Sermonizing sci-fi allows director John Frankenheimer to show his knitted-brow concern for liberal causes (housing problems in the urban ghettos, Indian rights, industrial pollution), while he amuses himself with the lunacies of this Field and Stream nightmare (a frenzied raccoon, an overinflated tadpole, and a murderous fifteen-foot-tall mutant that looks vaguely like a barbecued bear). The liberal stuff seems to be for the sole purpose of helping Frankenheimer get to sleep at night and face himself in the mirror the next morning. There is nothing dishonorable about making a monster movie, of course, except when it is executed with the crude, telegraphed scare tactics of this one. Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire, and Armand Assante. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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