 minutes of The Terror Within is uneventful and does not set up anything that you really need to know in order to understand the film. George Kennedy, who was "Hal" the leader of the crew and the other actors gave it their all. They did not have much to work with, the character work was just not there in the script.HOW THEY FELL SHORT:The Gargoyle is an actor in a full body suit and a bulky head piece that only looked good in extreme close ups or in the shadows. (They were aware of this when they made the trailer for the film.)The dialogue is too on the nose and with little use. The "David" character spends the second half of the film armed with a bow and arrow gun, which is never used. The prop was just there, I guess they though he looked good holding it.The best of all is the flame thrower that "Andre" lugs around with him. This is the least practical flame thrower ever conceived. Instead of strapping the fuel tank to the actor, he wheels it around on a hand truck. A HAND TRUCK, you know those carts we use to move furniture. During the opening scene Hal ask David, the owner of a dog Butch to "keep him under control." Then right on cue in comes Butch, the most docile and well trained dog on the planet. They kept this exchange despite casting a dog that makes it laughable. Lastly, the most entertaining sequence in The Terror Within also become the most over the top and ridiculous. There intention was clear, create suspense and have a proper reveal for when the Gargoyle is finally seen. When Andre is attacked by the Gargoyle they assemble a fun series of shots but it ends up making him look like he's standing there for a total of eight seconds waiting to be killed.David realizes the sound of a dog whistle is the Gargoyles only weakness it debilitates him, so they make a tape of it to play back over the speakers so he can hunt it down. The tape breaks just as the Gargoyle starts attacking him. The next seven minutes he is crippled, crawling around and doing everything except simply sounding the dog whistle he has hanging from his neck the whole time.In ClosingIt's goofs like this that lend to the overall charm of the film. In an attempt to duplicate a space epic like Alien on a budget estimated to be the cost of a new sports car, the film makers of The Terror Within have produced a low rent romp that is SO BAD IT'S GOOD. Beside the slow start, the film is oddly entertaining. They made a sequel in 1991 so the film must have been profitable.The Shout Factory DVD packages this film along with Dead Space (1990), another Corman produced Alien coin-up.There is really only one special feature on the DVD, a Feature Commentary by Fred Gallo the Director of Dead Space. If you are an aspiring filmmaker or enjoy informative and entertaining commentaries, this is a must own.

I've seen much worse- but at least those movies had the guts to try something new (even though they tanked doing it).The Terror Within is a rip-off of Alien. Similarities include (but are not limited to: a homemade flamethrower, a chest-bursting monster, lots of drool, a pair of engineers- one black, one white, an aging male captain who is somewhat heroic, a tense scene in something resembling air ducts, Creature reproduction includes humans, and a pet that is orphaned when its owner is killed.The most obvious ripoff is the scene when they are searching a storage room (cargo bay) for the creature. Even the camera angles and shot order are similar to Alien.I'd like to give this movie a 2 but there are other movies I'd give a two...and this isn't as bad as those.