STAR HUNTER (1996)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

I hadn't seen STAR HUNTER but once before, and remembered nothing about it. This  time I re-watched a TV broadcast simply to assess whether or not it had any combative aspects, given that it was a mash-up of two famous combative films, PREDATOR and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Of the two, PREDATOR is the more obvious influence, given that the "Star Hunter" robot has been strongly modeled upon the appearance of the earlier film's alien menace.

The Hunter comes to Earth looking to hunt humans, with some help from another alien, Reicher (Roddy McDowall), and the two of them set up shop in some low-income urban neighborhood. It's eventually revealed that they've succeeded in taking the heads of several locals, which might make one wonder why they haven't grown bored with such easy prey and moved on by now. But providentially they keep hanging around until a school bus, driven by a vice principal and filled with a half-dozen teenagers, breaks down in the hunters' vicinity. Vice Principal Marsh (Stella Stevens) knocks on Reicher's door looking for help, and soon she and her charges are sucked into a Most Tedious Game. Further complicating the tourney is a beneficent alien, called a "tracker," who invades the body of a kid named Cooper in order to help the beleaguered teenagers.

The teens are as one-dimensional as one would expect in this sort of low-budget effort, and the other characters, good and bad, are no better. After the Star Hunter kills a few victims, the remaining teens get into the spirit of the game and start using firearms like they've handled them all their lives. Had any of them been real badasses, this might have registered as a combative drama, but in an early estimation, the Hunter pronounces their fighting skill as "moderate." They are able to triumph over the Hunter, partly through luck and partly through the advice of their alien ally. 

While STAR HUNTER is not a good film by any means, I have seen many that were far more boring and badly budgeted. One of the few odd touches-- the fact that Reicher "the lure" is blind-- does give him some creepy moments, even though it's never clear whether he's really sightless or merely shamming. There's a tiny bit of pathos when Cooper is "killed" in a fight with the  Hunter, but the alien inside can resuscitate him over time by taking him off the planet. However, I did find myself wondering what would happen to the surviving teenagers if they ever tried to explain to authorities both the absence of Cooper and the deaths of their comrades (and some throwaway cops).