Roger Corman definitely had a thing for monster babies. First, there was the horrific and bloody baby "burst" birth scene in "Humanoids From the Deep." Then "The Unborn." Now this film about a band of apocalypse survivors battling an alien baby on the loose in a futuristic bunker.
A super-low budget movie, the film looks like it was made with leftover sets from "The Six Million Dollar Man." Some kind of plague has wiped out 99 percent of humanity. A band of scientists or former military people are holed up in a compound. They occasionally go to the surface, but find themselves doing battle with an army of monsters that they’ve dubbed "gargoyles."
When they find one female survivor who’s pregnant, they initially assume that it’s a human baby. Of course it turns out she was raped by one of the monsters. She gives birth to the creature in a chest-bursting scene more than little reminiscent of "Alien." They naturally have to hunt for the creature in the compound, using flame throwers and a laser. When another woman in the compound is raped, they’ve got a new monster pregnancy to contend with.
"The Terror Within" is one of a handful of horror films that deals directly with the subject of abortion. It’s better than "Humanoids From the Deep," but doesn’t offer much in terms of effects (the monster outfit looks horrible) or (if this is your bag, baby) skin. It has a good script, but the sets are just too hokey to make the film believable.
Nonetheless, the movie was a minor hit for Corman (as far as low budget movies can be hits) and a sequel resulted with Stevens directing.
