“There’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man.”
The typical slasher movie formula sees a group of people, often teens, stalked and hunted by a relentless killer with bladed weapons. Predator, released in theaters on June 12, 1987, retooled the slasher rules, swapping out vulnerable adolescents with a well-armed elite military squad prepared to take on guerilla camps in the jungle. Yet, not even they were equipped for the extraterrestrial threat that targeted them as worthy prey.
Seeing special ops so effortlessly dispatched in the grisliest ways is one effective way to increase the threat level of any horror antagonist, alien or otherwise, but director John McTiernan layers in gradual reveals about the eponymous hunter in a way that launched a franchise and clinched the creature’s movie icon status.
This movie monster has not one, but two major reveals.
The Setup
Vietnam War veteran Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his elite team of Mac (Bill Duke), Poncho (Richard Chaves), Blain (Jesse Ventura), Billy (Sonny Landham), and Hawkins (Shane Black) are tasked with a rescue mission in the South American jungle along with CIA officer Al Dillon (Carl Weathers). The team discovers a downed chopper en route to retrieving their target, its inhabitants skinned completely of flesh.
But they stay on mission. The subsequent retrieval attempt from a guerilla camp ends in bloodshed and gunfire, with the team opting to then move to the extraction point with the camp’s sole survivor, Anna (Elpidia Carrillo). But the explosive violence catches the attention of an unseen entity, one that begins picking them off one by one.
The Monster Reveal
“What the hell are you?”
For much of Predator‘s runtime, the titular creature employs a cloaking device that camouflages it in the jungle canopy, going undetected by Dutch’s group. Quick blurs of movement give only the barest hints of its silhouette, but droplets of neon green blood on foliage confirm that whatever is stalking the military unit isn’t human. McTiernan frequently interjects the Predator’s (Kevin Peter Hall) point-of-view via thermal vision to build out the creature’s presence and threat level. It’s not until much later that we see the entity uncloaked, a humanoid beast with advanced tech.
In keeping with slasher villain form, the Predator hides its true face behind a mask. Predator saves the reveal to herald in the climax: Dutch’s final confrontation with the monster that’s eviscerated his entire team, save for Anna. Dutch realizes this creature has an honor code and sends Anna to the chopper to safety while he creates a distraction. A confrontation leads to the permanent destruction of the alien’s cloaking device before Dutch falls into the river and escapes onto the muddy bank, where the glitching tech reveals the first full look at the creature in full armor. The design is so cool and unique, and the reveal scene even cooler, that Predator could leave it there. But McTiernan saves his best trick for last: unmasking the jungle hunter to reveal its reptilian face and spreading mandibles just as it corners Dutch.
Schwarzenegger solidifies this iconic reveal with an appropriate response to the unmasking, uttering the iconic line: “You’re one ugly motherf*cker!”
The Death Toll
Dutch and his men come upon four skinned bodies on their way to their mission, early signs of the creature’s handiwork. From there, Dutch’s men are systematically sliced, diced, maimed, blown up, and eviscerated by the intergalactic hunter in the goriest ways possible.
This is a ruthless hunter that takes pride in its kills, as evidenced by the way it rips out Sonny’s spine and cleanses his skull and bones to keep as a trophy. It also exhibits an honor code, which means not hunting unarmed prey, which further sets this movie monster apart; this is an intelligent creature operating beyond basic animalistic instinct.
The Impact
Predator opened to number one at the box office and earned Stan Winston an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. The film marked the start of a franchise that’s now five installments deep, not including the two crossover films with the Alien franchise. The prequel film Prey proved there’s still plenty of life left in this series, with Badlands on the way.
It’s safe to say this enduring franchise isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Where to Watch
You can stream Predator on Apple TV+, Hulu, and Tubi, and it’s also available on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
In television, “Monster of the Week” refers to the one-off monster antagonists featured in a single episode of a genre series. The popular trope was originally coined by the writers of 1963’s The Outer Limits and is commonly employed in The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so much more. Pitting a series’ protagonists against featured creatures offered endless creative potential, even if it didn’t move the serialized storytelling forward in huge ways. Considering the vast sea of inventive monsters, ghouls, and creatures in horror film and TV, we’re borrowing the term to spotlight horror’s best on a weekly basis.
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