- Directed by Thierry Notz
- Written by Henry Dominic, based on the novel by Dean R. Koontz
- Starring
- Marc Singer
- Tracy Scoggins
- Jonathan Farwell
- Irene Miracle
- Tom Poster
- Produced by Roger Corman
I never saw the first Watchers movie, but I did read the Dean Koontz novel; like most of Koontz’s novels, it was firmly average, consciously calculated to appeal to a wide potboiler-seeking reading public. (No, that’s not a compliment.) Assuming, quite reasonably, that the movie bears a resemblance to the novel, here’s what you would know going into the sequel:
Look out! Geek convention!
There’s a super-intelligent Golden Retriever and a mutant killer baboon, both created at a super-secret government laboratory. The Retriever, being pretty, is therefore good and noble and innocent. The baboon-thing, being butt-ugly, is Ee-vil; plus, it knows its butt-ugly, which makes it hate itself, which only makes it more Ee-vil, and it hates the dog for being pretty. So when the dog escapes, the killer mutant baboon breaks out after it, the two being psionically linked. There are also some humans, and the dog befriends them and helps them with their life and helps them find love and security and all that, and in return they help him defeat the baboon-thing. It’s a lot like a combination of the TV shows Lassie and The Fugitive, but with a mutant killer baboon (which, arguably, would have been a great improvement).
And now that I’ve told you all of that, let me tell you that you don’t need to know any of it. Because this movie is not a continuation of the story from the first Watchers; it is, instead something of a “reimagining” of Watchers (pardon the anachronistic buzzword), taking the basic premise of good dog vs. Ee-vil baboon and replacing all the parts about humans.
For great first impressions, you can’t beat having two NSA agents enter a government lab (hey! that’s the same tunnel and corridor I saw last night in Cyberzone!) to check out stuff, enter the super-secret basement lab, open a cage to take some pictures, and have their faces ripped off by a mutant killer baboon. Yup, that’s why our U.S. intelligence organizations are feared the world over; we manage to cull the stupid ones out right here at home. The scientist in charge of the project, Steve Malceno (Jonathan Farwell), tries to get the whole thing hushed up, but to no avail; the entire project gets shut down thanks to two NSA dweebs who could read the “DO NOT FEED THE MUTANT BABOON YOUR FACES” signs.
Genetically-engineered MTV-vision.
Of course, not everyone knows about the super-secret project in the basement. Some, like animal psychologist Barbara White (Tracy Scoggins), who simply works with cuddly animals like the aforementioned Gold Retriever, Einstein (gee, I appreciate subtlety). Einstein’s meant to be more intelligent than your average dog, but all of Barbara’s attempts to teach him to recognize letters or complex commands are just greeted with a tailwag and a woof.
It’s moot, of course, because with the project shutdown all subjects are supposed to be destroyed. But Malceno is unwilling to let “AE74″ (you know, the baboon) be destroyed, so he arranges for some militant animal rights “liberation” types to get into the lab that night, with an eye toward freeing AE74 in the brouhaha. Unfortunately, some of the activists get a little to excited and venture into the basement that Malceno told them to stay away from, beating Malceno as he attempts to rescue AE74, and opening the cage. When Malceno comes to, he’s surrounded by corpses with their eyes plucked out. (If you’ve ready number of Koontz’s novels, you recognize this as being a disturbing recurring motif.)
Meanwhile, on a road not far away, two MPs are accompanying AWOL Marine Paul Ferguson (Marc Singer) on his way to the pokey for striking a superior officer. They wreck their jeep when the driving MP tries to hit a dog in the road (Einstein, naturally), and Paul yanks the wheel to the side. One MP is left unconscious, and the driver soon gets it worse when he hears something in the darkness and goes to investigate. Einstein retrieves the cuff keys from the knocked-out MP (hey, so that’s why he’s called a retriever!), and Paul and Einstein speed off in the nick of time as something vaguely baboon-shaped claws the two MPs to death.
Singer’s career certainly seems to bear a “talking with the animals” motif.
