by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

Joe, on the other hand, is getting stuff done. He limps back to his car and drives to his gas station to gear up again. This time, he grabs a box of Wile E. Coyote-style dynamite and detonator to blow up the alien. He drives back to the shack and gets everything wired up completely without incident. How is this possible? Was the alien attracted by the sounds of whiny coeds? Is the elderly Joe virtually invisible without those two loads tagging along with him? And why didn't he just team up with the Sarge however long ago it was that he got that scar? The guy is a little off, but Joe reveals that he was the one who dug all those pits around the corpse shack. He seems like he'd be a much better hunting partner than Greg and/or Sandy.

Lest you think we forgot about those two, they've happened upon a nice creepy house to die in. Greg breaks a window to get in and they proceed to make themselves at home. Wearing the owner's clothes, eating his food, drinking his coffee, getting a cheap jump scare out of his cat, basically running roughshod all over a stranger's home. And this goes on for longer than you can imagine, as you watch them flip on all the lights and make tons of noise while they are ostensibly hiding from threats both terrestrial and otherwise.

At the very limits of the audience's patience, some noise startles the both of them. They tour the house, noting a bunch of things being moved, and lights being adjusted, and making no mention of the back door standing completely open because Greg broke in and didn't think it was worth keeping an eye on. He got cocky. He thinks that the windshield stopping that one flier is proof positive that glass is the alien's natural enemy!

The couple share some nice moments comforting each other, but you know they're going to drift apart after this. Trauma can bring people together, but once they have a chance to look back, they'll realize how much they piss each other off. Sandy is going to realize that Greg is an idiot who repeatedly drew them into the arms of at least one dangerous lunatic, and Greg is going to realize that he's a giant tool who makes bad decisions like he thinks he's in the running for some kind of award for incompetence.

Sandy wakes up from her nap after having a bad dream and goes to check on Greg.

Who, I ask, who would have thought that Greg's strategy of drinking coffee while staring at a blank wall would allow someone to get the drop on him?

Sandy screams her head off, and that startles the alien.

He holds out his hand as if to say, "Geez, lady, die with dignity!" But Sandy is having none of it. She runs outside and against her victim's instinct to power through the open woods in total darkness, she hides in a storage shed.

Poor Sandy. Now that Greg is dead, who's going to make all her decisions for her?

Oh thank god, Joe is back. Arriving just in time to take a few ineffective pot shots at the alien and hustle Sandy to the relative safety of being outside with the killer alien again.

Her relief is short lived when Joe explains that they are once again going back to the shack. He's worked out that the alien is hunting them as trophies. That seems unlikely, given how it's messed up all the other corpses it's assembled, but that's not the important part. You see, Joe has an ace up his sleeve: he's hunting the alien while the alien is hunting him! At last, we get to see the full genius of his flawless plan!! Pretty soon, he'll have another gross head mounted on the wall of his shotgun shack. Oh, and one in a jar, too.

As Joe explains the intricacies of his plan (lean a big bundle of dynamite against the shack, blow up the alien when it comes back), Sarge gets the drop on them. I guess you could say he came up on them without warning!

Joe doesn't have time to get introspective about his flagging hunter's instincts before the alien shows up. Sarge quickly abandons the whole "aliens disguised as people" angle and moves in on the alien. Unfortunately for him, the alien turns out to be completely unmoved by Sarge's monologue about how great it is that he caught an alien.

Just like that, the alien nonchalantly tosses a couple of coaster-sized fliers onto Sarge. I can't tell from his face if he's surprised that the alien who kills people with flying disc aliens killed him with flying disc aliens, but the thought had to have crossed his mind that he pretty much walked into this one. I mean literally, he walked up to the alien and got tagged with two carnivorous pasties. What a waste.

Sandy encourages Joe to shoot the alien. Joe tells her it isn't going to do any good. So why were you shooting at it back at the house, ya idiot!? We never get a satisfactory answer to this question, but we do see that Joe was right:

The alien takes the shot in the shoulder and spurts out a quart of intergalactic puss. Once he plugs the leak, a true contest of will begins:

The alien pegs Joe in the shoulder with a flier. Then he waits patiently while Joe digs it out and tosses it back at him. Then he hits Joe in the back with another. What is happening right now? And why didn't the director see this golden opportunity to have the final climactic battle between Joe and the alien feature them tagging each other with the same flier over and over again: one getting hit with the flier, digging it out, throwing it back, the other getting hit, digging it out and throwing it back, and then starting all over again.

Well it doesn't happen that way, much to my disappointment. Joe can't reach the one on his back, so he improvises a new plan: He'll run at alien screaming, "ALIEN!" and Sandy will push the plunger when the alien gets close enough. And that's exactly how that goes down:

"ALIEN!!!"

Sandy pushes the plunger, but nothing happens. Seems ol' Joe is as good at demolitions as he is at hunting. Thank goodness Sandy is as good at wiring as she is at screaming. She quickly fixes Joe's crappy wiring and blows up the shack, the alien, and Joe.

The movie ends with Sarge's earlier warning about how we can't be the only intelligent life in the universe. That's right: the movie called "Without Warning" starts with warnings, ends with a warning, and has warnings all throughout. Even those flying creatures made bat-like squeaking sounds as they traveled, warning anyone in the area that they were about to be struck by an angry flying starfish.

How could you fit more warnings into this movie? Could the alien's massive forehead have "caution" written across it? Could Sarge have introduced himself by saying, "I have dangerous beliefs and I am armed. Do not trust me." Or was it enough to see that this is a movie starring Jack Palance?

Yeah, you really only need that one.

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