Entertainment
R-Rated 90s Sci-Fi Thriller Is Trash Can Predator Versus The Scooby-Doo Gang
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Writing for this site, I’ve covered countless RoboCop and Mad Max ripoffs because they’re just so fun to watch, no matter how good or bad they may be. I’m going to have to start adding more Predator-style films into the mix after watching 1996’s Star Hunter, which plays out like Surviving the Game or Judgment Night, but with an antagonist doing his best Predator impersonation while wearing trash can armour, while it’s up to the Scooby-Doo gang to take him down once and for all.
Star Hunter has plenty of action but no choreography behind it. It’s total amateur hour, but I love it because everybody leans into the camp without ever taking anything too seriously. It hits all of the Most Dangerous Game tropes you’re familiar with, but it’s also about a bunch of teenagers fighting off some seemingly invulnerable celestial assassin who likes to kill for fun.
Let’s Keep This Simple
Star Hunter is about a group of high school football players and cheerleaders whose bus breaks down after the big game. They’re stranded in the bad part of town and need to make a phone call for roadside assistance, which leads them to an eccentric blind man named Reicher. He lives by himself in a luxury apartment and is more than accommodating to his unexpected guests, which immediately makes them suspicious because there’s barely any furniture, but the back wall is covered from floor to ceiling with weapons.
As it turns out, Reicher works closely with an escaped space robot convict named Star Hunter, and together they make a game out of hunting humans for sport as they move from planet to planet. The kids learn this the hard way when they discover a trophy room in Reicher’s apartment filled with severed human heads. Reicher gives everybody a one-hour head start before the hunt begins, and it doesn’t look good for the teenagers.
What the teenagers don’t know at this point in Star Hunter is that space officers known as trackers are also trying to stop Star Hunter and Reicher. When the token pothead starts acting even stranger than usual, it’s heavily implied that he’s possessed by a tracker, and it becomes his destiny to ensure everybody’s safety before they all get wiped out by the killing machine hunting them down.
A Total B-Production That Will Win You Over
Star Hunter leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to action choreography and special effects. Star Hunter is supposed to be some iteration of Predator, but it’s clearly just a guy in a suit.
Listen, I know how movies are made, and that Predator is also a guy in a suit, but this really looks like a guy in a suit. He walks around like a guy in a suit. He shoots guns like a guy in a suit. And he is 1000 percent, without a shadow of a doubt, a guy in a suit. It’s fine to know this as a movie watcher because most monsters are just guys in suits, but in my mind, and within this fiction, it’s just a guy in a suit, which really doesn’t do Star Hunter any favors.
What really saves this film, and inspired me to review it, is how much fun it has despite the fact that the antagonist is just a guy in a (really bad) Predator suit. It’s straight-up Scooby-Doo, and I mean that as a compliment. There’s no dog in this movie, but every single person looks like they’re about to say “jinkies” whenever something bad happens, but only after they all peer through a doorway in tandem, with the shortest person at the bottom and the tallest person on top.
While there’s no clear instance of everybody running in place before darting out of frame and leaving nothing but a cloud of dust behind, Star Hunter has some serious Mystery Gang energy that makes it way more fun than it has any right to be.
If you’re into action thrillers like Surviving the Game, but also find yourself craving low-budget sci-fi schlock and awe, Star Hunter, which is currently streaming on Tubi for free, should be your next watch. Don’t take this one too seriously, and you’ll have an absolute blast (pew, pew!) with it.
Entertainment
Raunchy 1970s Cult Classic Changed Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Forever
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
The 70s was an odd time for sci-fi movies. On the one hand, the genre had broken free of the generic 50s mad scientist/monster movies and a new wave of filmmakers was experimenting with stories that pushed the envelope. On the other hand, those wild experiments sometimes got a little weird. Case in point 1975’s A Boy and His Dog, which follows Vic and his telepathic dog Blood wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland as they search for food, and more importantly, women. Streaming for free on Tubi and Amazon Prime, it’s an unlikely inspiration for both Fallout and Mad Max, while a time capsule of what sci-fi was like before Star Wars changed everything.
A Boy And His Dog And His Libido
A Boy and His Dog stars Don Johnson as Vic, and Tim McIntire as the voice of Blood. The two constantly bicker as any two male best friends do. Blood’s ability to sniff out women is of incredible importance to the horny and lonely Vic, who after saving one girl, Quilla June (Susanne Benton) from mutants and finally getting laid again, decides to follow her to Downunder, a secret society beneath the surface that’s a near utopia compared to the nuclear blasted wasteland.
