Movie Info
Movie Name: The Terror Within II
Studio: Concorde Pictures
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): January 18, 1991
MPAA Rating: R
Wait…do I love you now?
The people who lived through the apocalypse continue to battle for survival as the disease ravaging them threatens to transform them into mutated beasts. With supplies running low, David (Andrew Stevens) could be the only hope for a research bunker if he can reach them in time with the necessary ingredients for the antidote. Saving a woman named Ariel (Clare Hoak), David could accidentally be bringing danger directly to bunker…and an attack could mean double the danger.
Directed by Andrew Stevens (who also wrote and starred in the film), The Terror Within II is a post-apocalyptic horror movie. A sequel to The Terror Within from 1989, the film was largely met with negative reviews.
The original Terror Within was no great piece of cinema. In fact, the movie was rather dull, predictable, and derivative. The Terror Within II is a good follow-up to the original film because it feels just as uninspired.
Dang it…right in the eye!
The story is odd in that there isn’t really much of a plot or storyline. The movie largely just feels like a slice of life from the characters. The movie doesn’t really feel like it is about getting the cure (which the movie starts out as), nor does it feel like it is about David and Ariel who I guess are the “stars” of the film. The bunker characters seem to be the focus (kind of) for a chunk of the movie, but they barely develop into anything. You simply want the mutants to attack, and you have to sit through a lot for a few minutes of killer (and apparently horny) mutants. Plus, if the whistle and high pitch noises are so effective, why aren’t they used more?
The acting is quite weak. Andrew Stevens seems like a low-rent Chuck Norris combined with Sylvester Stallone with none of the charisma (he returned from the first film). The only real star quality would be R. Lee Ermey as the leader of the bunker people. Ermey even admitted that he did the movie just to pay for his house.
Do I have something on my head?
The mutant is kind of interesting once it happens, but for a large part of the movie the mutants just lurk around in the shadows. I felt with the original film (which was even more of a heavy Alien rip-off) the monster was at least more present. Here you get the more humanoid monster though the monsters are mutant humans, and it is creepy…it just isn’t seen enough.
The Terror Within II is a bad follow-up to a bad movie. It is mundane horror that is just a step above a TV horror film, but still not enough of a “video nasty” to really get that grindhouse feel that would have helped the movie. The movie is a rather downer in that the characters who you barely knew are killed…leaving you with bland characters that you don’t really care about knowing. I guess they’ll go into the wasteland together somewhere and do something…do you really watch the movie and care about what happens next?
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