Review: Watchers 3 (1994)
Directed by: Jeremy Stanford
Starring: Wings Hauser, Gregory Scott Cummins, Daryl Keith Roach
Written by: Michael Palmer
Music by: Nigel Holton
IMDb
Here we are again, for the third iteration of smart dog/mean monster. Watchers 3 is sort of tied to the second entry in the franchise, in that we’re dealing with The Outsider and Einstein again, and a character named Ferguson is back — although this time the Ferguson is played by B-movie vet Wings Hauser. The Outsider again changes form, this time looking like a man-sized reptilian kaiju with goofy eyes. For some reason, the smart dog and mean monster have been dropped off in the South American jungle, which gives Roger Corman and co. the opportunity to plagiarize The Predator (1987) about as blatantly as you can without getting sued into the afterlife. Seriously, there are at least a dozen aspects that are taken directly from the Arnie flick and plopped right into the screenplay for this movie, down to the racial/personality composition of the military personnel, the scene of the creature tending to its wounds and howling in pain as it removes a bullet, a Spanish-speaking citizen lending an assist, a crazed soldier blowing his entire ammunition wad shooting into the empty jungle until it’s nothing but a smoky wasteland, etc. While Mr. Hauser is no substitute for Schwarzenegger, he does his best to keep this thing plowing along at an engaging clip. This movie is stuffed with a bunch of macho military nonsense and the aforementioned Predator-preying, but it’s assured in what it’s doing, I guess. This is easily the goriest of the first three Watchers movies and there are plenty of grisly deaths. Einstein has his biggest role yet as hero, too. He’s actively helping to save the day this time, instead of just barking in the background and occasionally typing some shit with his snout. There’s some additional silliness thrown in at the very end to try to explain why all of this is taking place, but it’s stupid and doesn’t matter. This movie is all plot, and that’s fine. It’s a brisk and not entirely unpleasant use of 90 minutes, which has generally been my opinion of this franchise as a whole, even if every movie is just another reincarnation of the same story.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10