ROGER CORMAN and CHEESE, part VI: "The Terror Within" and Newman's Own Sourdough Crust Meatball Pizza

"One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work"

- Roger Corman

The Terror Within (1989) centers around a small band of survivors from some kinda biochemical war that wiped out most of the human population and left a buncha rubber mutants to which they refer as "gargoyles". The survivors all wear the same grey jumpsuit and live in an underground lab full of blinking lights and computer screens and every once in a while these survivors/scientists/soldiers/technicians will go topside in search of food and supplies etc. and have to do battle with the gargoyles. On one such excursion they find another survivor - a tattered, catatonic woman who barely managed to escape the monsters. They bring her back to the lab and discover she's pregnant with a baby gargoyle, which is birthed in a bloody frenzy and escapes into the vast labyrinth of their hidden hideout and immediately becomes fully grown. Alien didn't invent the claustrophobic monster movie but it definitely reconfigured it and legitimized it for a new generation; looking at this underground lab it's fun to imagine how many other labs/spaceships/dungeons it's been dressed as (probably in other Corman productions). Even the gargoyles look as though they've been recycled: like Harry from Harry and the Hendersons going trick-or-treating as The Predator. Still, pretty effective, though the monster's clumsy attempts to inseminate human women lacks the clever eloquence of a face-hugger. At 90 minutes it's about 15 too long. 

It's fun buying Paul Newman products - apart from giving to charity it's like buying Fast Eddie Felson brand cookies. Not that we're too familiar with much of this brand but we have the basic cognizance to not judge it on a frozen pizza - and rightly so; the crust had a manageable crunch that was kinda exciting but the sauce and cheese was way too bland to like or dislike. The frozen meatballs tasted like frozen meatballs, which is a flavorful enough event to add some interest to this endeavor, and gives veneration to the idea of "pizza toppings" and that even a highly processed frozen meat product can make a good (or mediocre) thing better.

Folks, we found a match!

The Movie: C

The Pizza: C