There's Nothing Out There

After a boffo opening that will have you longing for those mom 'n' pop video stores of old, THERE'S NOTHING OUT THERE begins!

It's spring break, and a group of high school friends head out to a house in the deep woods. When the partying starts, these young people are unaware that something has decided to join them. Something not of this world! Bizarre events take place almost immediately.

The horror fanatic of the group expects grisly disaster at every turn. Luckily for us, he's right! Copious gore and nudity explode onto the screen!

This movie is for the low-budget horror enthusiast, as well as the self-aware parody lover. It's loaded with cheeeze-on-purpose and stereotypical characters. Is there superior acting? No. Deep, philosophical dialogue? Not a bit. More fun than a barrel full of quivering monkey guts? Yes!

The monster is sheer, rubbery perfection! The face melting sequence is incredible-ness itself! The beheading is brilliance on toast, with extra tomato! The final conflict will have you saving light bulbs and praying for a girlfriend like Stacy (Bonnie Bowers)!

This is one of a handful of Troma films that are truly worth watching. Watch it now!

One of 'Screams' fore-fathers in that it provides a character who has seen tons of horror movies and knows what to expect next! The plot is familiar - students who head out to the woods for a weekend of sex and alcohol are then terrorized by an alien. Yet, the writers definitely did this one up tongue in cheek style. Watch for the classic boom-mic scene. Skeeter gives it 9 for 10!

Before we got the likes of Scary Movie, there was this. Smart, fast paced film with a good sense of humor and a game cast is about seven college students going to a remote cabin and falling prey to an alien that is looking to reproduce. This time around though, one of the kids knows that they are part of a horror movie and knows exactly what is going to happen. However, his friends don't pay attention naturally.

Rated R; Sexual Situations, Rape, Nudity, Violence, and Profanity.

In low-budget horror spoof There's Nothing Out There, seven teenagers - couples Jim and Doreen (Mark Collver and Wendy Bednarz), Janet and David (Claudia Flores and Jeff Dachis), and Stacy and Nick (Bonnie Bowers and John Carhart III), plus 'gooseberry' Mike (Craig Peck) - spend spring break at a rural house in the woods, unaware that a vicious killer alien is lurking nearby.

If anyone should know how to survive a horror film scenario, it's a horror film fan - someone who recognises the warning signs, is familiar with the genre's tropes, and who understands what needs to be done in any given horror situation. That's the premise of There's Nothing Out There, scary movie aficionado Mike being the only one to realise the danger he and his friends are in and act accordingly. While his pals are wandering through the woods at night, skinny dipping in a pond, or having sex, he's preparing himself for a battle against the unknown. Hell, at one point he even suspects that he might be in a horror movie!

This meta approach makes the film more fun than if it were played straight - it's knowingly dumb and deliberately exploits all of the genre clichés, with characters doing the most asinine things guaranteed to place them in peril. In one crazy scene, writer/director Rolfe Kanefsky even has a character grab hold of the boom mic to swing to safety - it's that kind of film! The monster itself is a delightfully shonky, tentacled rubber creature that fires green laser beams from its eyes, there's a modicum of gore (with a wonderfully orchestrated decapitation scene), and all of the girls (and a couple of the guys) shed their clothes: Doreen takes a shower and strips for fireside sex, Janet has her clothes ripped off by the creature, and Stacy gets jiggy with Nick and spends the remainder of the movie running around in a bikini (and looks great doing so!).

It all amounts to a big dose of schlocky B-movie silliness, coated with goopy layer of green alien slime, which should appeal to anyone who can identify with Mike, for whom horror is not just a hobby, but a way of life.

I'm not the biggest fan of horror comedy, but this one adequately takes the clichés of eighties horror and blends them into a fairly funny little flick. It's obvious that the people involved were horror fans themselves, as the film revolves around an all-too typical horror theme. The lead character is Mike; a horror movie buff, who travels up to a lake-side cabin to spend a weekend with six friends. Mike begins to spot signs of danger, but the others dismiss his theories. However, it turns out that he's not wrong and pretty soon the group fall foul of something living out there in the area surrounding the lake-house. The film doesn't really work as a horror film in its own right; obviously the director was more interested in generating laughter than scares. But the self-referential jokes are quite funny, and the film is good at picking out the various horror movie clichés and poking fun at them. Unfortunately, I saw this on a rather poor VHS copy, but apparently there's a better DVD out now. Overall, There is Nothing Out There didn't do as much for me as it evidently did for others, but it makes for a fun viewing and is recommended to fans of horror comedy.