GeezerVison

Entry updated 23 February 2017. Tagged: Film.

Film (1980). Heritage Enterprises/Filmways Pictures. Produced and directed by Greydon Clark. Written by Lyn Freeman, Daniel Grodnik, Bennett Trainer, and Steve Mathis. Cast includes Neville Brand, David Caruso, Kevin Peter Hall (credited as Kevin Hall), Martin Landau, Sue Ann Langdon, Ralph Meeker, Cameron Mitchell, Jack Palance and Larry Storch. 89 minutes. Colour.

Three friends, Taylor (Palance), Dobbs (Landau), and Leo (Brand), are on a hunting trip in a US national forest when a huge Alien (Hall) begins stalking them and anybody else it finds in the area. This creature uses bizarre flying disc Weapons with tentacles that attach themselves to the victim and drain them of their blood. It then stores the bodies in a building owned by a nearby town's water department, presumably meaning to take them away as trophies. After most of the cast have been killed, Taylor obtains some dynamite and manages to destroy the alien by blowing up the storage building to which it has returned.

Though this is a minor film clearly meant for the US drive-in circuit, a strong case can be made that it directly inspired Predator (1987). That six-foot-nine-inch actor Hall played the alien hunter in both films makes the connection all the more striking. [GSt]

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