"Now wait a second!" I can hear you say. "This isn't the film we were expecting today! Where's Alien3? Where's the film that some say marked the start of the Alien series' descent into mediocrity at best?" Well don't worry people, Alien3 will be coming in a couple of days, but we've got a couple of other movies to cover first - starting with the 1987 film Predator. Because, as we all know, the Alien movies and Predator movies eventually cross over in 2004 (after a tease in 1990 much like Freddy Krueger's glove at the end of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday) and you all know how much I hate to review films out of chronological order.
A Special Forces commando team lead by "Dutch" Schaefer is tasked with a mission to rescue a diplomat whose chopper went down in a Central American jungle, where he was captured by guerrillas. Dutch and his team - Mac, Billy, Blain, Poncho and Hawkins - are also joined by CIA agent and old friend of Dutch's, Dillon. Once they enter the jungle, however, they quickly discover that more is going on than they've been told - the "diplomat" turns out to be an intelligence operative; another team was sent in before Dutch's; and something else is in the jungle, hunting and killing people and skinning them and taking their skulls and spinal columns. Trapped deep in the jungle with an unseen assailant stalking them and picking them off one at a time, Dutch and his team must find a way to reveal this hunter and defeat him - before none of them are left to hunt...
Remember in my review of John Carpenter's Vampires, when I discussed the idea of the male version of the "chick flick" (not a "guy-cry" film) - a film that's clearly designed to be a fun romp with action and explosions and a pretty basic plot? Well, Predator is another one of those films (not that any of that means that only men can enjoy them because I generally think these films are awesome as well, as do many other women). Seven very macho and muscular men with guns head into the jungle, shoot some bad guys and set off a lot of explosions, and then get picked off one by one by an unseen killer? It's another 14-year-old's dream movie. Predator is also a pretty clear example of a slasher film, however - if you remove some of the specific descriptors you've got a film where a group go into the woods (jungle) and are stalked and killed one at a time by an unseen killer, whose gaze we sometimes get to see through. Recently, I even read an article that proposed a queer reading of Predator - seven very macho and muscular guys spend a movie showing off their muscles, getting sweaty and shirtless and are all clearly uninterested in the only female they meet - and it does make some sense in an amusing way.
Predator was directed by John McTiernan. This was actually only his second film; he went on to direct such well-known action films as Die Hard, The Last Action Hero and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, so it's pretty safe to say that he's a director with a good eye for action films. His films aren't just dumb bullets-and-explosions, however; there's some actual depth in his films (not too deep though) - the predator-prey ideas in Predator, for example, might be obvious to us now but it would have been very easy to just fill the screen with shell casings, blood squibs and explosions for 100-odd minutes, and of course there are the afore-mentioned slasher movie parallels. The writers, meanwhile, were brothers Jim and John Thomas. Their other works include Wild Wild West, which... well, Nick liked that movie, but he would also defend the Ghost Rider movies so we know his tastes were sometimes suspect. We won't hold that against them, though, because Predator is a very tightly-written film that does a lot with minimal to no dialogue in places.
What really makes Predator stand out though is its cast. There's Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course, future (at the time) Governor of California. There's Jesse "The Body" Ventura, former Navy SEAL and WWE wrestler, future Governor of Minnesota and owner of a chin dimple you could store M&Ms in. There's Sonny Landham, former 70s porn star and future candidate for Governor of Kentucky (he didn't win), who had to have a bodyguard accompany him at all times while the movie was being made, not for his safety but because the insurance company insisted one be on hand to protect people from him, as he had a reputation for starting fights. There's Carl Weathers, former professional football player and Apollo Creed. And Peter Cullen as the (uncredited) voice of the Predator - yes, Optimus Prime (and Eeyore). And that's just half the cast.
While in general Predator is a sci-fi horror, its slasher elements are still clearly there. The entire third act, where Dutch sets his traps and prepares for his final battle with the Predator, could have been taken straight from the Nancy Thompson Guide to Home Defence, with the only difference being that Schwarzenegger can't really play a teenage girl so there's no Final Girl comparison. And while at the time reviewers were less than kind about the film ("slightly above-average... tissue-thin plot" and "...one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made..." were just two comments on it at the time), it's become rightly recognised as an iconic, enjoyable sci-fi/horror/action movie, that would eventually become entangled with the Alien franchise, with... mixed results...
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