Paul Ferguson(Marc Singer, whose likability and charm bring a respectability to this B-movie)is being taken to a suspension area for punching a superior when his MP's encounter a creature that had escaped and killed several animal rights' activists when the government decides to shutdown the andodyne program(more on this in a moment). Paul is helped to escape from his hand cuffs thanks in part to an intelligent golden retriever. Fleeing from the creature, Paul holes up temporarily with his ex-wife for the night. Paul is able to flee the residence thanks to his wife(Irene Miracle)driving him past police watching her home outside. With the dog in tow, Paul is able to swap his car with a man for a jalopy so that he will not be spotted. Tracy Scoggins(trying to hide her hotness underneath nerd-glasses)is an animal behaviorist named Barabara White who was trying to teach the golden retriever how to read letters in the alphabet. She is pretty much out of college and beginning her career & is green to exactly what the company she works for actually does. Andodyne is actually a military project where scientists(in this case a doctor named Steve Malceno played completely wooden by Jonathan Farwell)create beings from genetics which are in fact linked to canines. It is a new project and the creature that Malceno is over is the first experimental venture. It is explained that the canine would be used to "spot the enemy" and the beast would attack and destroy. Unfortunately, the experiment goes awry because the creature has an uncontrollable urge to kill. So everywhere the canine goes, the creature follows leaving a bunch of dead bodies in it's wake. Soon Paul will understand that the canine is much more than just some ordinary dog and will soon be lead to Barbara because she is the only one available to trust. Will Paul and Barabara be able to stop the thing and quiet it's rampage once and for all? The film also shows the obsession of Dr. Malceno to continue his research regardless how many this thing kills. The film has a rather low budget(produced by Roger Corman..need I say more?), and at times the creature really simply looks like a man in a rubber suit. Singer and Scoggins try, but this film suffers somewhat by revealing the creature awfully early into the film. The director does try to shade the monster and this often does work, but when light reflects on it the credibility of the creature takes a lashing. The dog's tricks are fun to watch and I liked Singer enough to at least enjoy the film. This film is perhaps the close you are about to get to the quality of the Koontz novel(the first one tries the approach of "less is more", but the unveiling of the creature was laughable;the "Watchers Reborn" has that "so bad it's good" quality, but is very mediocre;the third film in this series is merely a "Predator" rip-off), which is kind of sad. You kind of wish a Koontz novel could get a decent enough budgeted film, but maybe "Watchers 2" is about as quality as we'll ever see.
Review of Watchers II
