Watchers III

Ever wonder what Predator would have been like if Wings Hauser had played Dutch, Stan Winston hadn't been available for creature designs, and the budget had been severely cut? Well here's the answer... the third Watchers movie, which rips off Schwarzenegger's movie something rotten.

Hauser plays wrongly jailed Major Ferguson (the same character played by Marc Singer in Watchers II), who agrees to lead a covert clean-up mission in a central American jungle in exchange for his freedom, back pay and reinstatement in the army. He and a team comprising of other desperate ex-military convicts arrive at the designated location only to discover that they have been duped: they are being used in a field test for Project Aesop, the men (and one woman) hunted down by the mutant killing machine known as the Outsider.

There is not an ounce of originality in the plot: it's Predator meets The Dirty Dozen meets Watchers II, meaning that it also features Einstein, the super-intelligent doggy that can read and write. And it's every bit as dumb as that sounds. Fortunately, the film delivers a reasonable amount of cheapo gore, as the Outsider rips apart it's victims, and there's some enjoyment to be had from the sheer gall of the writers as they blatantly rip-off key moments from Arnie's classic, and from the cheeziness of the hilarious rubber monster.

It's all so cheap and trashy that I can't hate on it too much. 5/10.

One Watcher asked who makes these movies? Well who doesn't know Roger Corman or Loyd Kaufman, Full Moon etc. Also why are they made. Well probably because they are making money. What investor or company is going to want to invest in something that won't make it's money back. Yeah, they are cheesy and sometimes horrible, but they are still fun. When I watch a Roger Corman movie I know not to expect Lord of the Rings or the Godfather. I mean come on it's Concorde. Believe it or not there is a market for this or they wouldn't be hear. I mean dude Carnasour, Rapter, Deadly Outbreak, Cybervengence, The Outsider (which is basically a cheap straight to video remake of Westworld) When you hear the midi music that should really clue you in this is going to be a b-film. When you see certain actors that you know are considered washed up, TV movie or straight to video movie actors etc., when you even see chicks such as Shannon Tweed etc. you know you are about to watch a b-film.lol

There are few movie series more repetitive than Watchers, however this third entry in a franchise nobody asked for actually takes the closest stab at originality you're going to find under the Watchers banner.

When I say originality, I mean for the series, because there ain't nothing original about Watchers III. This is as cookie cutter a Predator ripoff as you're ever likely to find.

The plot concerns a military officer named Ferguson (Wings Hauser) currently wasting his days away in military prison. He's offered the chance to lead a team of convicts on a top secret mission into the a Peruvian jungle to find out why they've lost contact with a base there. Of course this is a smokescreen, and horror's most mediocre double act Einstein the super intelligent Golden Retriever and the Outsider, his psychic-bonded mutant monster brother are loose in the jungle and the reason all previous personnel are dead. It isn't long before the team have adopted Einstein and are battling for survival against the Outsider.

Now, in addition to not being EXACTLY the same plot as the other 3 movies in the series, you may also have picked up that this also boasts a series first in the form of a degree of continuity. A soldier named Ferguson in trouble with his superiors was the leading character in the previous instalment, and while it's never explicitly stated, he also references a history with the dynamic duo of dog and devil. There's also plenty of stock footage, but this is Roger Corman, that doesn't inherently imply continuity.

What's interesting though is that despite this, he doesn't seem remotely perturbed by the fact the Outsider has completely altered in appearance. In the previous movie it was a largely bald but for patches of hair thing with a vaguely reptilian head that was so badly designed I don't know how to describe it. Here it's an entirely hairless, kind of crusty, exoskeleton looking thing with a massive, triangular crest at the back of its head. It reminds me of a mixture of the thing from The Fly II, the crustacean from Deepstar Six & something Screamin' Mad George came up for in the Guyver movies. It does honestly look better than what you see on the cover, but still far from good, which makes the decision to keep showing it in daylight all the more questionable.

I suppose it's to try keep things exciting, because it is an otherwise entirely bland affair, ticking every box on the way to genetic Predator-ripoff heaven. Diversely presented but one dimensional soldiers it's impossible to like, corrupt officials, shooting into the rainforest while shouting, it's all here.

Wings Hauser gets a good rep online in B-Movie circles, and while I've never been a huge fan (ok to be fair I've only seen a handful of movies he's in) he's...workable here. Which is just as well cause he's the best of an utterly contemptible bunch. It is a bit of a stretch to think he's meant to be the same character as Marc Singer played, although he is a fellow Beastmaster series alumni so I'll permit it.

As I said with the previous entry, I feel like if you're looking up Watchers III you probably already have a rough idea if you're gonna like it, and while it's certainly nothing resembling good, I've also seen much worse. You could probably cobble together quite a compendium of bad low budget horror movies set in the jungle made in the early to mid 90s, and this will slot perfectly in there.

Sent to prison on trumped up charges, an American Army officer named "Paul Ferguson" (Wings Hauser) is given a chance to receive a full pardon if he agrees to undertake a top-secret assignment. Essentially, a genetically engineered monster known as "the Outsider" (Carlos Gonzales) has gone on a killing spree in the jungles of South America and a squad of convicts are sent in to engage the creature. What they don't know is that they are nothing more than dispensable test subjects sent in to gauge the ability of the government's creation. Fortunately for them, a genetically enhanced Labrador retriever is also in this vicinity and it knows the Outsider better than anybody. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film is basically a low-budget clone of the movie "Predator" but with a few items incorporated from "Watchers" and "Watchers II" to preserve its integrity. Unfortunately, the melding of "Predator" and "Watchers" doesn't really work nearly as well as it should due in large part to the low budget and poor acting overall. Even so, I didn't think it was terribly bad and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

wings hauser carrys this film.

he takes over the character that marc singer played in the second film.

basicly if you liked the first 2 films you will like this one.

i consider this film to be a cheap version of predator.