Andrew Stevens, co-star of the first film, boosts himself to the starring role in this very routine sci-fi / horror sequel. He also wrote the script and made his directing debut here, as his character David is out in the apocalyptic wilderness collecting ingredients for a vaccine. He hooks up with a lovely young lady, Ariel (Clare Hoak, "Cool World") who was traveling with her brother before they were set upon by the mutant monsters that plague this future world. They then need to double-time it back to the lab where Davids' colleagues are hard at work.
"The Terror Within II" is another of those low-budget genre flicks (this one made for Roger Cormans' post-New World company Concorde) that this viewer doesn't consider "bad" so much as simply pretty average. Much about it is familiar, especially that final quarter which turns into yet another imitation of "Alien" and "Aliens". That said, the monster is pretty cool (Stevens holds to monster movie convention by taking his sweet time in properly revealing it), there's plenty of gore, Stevens does his best working within the confines of limited funding, and there are two key talents that help make this watchable: composer Terry Plumeri ("Body Chemistry") and future Spielberg collaborator, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ("Saving Private Ryan"). Kaminski started out his career working on a lot of these Concorde pictures, and it's clear he was destined for great things.
The cast is good and certainly above average, with Stevens' mother Stella ("The Nutty Professor") in a major supporting role. R. Lee Ermey ("Full Metal Jacket") once again effortlessly projects authority, although he later admitted that he just did this picture for the paycheck (to help pay for a house). Co-starring are Chick Vennera ("McBain"), Burton Gilliam ("Blazing Saddles"), Renee Jones ("Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI"), Barbara Alyn Woods ('One Tree Hill', 'Chucky'), and Gordon Currie ("Puppet Master" 4 and 5).
In general, this is not one of those movies one should go out of their way to see, but it wasn't a real waste of time, either, not for this viewer.
Five out of 10.
