Predator (1987)

Predator (1987)

A fast-paced sci-fi / horror action film with effective special effects and tense atmosphere.

Directed by John McTiernan
Written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas
Produced by Lawrence Gordon, Joel Silver, John Davis
Cinematography: Donald McAlpine
Edited by John F. Link, Mark Helfrich
Music by Alan Silvestri
Production companies: 20th Century Fox, Davis Entertainment
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Running time: 107 minutes

Cast

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch
Elpidia Carrillo as Anna Gonsalves
Carl Weathers as Al Dillon
Richard Chaves as Poncho Ramirez
Sonny Landham as Billy Sole
Bill Duke as Mac Eliot
Jesse Ventura as Blain Cooper
Shane Black as Rick Hawkins
R. G. Armstrong as General Homer Phillips
Kevin Peter Hall / Peter Cullen (voice) as Predator

Trailer

A team of special force ops, led by Major "Dutch" Schaefer are on a mission to rescue potential survivors of a helicopter downed over a remote South American jungle.

The team has been deceived and are sent in under false pretenses.

Worse still, they find themselves being hunted by something not of this world.

Will Dutch and his team of commandos stand a chance against this ultimate predator from the stars?

*********

Suddenly I found myself staring into the black-hole of a rifle barrel. Transfixed, I had no time to process the prospect of my own impending oblivion before a voice commanded me to “Get OWWT, asshole !’

The voice seemed to belong to an angry omnipotent eyeball that appeared to be aiming the black-hole in my direction. That is until I saw it formed part of an aged, weathered, grizzled but strong face with a heavily stubbled chin.

“I said get owwt - NOWW!” the face commanded me again.

I cautiously took a step backwards and slowly raised my hands while  rotating on the spot to demonstrate that I was unarmed and posed no threat to the man. It was a gamble on my part to assume that he would not be inclined to gun down an unarmed man in cold blood. This despite having been taught never to assume anything.

I quickly told the man my Christian name, that it took me a great deal of effort to locate him given the fact that he lived in an isolated forested part of the country and that I had almost been impaled, crushed and blown to smithereens had I not been ‘fortunate’ enough to discover and avoid his cleverly laid traps intended for would-be unwelcome intruders. I guess good training does pay off even if I rarely had an opportunity to exercise it after I had left the….let’s say - ‘special forces.’ Still, here I was inside this man’s log cabin with a gun pointed at my head. The final trap and I was caught in it.

The fact that I had managed to evade the man’s clever outdoor traps seemed to peek his interest as he lowered his rifle ever so slightly and replied, “Unwelcome intruders like you, ass-hole.” His level of interest seemed to increase a bit more as the level of the gun’s barrel lowered some more, especially when I said in reply, “That’s right, Major Alan Schaefer – or should I say ‘Dutch?’

Suddenly the black-hole was staring into my face once more as Schaefer said, “Only my close friends get to call me ‘Dutch, smart ass! And they’re all dead now. Now what the fuck do you want here and how do you know me and why should I give a shit?”

Well, it was a slim chance, but I had a possible way in, hopefully without getting my head blown off. I asked Schaefer if I could slowly and carefully extract my credentials from my jacket pocket and show them to him. After an amount of time he seemed to have deemed suitable to display the requisite degree of hostile suspicion, he agreed.

After ordering me to divest myself of my backpack, followed be a cursory glance at my credentials, Schaefer said in a rather accusatory tone of voice, “So, you’re a fucking company man,” It was also mixed in with a large helping of disgust as he drew himself up to his full height and glared at me as if I was some kind of repulsive-looking sputum. It was then I noticed that despite his age (somewhere in his seventies perhaps) he still exuded a high degree of strength and power. I would not have liked to get on his wrong side which I felt I was now venturing further into than had so far been the case.

“Yes, I am Mr Schaefer,” I quickly but frankly admitted. “But much more than any company interest is at stake which if you will allow me just a few moments of your time I will explain the reason for my presence here. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll be out of your hair forever. I will be straight with you though and tell you from the outset that the very existence of our planet and our civilization is more than likely at stake. And that includes you despite your isolation from the rest of society.”