Paul and Einstein stay the night at his estranged wife Sarah’s place (Irene Miracle), but soon have to take off as police start crawling all over the place, considering him a suspect in the double murder. (The two detectives, by the way, are listed in the credits as “Smith” and “Wesson”. Har de har har.) Paul and Einstein trade his car for an untraceable junker and hide out in a seedy motel, where Einstein manages to demonstrate his great intelligence, first by cutting off Paul’s two attempts to call and turn himself in, and then understanding Paul’s pizza order (veggies, no; meats, yes). He then manages to communicate that Paul should call Barbara White; he does this by setting the phone book in Paul’s lap, pulling every white object in the room into a pile, and then when Paul finally clues to “White” and starts reading off the names in the book (good thing her name was also a noun in English), barking his head off when he hits “White, Barbara” (good thing her first name wasn’t “Zelda” — or that she didn’t just have her initial listed, like every other single woman in the world).
Unfortunately, AE74′s on the trail; he breaks in and kills Sarah (adding another murder to Paul’s suspect list), then follows up to the motel. Of course, having made contact with Barbara, Paul and Einstein have just left, so AE74 instead attacks the two horny kids who have taken his room.
Nope. No matter how much you flush, it ain’t going down.
At this point, Malceno finally shows up, following the tracking device implanted in the baboon, and tranks it into submission. He and the monkey are already home when Barbara, excited at being reunited with Einstein (and finding out his hidden intellect, plus his typing skills), calls him, trying to find out what this “outsidr” is that Einstein claims is doing all of the killing. (Says Malceno, “We didn’t create a killing machine. Why do you ask?”) Unfortunately, AE74′s hatred of Einstein is stronger than even Malceno’s conditioning can control. One of them’s going to die.
One of the main plot threads is that AE74 is able to track Einstein because they were designed that way; as part of a prototype military project, the enhanced dog is meant to track and find a target, and the baboon-thingie will find the dog and the target and kill him. Unfortunately, in practice, this turns out to be a crummy way to go about such things, because the Outsider ends up not homing in on the dog, but simply following his trail, visiting all the places he’s been. Thus, there are killer mutant baboon attacks everywhere that Paul and Einstein have just left: Sarah’s house, the motel, even a small grocery store they stop in briefly. Seems that this is a military project that seriously needs some reevaluation. (Howsabout just make the dog as deadly as the baboon? Or is that too efficient?)
Aaagh! Unconvincing mutant killer baboon! Run!
While we’re at it, AE74′s a fairly ungainly beast; he shambles and shuffles, in between waving his arms as just about any actor in a monster suit will do. And the fact that the suit itself is wrinkly, rubbery, and terribly unconvincing doesn’t help anything. Director Thierry Notz would have done well to heed the ancient dictum: If your monster suit’s crummy, for heaven’s sakes, keep it in the shadows as long as possible! Unfortunately, we’re treated to full-on views of AE74 from about the first half-hour onward, and it doesn’t get any better as it goes along. (Word on the street is that the suit is actually the one Notz used in his previous directorial outing, The Terror Within, which I also haven’t seen; all I know for sure is that this suit looks nothing like the ones I’ve seen in photos from the original Watchers.)
There’s nothing terribly wrong with this movie, but there’s nothing terribly right about it — certainly nothing in the premise or treatment thereof which would make anyone say, “Boy, there’s just so much more in the original Watchers premise that cries out to be dealt with.” Maybe I just can’t see what others see in it — specifically, others who have gone on to make two more Watchers movies after this one.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 12 (plus 1 sheep and 1 killer mutant baboon — whoops, hope that wasn’t too much of a spoiler)
- breasts: 2
- explosions: 4
- ominous thunderstorms: 1
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 5
- Tracy Scoggins (Barbara) played Cardassian scientist “Gilora Rejal” on the DS9 episode “Destiny”
- Jonathan Farwell (Steve Malceno) played “Captain Walker Keel” on the TNG episode “Conspiracy”
- Tom Poster (the fellow inside the mutant baboon costume) was a stunt Borg in Star Trek: First Contact
- Don Pugsley (“Smith”) played “Alien Visitor” on the Voyager episode “Concerning Flight”
- Tommy Hinckley (the lab assistant) was a journalist on the bridge in Star Trek: Generations
