The Terror Within

1989 "It Wants To Get Out!"
4.7| 1h30m| en| More Info
Released: 20 January 1989 Released
Producted By: Concorde Pictures
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Experiments in biological warfare have destroyed all but a few remnants of the human race. Alone in a lab, eight students work feverishly to create a vaccine before they are forced outside in search for food. It is then that the surviving scientists discover creatures mutated by the plague. Now they prepare to do battle against their worst fear: The Terror Within.

... View More
Stream Online

Stream with Prime Video

Director

Producted By

Concorde Pictures

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

Stream on any device, 30-day free trial Watch Now

Trailers & Images

Reviews

Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
gpeltz I am taking about "The Terror Within, 1989, A Roger Corman Production. Spoiler Alert. I will be talking about the plot, This movie has the iconic George Kennedy as the senior lead. A role well suited to the veteran Sci Fi ace. Here he leads a scientific exploration group in a post apocalyptic world. Along for the ride are the usual staff: From the grunt workers to the top. The cast,:Andrew Stevens as David, Starr Andreeff as Sue, Terri Treas as Linda, and a handful of others, go through their actions in earnest, Imagining themselves, I suppose, in a bigger budget production, where they are not terrorized by a guy in a rubber suit. Lord they do try, The picture looks good, all production values on the mark, the writers have a tendency to repeat sequences, things are done in pairs, search the lower decks, " is the baby human?" let's split up" Don't leave the control room, The flaws are breath taking, The plot takes a "Ten Little Indian" turn by midpoint, I am sorry, so sue me, but the monster on the soundtrack reminded me of the great Supy Sales's, off stage pet, "Black Tooth" Blarh ! So the crew is wiped out by reason of stupidity, The rubber guy got them and they did not even shoot their weapons or blow their whistles, All very entertaining, Take the kids, they won't get the "pregnant part" anyway. Real popcorn thrower. I give it Three out of Five "short of a hoot." Stars
Scarecrow-88 Well if you are going to make a no-budget B-movie it is nice to have a cast committed to their roles, willing to put forth decent performances. It also never hurts to have the caliber of a go-to character actor like George Kennedy in the cast, either.The integrity of an underground installation is compromised when abnormal humans (nicknamed "gargoyles") who seemed to have developed into monsters due to radioactive fallout thanks to war that wiped out 99% of mankind, find out their entrance (a shack in the middle of the Mojave desert). Oh, but that really isn't the problem for the small Mojave Lab crew holed up in the installation. Two of the members (the handsome Andrew Stevens and cherubic Starr Andreeff) find a female human survivor of the plague, bring her to the lab, and it is soon discovered that she is pregnant. The fetus is actually a monster, a victim of the plague, abnormal because of the radioactive effects of the outside atmosphere (it is also possible she was raped by one of the gargoyles). During a surgical removal operation, the monster escapes into the ventilation shaft, leaving the crew concerned about their safety because its growth rate is also abnormal. Multi-leveled, the installation has several places to hide and it will be up to a coordinated, intricately planned hunt for the creature if the crew is to find and kill it. Sound familiar? Even after ten years, the inspiration of Alien continues to reverberate into the later 80s (and 90s). The Terror Within has a monster fetus "exit" very similar to the infamous chest bursting scene, this time fleeing from the surgical stomach cut by the installation's chief medical officer. Aimed with a laser (its use is limited to four shots) and a blow torch (yes, quite similar to Alien, also), the weaponry at their disposal requires getting close to the monster. Soon, the movie becomes a "man in rubber suit" affair with Stevens and company in pursuit of the seemingly indestructible monster that walks upright but has a protruding face and hands with claws that rip flesh in one strike. Several are downed in quick order due to neck flesh wounds by the creature's aforementioned claws. The most tragic scene is what happens to Andreeff, who rushes to help her beloved Stevens (they are lovers in the movie), when she is captured and sexually molested by the creature on the rampage. Andreeff, I thought, was really good during her limited contribution to the film, and her plight/fate truly saddened me. She has an almost angelic quality to her. Terri Treas is also quite good as the doctor who must join forces with Stevens after the monster has wiped out most of the crew and figure out some way to kill the damned thing on the loose. Sealing the ventilation ducts is one option, clever use of high frequency sound inspired by Stevens' dog whistle, and survival techniques right out of Rambo 101 are also options tried by Stevens and Treas, hoping that something might stop it from adding them to its death list. While it's an obvious rubber suit, I thought the designers done a good job on making the creature as ugly and ferocious as possible. And those monster fetus designs and neck flesh wounds are properly grotesque. I admit that I enjoy Alien, Robocop, and Terminator rip-offs, and "The Terror Within" was better than I expected. Sure, the sets and props, even the rubber suited monster, are meager, but given the budget Thierry Notz had to work with, I found "The Terror Within" rather surprisingly exciting and fun. Notz hasn't had a lucrative directorial career, but I did enjoy his Watchers II. Stevens, I thought, actually doesn't make too bad a hero and has the looks for the role. Treas gets to be heroine at times and come to Stevens' rescue even, so I imagine she had a blast in her role (she has an inspired line, "I'm a doctor, not an engineer."). An obvious criticism will be that this film doesn't have one original idea, but I never felt it was designed to be anything more than a cash-in sci-fi actioner mimicking other popular flicks from the past.
