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| Images courtesy of Ronin Flix |
Roughly six years before Wes Craven’s Scream popularized
the meta self-referential characters in slasher horror movies who would call
out the cliches and tropes of the genre while still being a horror film as
opposed to a parody, young teen prodigy/horror cineaste Rolfe Kanefsky at the
age of twenty wrote and directed this Super 16mm $350K space monster movie that
is among the earliest horror movies to open with its first slasher kill inside
a video store. A film well aware of its
own budgetary limitations which takes full advantage of the shortcomings and
cut corners, There’s Nothing Out There falls somewhere between The
Evil Dead and Xtro with some innovative practical effects, amusing
characters and a wild mixture of science-fiction, horror and comedy.
A mom-and-pop jump start to the cult director’s career, the
film is a regional exploitation horror flick involving a group of horny teens
who venture out to a remote lodge for a weekend getaway when dorky horror movie
nerd Mike (Craig Peck) senses something is amiss but his peers naturally don’t
believe him. From there it turns into a
kind of tentacled frog monster creature feature replete with laser beams
shooting from its eyes with some mild leanings towards Humanoids from the
Deep involving an alien species intent on killing the men while
impregnating the women. All the while
our dorky hero and a girl who spends most of the rest of the film in a bikini are
all that stand in the way of an out and out extraterrestrial invasion.
A charming progenitor to what would or would not become an
entire subgenre of horror films populated by characters who seem to know they’re
in one, There’s Nothing Out There is for all intents and purposes
something of a time capsule chronicling the love of distinctly 1980s regional horror
crossing over into the ‘90s. While the
horror scene was definitely ever changing over the decades, it is like Scream
aimed at viewers who were raised on VHS horror offerings of the 1980s and as
such feels like a paean to lo-fi thrills and chills that were low on money but
high on homegrown heart and soul. From
its funky pre-The Lawnmower Man title sequence to its proto-Prodigy score
by Christopher Thomas and its gritty 16mm photography by Ed Hershberger, the
film is unmistakably a staple of the early 1990s still in the throes of redefining itself in the horror landscape.
Performances in this aren't the best though there's enough near or full onscreen nudity from the young performers in it viewers likely won't mind the rusty acting, particularly that of the film's nerdy movie buff hero. As aforementioned, the film received a limited theatrical
run in New York and Los Angeles where it sadly shriveled up commercially before
an Image Entertainment tape and laserdisc release ushered the film in to video
store shelves sometime in 1992 and helped build a cult following. At one point Troma Entertainment put the film
out on DVD but like many of their releases it tended to fall between the lines
and not get much notice outside of Troma disciples.
Thankfully that wrong was righted sometime in 2019 with
Vinegar Syndrome’s 2K restoration of the interpositive. Sometime in 2023, boutique label Ronin Flix
and MVD once again issued a new limited special edition with plentiful extras
and a mini-poster while boasting a new 2K scan (some suspect it is the same
transfer). Though very much the work of
a twenty-year-old still figuring things out, There’s Nothing Out There nevertheless
remains a striking do-it-yourself family affair: an early ‘90s monster movie
whose characters seem to wonder if they’re actually in one. While owners of the Vinegar Syndrome disc are
inclined to hold onto their sets, newcomers who missed out on that run should
surely seek this as its one of the great lo-fi beer-and-pizza sci-fi/horror
films of its day.
--Andrew Kotwicki
