Watchers - The Chase Is On

wings hauser carrys this film.

he takes over the character that marc singer played in the second film.

basicly if you liked the first 2 films you will like this one.

i consider this film to be a cheap version of predator.

There are few movie series more repetitive than Watchers, however this third entry in a franchise nobody asked for actually takes the closest stab at originality you're going to find under the Watchers banner.

When I say originality, I mean for the series, because there ain't nothing original about Watchers III. This is as cookie cutter a Predator ripoff as you're ever likely to find.

The plot concerns a military officer named Ferguson (Wings Hauser) currently wasting his days away in military prison. He's offered the chance to lead a team of convicts on a top secret mission into the a Peruvian jungle to find out why they've lost contact with a base there. Of course this is a smokescreen, and horror's most mediocre double act Einstein the super intelligent Golden Retriever and the Outsider, his psychic-bonded mutant monster brother are loose in the jungle and the reason all previous personnel are dead. It isn't long before the team have adopted Einstein and are battling for survival against the Outsider.

Now, in addition to not being EXACTLY the same plot as the other 3 movies in the series, you may also have picked up that this also boasts a series first in the form of a degree of continuity. A soldier named Ferguson in trouble with his superiors was the leading character in the previous instalment, and while it's never explicitly stated, he also references a history with the dynamic duo of dog and devil. There's also plenty of stock footage, but this is Roger Corman, that doesn't inherently imply continuity.

What's interesting though is that despite this, he doesn't seem remotely perturbed by the fact the Outsider has completely altered in appearance. In the previous movie it was a largely bald but for patches of hair thing with a vaguely reptilian head that was so badly designed I don't know how to describe it. Here it's an entirely hairless, kind of crusty, exoskeleton looking thing with a massive, triangular crest at the back of its head. It reminds me of a mixture of the thing from The Fly II, the crustacean from Deepstar Six & something Screamin' Mad George came up for in the Guyver movies. It does honestly look better than what you see on the cover, but still far from good, which makes the decision to keep showing it in daylight all the more questionable.

I suppose it's to try keep things exciting, because it is an otherwise entirely bland affair, ticking every box on the way to genetic Predator-ripoff heaven. Diversely presented but one dimensional soldiers it's impossible to like, corrupt officials, shooting into the rainforest while shouting, it's all here.

Wings Hauser gets a good rep online in B-Movie circles, and while I've never been a huge fan (ok to be fair I've only seen a handful of movies he's in) he's...workable here. Which is just as well cause he's the best of an utterly contemptible bunch. It is a bit of a stretch to think he's meant to be the same character as Marc Singer played, although he is a fellow Beastmaster series alumni so I'll permit it.

As I said with the previous entry, I feel like if you're looking up Watchers III you probably already have a rough idea if you're gonna like it, and while it's certainly nothing resembling good, I've also seen much worse. You could probably cobble together quite a compendium of bad low budget horror movies set in the jungle made in the early to mid 90s, and this will slot perfectly in there.

I finally got to see this movie after about 8 years of research (when I started, Internet was something off-limits for most of the people), just because I've been obsessed with Koontz'novel (and related movies) for quiet a while. I'm pretty disappointed for what I saw, but I also have to admit I enjoyed the experience: this is one of those so-bad-is-so-good cases. The fun begins as the movie starts, when you see WATCHERS 2 footage re-used as new material (a voice-over and a detail of two boxes and you've your prologue - this is the real and pure Corman spirit) and proceeds through the entire movie, with blue-screen as sky for helicopter insides and a gummy suit with toy-eyes for the "monster". As Notz, Stanford decides to show the Outsider pretty early, giving away any chance of suspense: it doesn't matter if you insist with shadows and POV after, since you have spoiled it before. This time, the creature design is really horrible, in a bad way: even its shadow is ridiculous. A furry thing like the Oxcom in WATCHERS would have been better (and scarier). This is the first real sequel to a previous entry in the series: it takes the character of Ferguson from the previous movie, even though the two story lines are a little bit in contrast (again, other WATCHERS 2 footage: doesn't matter if the creatures are totally different). The screenplay adds some other elements from the original novel (the cave, for instance - even if it was switched to the sewers in the previous film) but most importantly completely rips off the PREDATOR storyline and settings, so we get a squad of soldiers (all convicted) against the "evil menace". Actually, the plot wants to be a little bit more dramatic than the previous entries, but you can't take seriously a movie with a bad Halloween costume as the monster. It's a little pity, since Wings Hauser tries to but has the entire feature against himself. On a first sight, this flick looks gorier than the previous, but actually it is not: after a mutilated body, we don't see very much - in fact, another funny element it's the way the characters die. The action sequences are pretty cheesy too (like the end). Again, the real and only impressive thing is the dog's performances. The first WATCHERS remains the best (and we're not talking about a masterpiece!), for now.

What, it got no Oscars? I wonder why? Well, I guess Dean's Watchers will never be made into a good movie... which does not really matter in this case, because it has nothing to do with the novel. It's YAPR (Yet Another Predator Ripoff). You've seen one, you've seen them all. This one isn't as idiotic as some of them (X-Tro 3...), but certainly not 1/10 as good as the original. Simply another below-average flick. Watch it if you can't get anything else, and don't have to pay for this one. Or if you're curious about the Watchers line and you're wondering "what are they going to screw up this time?". They didn't screw up too much, but they just didn't come up with any ideas.

Watchers III (1994) is a movie I recently watched on YouTube. The storyline follows a group of convicts sent into the jungles of South America to retrieve an escaped science experiment. A golden retriever happens to be running through the same jungle that appears to be willing to help them...

This movie is directed by Jeremy Stanford (Trantasia) and stars Wings Hauser (Rubber), Gregory Scott Cummins (Cliffhanger), Daryl Keith Roach (Crocodile Dundee: Los Angeles), Frank Novak (Watchmen) and Christian Meier (Terminal).

The storyline and execution for this movie felt like a Predator ripoff...plus a dog. The opening kill in the jungle was fun; but unfortunately, probably the best part of the movie. The creature in this looks terrible and I'm surprised they put it on the cover of the film (they must have thought it looked good). Most of the horror scenes were a poorly executed man in costume sequence with limited gore but some good blood splatter here and there.

Overall, this is bad and not really worth your time. I would score this a 2/10 and recommend skipping it.