Director – Thierry Notz, Screenplay – Henry Dominic [John Brancato & Michael Ferris], Based on the Novel Watchers (1987) by Dean R. Koontz, Producer – Roger Corman, Photography – Edward Pei, Music – Rick Conrad, Outsider Created by Dean Jones & William Starr Jones, Makeup Effects – John Criswell & Joe Podner, Production Design – Gary Randall. Production Company – Concorde-Centaur.
Cast
Marc Singer (Paul Ferguson), Tracy Scoggins (Barbara White), Jonathan Farwell (Steve Maleno), Irene Miracle (Sarah MacIntyre Ferguson), Thomas W. Poster (The Outsider), Donald Pugsley (Smith), Joseph Hardin (Wesson), Kurt Braunreiter (MP #1), Merritt Johnka (MP #2), Kip Addota (Motel Clerk), Mary Woronov (Dr Glatman)
Plot
At the Anodyne Laboratories in the California desert, Barbara White is engaged in trying to elevate the intelligence of the dog Einstein. Threatened with the closure of the lab, its director Steve Maleno secretly lets a group of animal rights activists in to free the animals. However, the activists ignore his warning to stay away from the lower level and inadvertently unleash a monster that Malento keeps penned there. At the same time, soldier Paul Ferguson is being taken away to military prison for striking a superior office. The freed Einstein wanders onto the highway, causing the jeep that Paul is being transported in to crash, killing the other officers, Paul gets free. Taking Einstein with him, Paul seeks refuge with his ex-wife Sarah at the same time as he is listed as a wanted fugitive by the authorities. Paul realises that Einstein is intelligent as it directs him to call Barbara. As Paul sets out to return Einstein to her, Einstein tries to warn them that what has been unleashed from the lower levels of the laboratory is The Outsider, a mutant creature designed for military purposes that is psychically linked to Einstein and will come eliminating everything in its path.
Watchers (1988), the adaptation of a 1987 Dean R. Koontz novel, proved a modest hit for Roger Corman’s Concorde productions – it earned less than a million dollars in theatrical release but gained much more life in video release. It was evidently sufficient of a success that Corman spun out a series of sequels. This was the first of them and was followed by Watchers III (1994) and Watchers Reborn (1998). The premise of the intelligent dog and the weaponised monster hunting it doesn’t really lend itself to a sequel and so each of the Watchers films is essentially a remake of the book and retells the story from scratch.
The first Watchers teetered on the edge of risibility but mostly came through; Watchers II alas falls on the wrong side of it. This becomes abundantly evident from the opening scenes where we have the unintentionally funny image of Tracy Scoggins sitting at a computer trying to teach a harmless looking Golden Retriever the alphabet. The height of absurdity though is the scene where the dog plays a game of Charades with Marc Singer with it bringing out in its mouth rolls of toilet paper, trash bins and the like all coloured white to indicate he needs to look up the name of someone called White in the phone book. Or later scenes repeated from the first film with it tapping out messages on a computer keyboard with a pencil in its mouth.
The monster, a standard makeup effects creation of the day, looks ridiculous with its long open snout. Not to mention the final image the film goes out on with it cuddling a teddy bear. The last third of the film is a standard B movie monster climax with the Outsider pursuing Marc Singer, Tracy Scoggins and wiping out assorted others in the way to arrive at a largely indifferent climax.
Tracy Scoggins with Einstein the dog
The film has an okay B movie cast. Marc Singer looks incredibly buffed and even gets a scene where he walks around in his underwear. Tracy Scoggins was a minor name in some films for Charles Band around this time, before going on enjoy some mainstream success in tv shows like Babylon 5 (1992-8) and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-7). Although when you get to two detective characters named Smith and Wesson, Watchers II is clearly a film where the writers are not taking much seriously.
Thierry Notz served as second unit director on Corman’s last directorial film Frankenstein Unbound (1990) and made his directorial debut with the Corman produced monster movie The Terror Within (1989). Notz subsequently made a couple of war films Fortunes of War (1994) and Goodbye America (1997) but has since vanished.
Henry Dominic was a pseudonym for the screenwriting team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris. This was their first film and they subsequently wrote the Corman-produced The Unborn (1991) and several other B-budget films including Mindwarp (1992) and Severed Ties (1992) as Henry Dominic. They then moved to A-budget films under their own names with The Net (1995), wherein Sandra Bullock’s life is turned upside down by an elaborate conspiracy of shadowy computer hackers; the David Fincher directed The Game (1997); The Others (2000), a short-lived tv series about a team of psychics; Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003); the much ridiculed Catwoman (2004); the killer crocodile film Primeval (2007); the SF film Surrogates (2009); and Terminator Salvation (2009).
