This micro-budget 16mm feature from director Rolfe Kanefsky was made for peanuts and released in 1990. It originally appeared on DVD from Image Entertainment back when that label was a hot spot for cult related oddities but has been out of print for some time. Enter Troma who have stepped up to the plate just in time for the film's twentieth anniversary and released it once again, this time in an extras-laden two disc set with more supplements relating to this film and its director than any one sane person could actually really want. But what's the movie all about? Let's start with that.

Like so many horror movies before it, There's Nothing Out There tells the story of a group of young people, seven of them in total, who decide to head out to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for some rest, relaxation, drinking and copulation - you know, all those things that teens in horror movies just can't get enough of. Shortly after our seven protagonists - a meathead jock, a nerdy guy, a European foreign exchange student, a dumb blonde bimbo, an attractive and brainy brunette, and a snobby rich dude and an introverted loner guy - arrive at the cabin, a pair of pot smoking miscreants show up and take a dip in the pool, having confused it with a nearby pond. No matter, they take off never to be seen again and have nothing to do with the plot.

Later yet that same night, our heroes decide to split into groups for various reason - some want to explore the woods, some want to goof off, some want to get some alone time and get some quality boffing in before the others find them and some want to go skinny dipping. As the group spreads out, am amphibian monster starts killing off the male characters, one at a time, but leaving the females alive for an all together different fate - a mating ritual! Thankfully the nerdy guy has seen enough horror films over the years to have a rough idea of how to get out of this situation with as few casualties as possible - and so they work together to come up with a plan to make it out alive, but will it be enough?

Cheap, schlocky and gleefully trashy, There's Nothing Out There is an effective mix of low budget horror and goofy, tasteless comedy. The film wallows in genre clichés and needless T&A to good effect, resulting in a film that's completely watchable and simultaneously horrible. It's not a good movie, not at all - the acting is bad, the script pedestrian and base, and the effects done without a proper budget to support the director's vision or ambition - but I'll be damned if it isn't a whole lot of fun. Writer director Rolfe Kanefsky, seemingly well aware of the type of movie that he was making, throws in enough random and off the wall comedy to keep the whole thing consistently funny even if you'll find yourself wondering what the point of much of it is. Entertainment, really, is the point and on that level, this screwy little picture succeeds where countless other films made for far more money have failed miserably. There's something to be said for such determination as is on display here. While it's certainly true that no one is taking any of this all too seriously, there's still a fair bit of talent evident in how it's put together. This is very much a case of laughing with the movie as much as it is at the movie, and while frequently such films that take the piss out of genre material fall flat on their self referential faces, There's Nothing Out There gets it right with just the correct amount of tits, blood, weird special effects and genuinely effective humor.

Video:

The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer mirrors the one used by Image Entertainment the first time this movie was released on DVD, but at least it's a decent one when you consider the fact that this was a 16mm production. Expect the usual amount of grain and debris inherent in movies like this to appear throughout the movie and some periodic random color fluctuations, but overall the picture is certainly watchable enough. The black levels are more like dark grey than true black but hey, at least compression artifacts and edge enhancement are held in check. Reference quality? No, not at all, but perfectly acceptable.