ROGER CORMAN and CHEESE part XIX: "Watchers II" and Dave Portnoy's One Bite Five Cheese Pizza

Of all the "formulas" (some real, some rumored) utilized by Roger Corman, they're all meant to land on the same conclusion: profitability. Sure he expected quality as well, so when his company put out a good movie made for cheap that managed to be profitable, he would put another formula into play: The Sequel. 

The first Watchers movie (which we saw very recently so expect comparisons) was released in theaters in 1988 and did very little business. However (and predictably) it prospered as a video rental. And so, directly onto tape came Watchers II in 1990, recycling basically the same story as the first one, which isn't weird since they're both based off the same singular novel by Dean Koontz. We thought the biggest strength of the first movie was its charming domestic core of a boy and his mom trying to rescue the family pet from bad guys. The sequel (which supposedly is more faithful to the book) leans heavy into the science/military perspective, and our two main characters are literally a solider (Marc Singer as Guile from Street Fighter II) and a scientist (Tracy Scoggins as Laura Palmer's cousin Maddy). Their chemistry is forced but pleasant; they never get annoying, but we never get invested. But truly unlike the first movie, the monster (called The Outsider) actually gets screen time - a ton of it (which might not be a good thing). In appearance it looks like an updated colorized version of so many rubber monsters that haunted so many black & white B-Movies of the past (many of them from Corman), but more specifically a combination of the transformed Dr. Z in Zaat and the Gargoyle from The Terror Within. It's adequately icky, but it's completely undermined by the stuntman's performance: he stumbles and waves his arms around comically and constantly like the robot from Lost in Space (or, more appropriately, a B-Movie monster with a rubber suit). Stuff like that makes us appreciate performances like Kevin Peter Hall as the Predator and how some menacing choreography can make all the difference.

We didn't know who Dave Portnoy was. We kinda continue to not know who he is - a quick search proved to be just boring enough to be almost sedative; despite our role in this medium, "Internet Personalities" aren't really our thing. But the one relevant phrase that popped up was the concept of "one bite", in which you're meant to provide a rating of a pizza's quality after just one bite. Coincidentally (or is it ironically) the first bite of this One Bite Five Cheese Frozen Pizza isn't particularly pleasant. Think of how many frozen pizzas advertise "Three Cheese" or "Four Cheese" or "Five Cheese" or "Every Cheese Ever" and in the end, it just tastes like one singular nondescript cheese. But in the case of this recipe, the mix comes across as aggressively salty/sour, and there's a ton of it; it combines Provolone, Asiago, Parmesan, Romano, and "low moisture" Mozzarella, and it makes for a beautiful color & texture that most closely resembles a Ninja Turtles cartoon, but the flavor is, at best, just okay. Actually, the closer you get to the crust as the cheese ratio begins to regulate itself, the closer it comes to nearly excellent pizza. But dude, you're gonna need way more than one bite to get there. 

The Movie: C+

The Pizza: B