Suddenly Schaefer interrupted me. “They’ve returned again, haven’t they?” I found myself nodding in assent as no verbal clarification of who the ‘they’ were seemed to be necessary. “OK, I’ll give you your time...on one condition.” I asked Schaefer what that was and he replied, “Don’t call me Mr Schaefer. It makes me feel fucking old. Call me Alan – for nowww.” And don’t ever refer to me as ‘Major’ as I have well and truly burned all of my bridges to the military if you get what I mean. As for you, Mr William Marion Benson, I think I will call you ‘Marion’….for noww. A fitting name for a girlie-man” ‘Oh, great’ I thought to myself as Alan handed me back my ID.

It wasn’t long before Dutch (here I’ll refer to him by that name) and I sat opposite each other with a bottle between us of what could have only been some kind of gut rot paint stripper moonshine. He watched me as I heroically downed the first glass and survived...barely. Satisfied, Dutch lit up an enormous cigar, leaned back in his chair and proceeded to give birth to multiple swirling cumulus clouds of thick smoke. “So Marion, what the hell did you come here for?” Dutch asked.

With Dutch’s permission to record our conversation, I pressed the play and record button on the recorder I placed on the coffee table and began:

“The company, Weyland Corporation is headquartered in San Francisco and specialists in nanotechnology, cybernetics, energy, aerospace and biomedical Science. There’s almost daily reports on its involvement in commercial space missions such as industrialized orbital manufacturing platforms that produce ultra-pure alloys and crystalline substrates that are impossible to create on Earth. Then there’s the revolutionary synthetic atmosphere system that has achieved some success in reversing the warming trend of Earth's polar ice caps. Hell, the company is even exploring technologies that will help us one day achieve faster-than-light space travel and even the creation of synthetic life and the coloration of other worlds. This isn’t widely know just yet but Weyland Corp's Cybernetics Division has produce David 1, the first truly advanced synthetic humanoid prototype made possible by Weyland’s advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics.”

[The sound of Dutch exhaling cigar smoke] “No doubt this is all very profitable….for some. How long before you become a billionaire, Marion? Are all of you at Weyland Gods noww? ”

[Benson] “The important thing is that ‘They’ which you referred to have indeed appeared to have returned and it it is ‘They’ I have come to speak to you about considering you are the only one left alive who we know has had first-hand experience with them. We need your insights and any bit of information you can give us which will help to protect humanity from them should they prove to be hostile.”

[Dutch] “Yes, and I bet Weyland can hardly wait to get its hands on some lovely advanced alien technology to develop bio-weaponry and other military capabilities. Should prove to be immensely profitable and give someone a very healthy edge,” said Dutch.

[Benson] “You’re being too cynical, Alan. Developing such advanced weaponry could provide us with the means to defend ourselves. Look, recently Space Force Command detected an object moving through space on a trajectory towards Earth. This was followed by others at various locations around the world. The first object we detected was under obvious intelligent control. This extraterrestrial space craft launched a capsule, which entered Earth's atmosphere after which the spaceship departed at astonishing speed. The capsule has not been located yet and we aren’t certain about the others. Furthermore, deep space tracking has detected the presence of multiple objects at various points between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. The consensus is that these are alien spacecraft under intelligent control and whose purpose in our solar system and interest with our planet is as yet undetermined but must be viewed as a potential threat.

“Of course theories abound. There’s one school of thought that holds that these alien beings are undertaking probing activities prior to launching some kind of full-scale invasion of Earth. I don’t give that much credence though. Others believe that perhaps these aliens are in our system because we were foolish enough to indiscriminately broadcast our presence to all and sundry in the universe. Still others suggest that perhaps the aliens (what the hell do we call them apart from ‘aliens?’) have been forced to enter our solar system possibly because they are themselves threatened by another alien species. Who can say for sure? But yes, Alan, there are most likely other alien species as you’ll learn from what I’ll tell you shortly.

“Anyway, I don’t use the word ‘threat’ lightly considering what scraps of information have been gleaned from various written historical records as well as oral traditions handed down through the ages by various cultures. There’s a common thread to them involving stories about strange giant war-like creatures hunting down and killing human beings and even taking parts of their victims as trophies. It is as if they live for nothing but warfare or at least some kind of ritualized hunting. Once a hunt had been completed, the creatures seemed to just vanish until sometime later and at some other place it all starts up again when they mysteriously seem to appear out of thin air - all throughout human history it seems. I can’t begin to tell you how many instances there have been of people simply seeming to just disappear off the face of the earth especially involving soldiers from armed forces around the world, members of armed militias, violent drug gang members and on and on it goes. There are those in the company who are convinced that many of these disappearances seem to have something to do with these alien beings that appear and vanish at will.”

