Without Warning is a great reminder for all the actors out there that it is okay to take roles in lesser films when your career is in a lull. Look at the two guys starring in it: Martin Landau and Jack Palance. Both are over 50 in age here. Both would go on to win Oscars after the film. David Caruso is also in it, and he is a great reminder that when you are in the most popular show on TV, sign up for another season instead of trying to make it in sexy neo-noir thrillers.
And what a b-movie it is. Without a Doubt is two shillings away from being shot on tape. It had a budget of 150k and 75k went to the two leading men. It’s made on a budget, and it glows. It glows big time!
It’s about a bunch of teenagers (Caruso being one of them in short shorts) that are going to a lake to do some partying. Before, they meet not one, but two, old men who warn them of the lake. Those two men are Landau and Palance. Obviously, alien creatures are about. Little shell looking discs that jump on unsuspecting campers and ooze goo and blood as its tentacles make way into the victim. “Flying critters,” as Landau explains. He is the crazy vet in town that has been warning people about the invaders, but nobody believes him.
The pièce de resistance is the humanoid form (or master?) of the critters. It’s a blue gray that looks a bit like the OG grey from the Outer Limits episode The Bellero Shield. That’s the tv episode that aired before Betty and Barney Hill described the aliens that abducted them as greys. Who starred in that episode? Yeap, Martin Landau.
Also, the dude who portrays the grey is Kevin Peter Hall, the master who was the predator in both the original and first sequel before he succumbed to AIDS in 1991.
The premise and execution are as basic as basic can be but it makes up for it with the casting. Aside from the kids, all the old timers are played by Hollywood old timers. It’s a charming mix of Friday the 13th and Critters—two films that came out after Without Warning.
