WITHOUT WARNING: It Came From Beyond… To Stalk & Slash

After the one-two punch of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Star Wars, film­mak­ers look­ing for a com­mer­cially exploitable hook came down with a big case of “space fever.”  Those on the low-budget end of the spec­trum didn’t have the resources for tricky visual effects or elab­o­rate space­ship mod­els but still man­aged to find clever ways to exploit their audience’s desire for alien encounters.

A par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing exam­ple of this sort of low-budget inge­nu­ity is Without Warning.  This space-schlocker was directed by Greydon Clark, a fairly pro­lific drive-in auteur, and boasts an inter­est­ing plot hook that crosses the streams between sci-fi and hor­ror.  In a rural town located near a lake and a for­est, a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure has begun to pick off var­i­ous towns­peo­ple.  The mys­tery fig­ure doesn’t use a knife or a gun — instead, it uses fleshy, toothy “discs” that fly through the air and drain their unlucky victims.

The only two peo­ple wise to what’s going on are Joe (Jack Palance), an ornery gas-station owner who loves to hunt, and Sarge (Martin Landau), a loony ex-military man who thinks the war never ended.  Into the midst of this insan­ity wan­ders a quar­tet of teens look­ing for sun and fun at the lake.  Unfortunately, two of the four (a young David Caruso and Lynn Theel, one of the vic­tims from Humanoids From The Deep) get picked off and nom­i­nal heroes Greg (Christopher Nelson) and Sandy (Tarah Nutter) are left to fight the mys­tery attacker, who is even­tu­ally revealed to be a vis­i­tor from another planet.

Without Warning has a cer­tain amount of buzz sur­round­ing it in cult/exploitation flick cir­cles, mainly because it has been hard to see over the years (it was never avail­able in the U.S. on VHS or DVD, forc­ing hor­ror and sci-fi fans to hunt it down on cable t.v.).  It also boasts a fun sup­port­ing cast of char­ac­ter actors: in addi­tion to the afore­men­tioned Palance and Landau, it also boasts cameos from Larry Storch as an ill-fated cub scout leader, Cameron Mitchell as a gung-ho hunter, a pre–Malibu Express Darby Hinton as Mitchell’s son and Neville Brand and Ralph Meeker (in his last role) as a pair of dis­be­liev­ing bar patrons. Another key ele­ment of the film’s appeal is that it was bor­rowed from by Predator, which it pre­dates by a good seven years (both films also fea­ture Kevin Peter Hall play­ing their cen­tral alien characters!).

Unfortunately, Without Warning falls short of its promise due to a lack­lus­ter treat­ment of its admit­tedly intrigu­ing premise.  Despite the pres­ence of four screen­writ­ers, the sub­plots never cohere and there are moments where the story drags — the worst is a long ten-minute of stretch of noth­ing at the top of the third act as our two teen heroes wan­der around aim­lessly in a rural house.  Clark’s direc­tion is tech­ni­cally solid but weak on pace and the hum­drum script keeps the film from being more than an under-performing programmer.

That said, exploita­tion buffs with a yen for sci-fi/horror stuff will still want to check out Without Warning for a few rea­sons.  For starters, Palance and Landau are a lot of fun to watch, with Palance deliv­er­ing all his lines in a surly whisper/growl and Landau ham­ming it up like there’s no tomor­row.  The flesh-disc effects are wonky but fun to watch and the design of the alien, mas­ter­minded by a pre–Lost Boys Greg Cannom, has a cool, retro design to it.  Better yet, the last ten min­utes deliver a worth­while show­down between man and alien that sends the film out on a pos­i­tive note.

However, the best thing about Without Warning is the stel­lar cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Dean Cundey, who gets max­i­mum atmos­phere from the film’s woodsy locales.  He and his cam­era crew do a lot of skill­ful hand-held pho­tog­ra­phy, includ­ing what appears to be some early Steadicam work, and pull off some gor­geous night exte­ri­ors.  His skill­ful work gives the film a level of pro­duc­tion value that it would not have oth­er­wise (see the recent MGM-HD broad­cast if you can, as it shows off his work to great effect).

Ultimately, Without Warning is more of an inter­est­ing foot­note than a lost gem but chances are you’ll still want to see it if you’re into space-schlock.  It’s worth a look as long as you keep your expec­ta­tions in check.