Normally I scoff, cough, or get violently ill when confronted with the prospect of an Arnold Schwarzennegger movie, but when the cast includes a monster designed by Stan Winston and the former pro-wrestling governer of Minnesota, the bouts of illness turn into vomits of joy! Such is the case with PREDATOR. With special FX brilliance, andrenaline pumping direction by John McTiernen, and big dudes with big firearms, you can't help but fall into this movie! Sure, some of the more meak amongst us would rather sit down and watch a 15 hour documentary on the long term effects of slow drying cement, but if you want pace, violence, and balls in your throat death, here we have it! Besides, Ventura alone is worth the price of admission!

Our story follows Vietnam vet (and resident brick shithouse) Major Dutch Schaefer (Arny), who's contacted by the military to take his crew of leathernecks back into action for a top secret government mission. The special-ops rescue team is supposed to go into the unfriendly bushes of South American jungle land, where they're to rescue a group of hostages held by some bloodthirsty rebels, kidnapped from a downed airliner. Like the kinda shit Chuck Norris usually sticks to. When the group 'chute down into the greenery, they discover a little more than they expected, as they find bodies, skinned like fish and hanging from the trees! Even more surprising, the bodies belong to US green berets... you know, like Rambo. Not to be phased by this kind of atrocity, the gang heads on to their mission, blowing up an outpost of enemy soldiers and leaving an orgy of flaming bullet riddled bodies everywhere! You know the usual Schwarzenegger fare of killing off mobs of extras. But, turns out there are no hostages...

Yep, like Uncle Sam loves to do, the government lied to their brainless robots, giving them the bullshit story about the trapped Americans in order to get their iron asses in and destroy the base, for no real reason other than because the US gov doesn't agree with them. Problem is, they figured Dutch and his men wouldn't do it without the proper motivation, so they made of the downed plane crap. Meanwhile, business picks up, as we see there's someone (or something) following the government sponsored hitmen... something with infra-red heat vision that doesn't sound too human. When they leave the massacre, the boys take a hostage of their own with them: a young South American woman. Yeah, 7 or 8 US army guys, I bet she's gonna be treated like the rules demand... unless of course you're reading the Ted Kennedy version of the rule book... Not long into their trek back to their meeting point, the girl makes a break for it, attempting to lose her captors in the surrounding jungle. When the team splits up to look for her, the one who finds her gets an unwelcome hello by our nigh-invisible stalker, who attacks the poor soldier boy, then drags his carcass off into the canopy! The rest of the gang shows up to find the P.O.W. in a state of shock, frozen in place and looking into the direction the fallen man was carried. THey snap her out of it, and from that moment on the girl becomes more docile, realizing that these AMerican with their big guns are the only thing standing between her and me... you know, Death... forget whose page you're at dingus?

Of course the invisible slasher isn't done there, as he continues to hunt the members of the team, picking them off one-by-one Jason style. The next to go, sadly, is Sgt. Blain (Ventura), his big helicopter side gun useless as the unseen fiend's lasers tear a huge gaping hole in the beefcake's MTV shirt, along with the chest cavity beneath it of course! I got dibs on his CRODILE DUNDEE hat... The rest of the group shows up just in time to be too late, as all cinematic military squads always are, but to make up for their late arrival, they mow down half to fucking rainforest! And to think, the hippies are worried about corporations doing it! Despite their massive landscaping job though, they only manage to injure the creature who, though stays invisible, still leaves behind a fair amount of green blood, only it's not acidic like that other outer space menace. From here the monster reveals him/her/it-self to us, as he/she/it unpacks /his/her/it's portable surgery kit to heal the wounds picked up in that bad lawn mowing overkill accident. And believe me, Stan Winston out did himself on this beastie! Afterwards, the Predator (yep, that's our title creature) packs up and heads back out to finish the job, taking out more of the group, again in one-by-one guerilla fashion... and no, not "gorilla" fashion, as the Pred does NOT slap it's chest and grunt and throw it's feces at the good guys. Even though that'd be hilarious, it doesn't happen.

On their blood soaked journey through the heat and humidity, Anna (the P.O.W.) tells our troops that this isn't the first time the beast has dropped from the Heavens and raised some Hell. Turns out the Predator, or "the demon who makes trophies of man" (which explains all the skinned bodies and missing skulls), comes to the jungle on holiday, like a rich old white dude on Safari. It the only shows up during the REALLY hot and uncomfortable time of the year, which is obviously it's climatory preferance. Then, we proceed with the slayings, as the space monster obliterates everyone in the gang except for our protagonist Dutch and the lovely Anna. After sending Anna on her way to safety, Dutch plays out the classic final confrontation with the monsterous ass-kicker. The whole "Dutch beats the Pred using techniques he learned in the Boy Scouts Handbok" battle is actually rather nice, as he defeats the creature's advanced technology using primitive weapons and traps, such as sharp sticks, and... uhm... more sharp sticks. His low tech guerilla tactics outshine the Pred's advanced alien weaponry guerilla tactics (you can't beat a guy who survived 'Nam, man!), and it all leads to an "honorable" hand-to-claw brawl-for-all. But, Dutch has one last trick up his sleave, as he pins the great green fuck face (and he does have one fucked up face at that!) under a log trap. Not one to lose with grace, the Pred sets his wrist gauntlet to "blow myself up real good" mode, chosing death before dishonor. Dutch realizes what's going on just in the nick of time (as Arny does in ALL his action movies) and manages to escape with Anna before the creature does some of it's own landscaping, turning a sizeable piece of nature into a sizeable piece of smoldering black crud!

Normally I run in fear at the mention of an action movie, as they usually contain sub-intelligent plots, unoriginal characters, and the same old explosion footage over and over again. PREDATOR however, using it's sci-fi basis to it's advantage, manages to change that. For instance, it's not just another evil terrorist getting his ass kicked, but an intergallactic hunter! It's not just a city they're in, it's the deadly jungles of South America! They're not just a group of unintelligable leathernecks, they're... well, alright, so that stereotype fits the bill. Anyway, the action itself was very fast and very in-your-face, and all those other buzz words too. No surprise though, because McTiernan would later be responsible for THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, DIE HARD, DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, THE 13TH WARRIOR, LAST ACTION HERO, DIE HARD ON YO' MOMMA... ok, so a few of those aren't worth wasting the brain cells and that last one is still in the works, but hey, the guy has a flare for pacing! The other great stand out of the film is the design of the title creature. Stan Winston and his crew really went all out to make a very realistic, yet very fucked up space hunter! From it's face to it's arsenal, all very good and original! Unfortunately, would it be too much to ask for a movie in which I don't have to listen to Arnold and his brainless one-liners?! That accent of his just makes him sound even more mentally handicapped than all the other one-gag action stars! I have to admit though that there were a couple good lines, not funny ones, but he-man macho lines. For instance, Arnold's one great line was the classic, "if it bleeds we can kill it". But, Ventura had the geatest lines of all, especially the line Duke Nuke 'Em plaguerized, "I ain't got time to bleed"! All these great elements combined, action, comedy, and sci-fi make for a bitchin' flim that could only have been a little bit better. How? Do what Cameron did in THE TERMINATOR and limit Arnold to two lines...

Sequels: PREDATOR 2

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: THE TERMINATOR or STAR HUNTER