Behold! Action, Science Fiction, and Horror blended together in all it’s gruesome glory!
Predator (1987)
Directed By: John McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October)
The Prologue
You know I have a soft spot for Predator. I remember watching it when I was a kid and really enjoying it. When I was little I had a thing for army movies and I also had a thing for horror so I got both of that all together with this flick.
The story of how this movie all came about is that the whole idea came up as a joke when someone said that if there was a Rocky 4 he’d have to face off against a creature from another planet because he had run out of opponents. Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas took the joke seriously and wrote a screenplay based on the joke. Arnold Schwarzenegger got attached to the project (which was originally going to be called “Hunter” and was well into production) and the rest as they say is history!
The Movie
So if you didn’t know the plot of this bad boy is a team of commandos, on a mission in a Central American jungle, find themselves hunted by an extra-terrestrial who isn’t here to mess around.
Right off the bat you get one heck of a cast here with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers (Apollo from Rocky), Jesse “The Body” Ventura, and Bill Duke! Yes this is the 80′s and yes it is rather awesome! I mean where else can you see two future Governors (Arnold of California and Ventura of Minnesota) spout off cheesy one liners but have it actually work instead of making your eyes twitch from how bad it is?
I’ll admit when I was a kid I loved this movie so much because Jesse Ventura was in it. I loved wrestling a thus would watch anything a wrestler was in. It also helped that the character of “Blain” was pretty darn cool as well, even if he did have a rather nasty habit.
In the same way that “From Dusk Til Dawn” would start off as one thing then go into something else years later, Predator starts off as a pretty cool war film before getting into the parts where the group starts getting hunted down in a pretty graphic game of cat and mouse with the always looking for a challenge Predator..who if you didn’t hear is one ugly mother..well you know.
From the point The Predator starts skinning people and ripping them apart it’s easy to get hooked on the film as you watch it. If you love horror and you love gore you get plenty of that here and if you just like military based movies you get plenty of that stuff as well so this movie seems to have something for everyone, unless you are a bit skemish, but if you are you probably won’t be reading this now.
The final showdown between Arnold and The Predator is still one of my favorite finals to watch.
The Conclusion
The 80′s were indeed cool for the most part folks, and this movie is way way up there on my cool list. With word of Robert Rodriguez behind a reboot of Predator one can hope it stays true to this original classic. And with that I mean I hope we get the guts and gore without it being all CGI
I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know when it comes to this movie but if for some reason you have not seen it yet then do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s in my humble opinion one of the best of the 80′s.
Oh and I got the review of Predator 2 coming up so..”Stick around”
The Rating (7.5/10)
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