[Dutch] “Have you checked your news feeds lately? How much do corporations and governments profit from warfare and the opportunities afforded by it to develop newer and improved means of wiping out larger swathes of humanity? Don’t forget, I came face-to-face with one of those ugly mother-fucker alien creatures and I have lived with people all of my life. It is hard to distinguish which poses a greater threat. So, why don’t you continue telling me all that you know so far without the company preamble bullshit.”

[Benson] “From the American civil war to the conflict with and pursuit of Pancho Villa; from Japan’s Song Shogunate and Samurai Dynasty and the sagas of the Vikings through to the 20th century’s two world wars and the Korea and Vietnam wars. Reports of strange giant creatures suddenly materializing during times of armed conflict and doing battle with humans. There was even a belief that they were practically invincible. They were often thought to be demons clad in armor that bled green blood. Some who came into contact with the aliens thought that they operated according to some kind of code of honor. In feudal Japan, there was a name for these creatures who were thought of as being demons called the Oni. Another name that has has come down to us is ‘Yautja.’”

[Dutch]: Yautja, eh? I have seen one of them bleed and if it bleeds, we can kill it.”

[Benson] “OK then. Modern instances involving these extraterrestrials include the one reported in Los Angeles in 1997 when LAPD Lieutenant Mike Harrigan investigated a series of brutal ritualistic murders tied to warring Colombian and Jamaican drug gangs who were engaged in a turf war. Both drug lords and the innocent were being murdered but in this case we learned that Harrigan claimed that the killer was an invisible, technologically advanced extraterrestrial called the "City Hunter." The story gets a bit murky but in the end, Harrigan was officially pensioned off on the grounds of mental and emotional instability. He was last heard of giving talks around the world on police matters and may have been involved in another Yautja incident in Brasil - his second confrontation if we can believe the reports and rumors. He disappeared f afterwards and we learned that he had passed away only a couple of years ago. There were rumors that Harrigan was not alone in his knowledge of extraterrestrial involvement and presence on our planet at that time.

“The next event occurred in October of 2004 involving an archaeological expedition on Bouvetøya Island in Antarctica where a team of archaeologists and scientists found themselves embroiled in some kind of an extraterrestrial conflict.

“One of Weyland’s satellites in low Earth orbit had detected an unidentified source of heat in Antarctica and get this, determined it to have been a pyramid buried 2000 feet beneath the ice. Our boss, Weyland believed that he had discovered buried under the ice the ruins of an ancient pyramid temple predating the Egyptian and Aztec pyramids!”

“No shit!” [floating out of Dutch’s mouth on a roiling carpet of exhaled cigar smoke]

[Benson] “Included on the team of experts assembled by Weyland was a guide named Alexa Woods to whom Weyland made an offer to fund her organization for a year if she agreed to join the expedition. Woods had spent several seasons exploring both the Arctic and Antarctic environments. All we know is that once the expedition reached their destination, they soon came across signs indicating the presence of an unknown alien species. And not just one alien species, but two species apparently at war with one another. One of them being the subject of our discussion and the other about which we know next to nothing. Caught in the middle, the human team members appear to have become the prey of these two alien species.

“The only survivor was Alexa Woods. She seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth but there were reports of her having made contact with with the crew of a Russian (supposedly) research vessel. After a time she was conveyed to an American Antarctic research station and from that point….nothing more was heard about her. Elements of her story came out piecemeal but were largely dismissed as being the ravings of someone afflicted with mental and emotional trauma, especially with the ending of her account suggesting that she somehow teamed up with one of the aliens (the Yautja) to defeat its adversary and having been honored in a fashion by its brethren for achieving just that. Like I said, it’s pretty scrappy info and with Alexa’s unexplained disappearance, nothing can be confirmed as yet.”

[Dutch] “Sounds loopy to me. So, now we get to me, something which you can get straight from the horse’s mouth and if the company doesn’t like it they can put it down to the ravings of someone afflicted with old age and dementia.”

[Benson] “Well Alan, what did happen back in 1987?”

Read on for more.....