slayrrr666 "The Terror Within" is an entertainingly cheesy creature feature.**SPOILERS**On a research mission, Hal, (George Kennedy) David, (Andrew Stevens) Sue, (Starr Andreeff) Andre, (John Lafayette) Linda, (Terri Treas) and Neil, (Tommy Hinkley) begin worrying that their mission should be concluded. Believing that the gargoyles around pose no real threat to them, they find young Karen, (Yvonne Saa) sole survivor of a massacre, alone in the wilderness and bring her back to them with safety. Trying to determine how she survived the plague-ridden countryside, the eventual discovery of her abnormal pregnancy is made. During the abortion attempt, the fetus produces a monster that wreaks havoc through the military base. Determining the reason behind it's attacks, the team scours the base for the creature and launches a plan to get rid of it before it is able to kill off the entire crew one-by-one.The Good News: While not a great film, this one here is pretty decent. One of it's inherent pluses is that it manages to evoke a really campy attitude towards itself. There's no sense of it every really being taken seriously, especially not with the creature present or it's blatant use of so many copied scenes in it's plot. The monster itself is the biggest one, as it's got a great design to it that only manages to provoke giggles through the fact that it's made up of a badly-done suit. The reptilian facial features, crocodilian jaws, bony scalp and icy stare give it a great look that may have come off fairly well if done right, and there is moments where it does look intimidating. The film does move at a pretty nice pace, keeping it between one encounter with the creature at a time and one significant discovery until it's done capitalizing on the previous one. This really makes it seem like there's no real down-time at all, and by making the creatures' appearance in the film really early works wonders. This allows for the second half to be a series of showdowns, making their action-packed exploits all the easier to sit through. The initial appearance of the creature is the real highlight, coming through in a really gory, bloody way that looks quite gruesome and shocking. It's hard not to be impressed by that scene, even though it's blatantly taken from another film. There's even some more gore thrown in with it's few kills, with some exceedingly graphic throat slashings, a couple of stomachs ripped open to various degrees in interior-organ-display, scratches along the face and chest and more as well, leaving this one nice and bloody when it wants to be. This also deserves the praise of keeping the creature off camera until well into the film, as the beginning stalking scenes are done through the creature's POV, and this leads into some pretty nice scenes. Overall, this one wasn't all that bad as it could've been.The Bad News: This one here didn't have a whole lot of failings, but they were visible. The biggest flaw in the film is the fact that the film decides to liberally steal from other sources. The basic premise of the film, several of it's key action and plot-point set-pieces are taken from one singular movie, the creatures' actions are the exact same as another film, and there's a whole series of scenes that come off as being featured in a thousand individual scenes themselves. All of these five the film an unmistakable sense of repeated affairs when nearly every scene is from another film. That makes the film's scenes stand out more, as it's going to be more noticeable that's where they're coming from. It's quite hard to see these scenes as anything but that, leading many to become instantly dismissed due to the outright stealing that they use. The other major flaw is that simply, the creature looks terrible. The basic design is great, but there's the fact that it's just a badly-made suit for it's scenes. This is quite evident, as it looks way to fake to be anything else but a cheaply-done monster. It's way to humanoid, sports not a whole lot of detailing in major areas that need it, and just simply screams fake. These here are the main problems in the film.The Final Verdict: With a load of cheesy charm, this one here does include some obvious flaws mixed in with it as well. Lovers of cheesy creature features should owe it to themselves to give it a shot, while those with more discriminating tastes will find the negatives more than outweigh the good parts.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity and mention of a rape
hip_school_preppie This movie is a direct cross of Alien and The Beast Within. Alien, a great Sci-Fi flick, had the birth and rapid growing which was poorly repeated in this flick. The Beast Within (notice the title similarity), which was a decent horror movie for it time, has the same theme of a monster trying to mate with every woman it comes across. They took two good movies and made one pretty bad one. The low budget definitely didn't help. The "Gargoyle" reminded me of Godzilla. A rubbery suit that was too big for the guy wearing it. Water, or some sort of goo/liquid sprayed on the suit would have helped - looked too dry. I will give it 1 star for gore though.