Unfortunately, Blood remains on the surface and none of the human characters can match his dry wit. It’s there, in the subterranean version of Topeka, that Vic learns he’ll achieve his dream of copulation thanks to a high “stud rating,” except he’ll be “sent to the farm” after impregnating 35 women. Worse, it’s all done through electrodes, and that more than anything is what spurs Vic to escape Topeka.
A Faithful Adaptation Of A Sci-Fi Legend
It’s a weird plot, but it’s also a rather faithful adaptation of the novella, A Boy and His Dog by the sci-fi icon Harlan Ellison. The biggest change was a few lines of dialogue that make the film more, according to Ellison, misogynistic than his novel ever was. It wasn’t enough to stop the film from becoming an immediate cult classic. It would never, ever be made today. Johnson’s performance, which makes it pretty clear that Vic can be outsmarted by everyone he comes across, goes so far as to start flipping the script.
The influence A Boy and His Dog had on Fallout is immediately clear. Vic calls Blood “Dogmeat,” Downunder is essentially a Vault-Tec experiment, and the complete breakdown of society’s old order explains why something as mundane as bottle caps became currency in the games. Who knew a black sci-fi comedy about a horny survivor would influence one of the best post-apocalyptic series of all time?
A Boy and His Dog bombed in theaters, but once it became a cult classic, work started on a sequel. Instead of Vic, it would follow a female survivor named Spike and of course, Blood, the real hero of the series. Nine years after he brought Vic to life, Don Johnson starred in Miami Vice and changed television forever. If you ever wanted to see Sonny Crockett as a horny scavenger, A Boy and His Dog is your chance.
A Boy and His Dog is streaming for free on Tubi, Amazon Prime Video, Pluto TV, Plex, and YouTube.
Entertainment
Another Major Delay Spells Doom For James Gunn’s DCU
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
When James Gunn’s DCU began with a Superman movie, many superhero fans had the same question: when are we going to see a team-up with Batman? Unfortunately, an onscreen collaboration between the World’s Finest seems increasingly farther away. Nobody has been officially cast as the DCU’s Batman, and his first movie doesn’t have a premiere date yet. Weirdly enough, that hasn’t kept Warner Bros. from greenlighting numerous projects focused on the Caped Crusader’s foes, including Clayface (releasing October 23) and a Deathstroke/Bane team-up film. Now, it seems like our odds of seeing Batman in the DCU have gotten worse with the surprise delay of a completely separate project.
Separate from James Gunn’s cinematic universe, Matt Reeves has continued working on the sequel to his 2022 hit film The Batman. The sequel was previously scheduled to be released on October 1, 2027, and fans were counting down the days until they’d see Robert Pattinson kicking butt and taking names once more. Unfortunately, the countdown just got longer: The Batman II has been officially delayed to February 18, 2028. This is actually the second delay for the movie, and one that may effectively endanger the DCU by forcing two different Dark Knights to compete against each other.
Dancing With The Delay In The Pale Moonlight
Fans of Matt Reeves’ The Batman are getting all too used to the sequel getting pushed back. Originally, the movie had a release date of October 2, 2026, but the studio delayed it until October 1, 2027, to give Reeves more time for postproduction. Now, it has been delayed until February 18, 2028, which gives the director even more time to polish the sequel. Nonetheless, the repeated delays have concerned some fans who worry that the film is a Supergirl-style stinker Reeves is trying to fix in post. Others worry that even if the film is great, making us wait over half a decade between sequels will kill any momentum the movie could have had.
DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn disagrees, of course. On Threads, he mentioned how several sequels achieved critical and commercial success despite a long wait between films. “7 years between Alien and Aliens. 14 years between Incredibles. 7 years between the first two Terminators. 13 years between Avatars. 36 years between Top Guns. And, of course, six years between Guardians Vol 2 and Vol 3.” While he has a point, it’s worth noting that several of his examples (including Aliens, Terminator 2, and The Incredibles 2) succeeded back before audiences were collectively hooked on the never-ending stream of new content from platforms like TikTok.
Will Audiences Respond To The Next Bat-Signal?
In other words, a huge wait between The Batman and The Batman II might be a turn-off for younger audiences more attuned to movies like Obsession and Backrooms, both of which were created by filmmakers who first achieved success on YouTube. The real elephant in the room, though, is that delaying Matt Reeves’ latest film may end up hurting the eventual Batman DCU film. Rumors have been swirling that Warner Bros. is trying to find the right actor for the role, and the failure of Supergirl may encourage the studio to focus on a new Dark Knight movie sooner rather than focusing on another relatively minor character.
If that happens, the DCU Dark Knight movie (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) could come out very soon after The Batman II; possibly less than a year later. Should this occur, one or both of the films are likely to suffer at the box office. For example, if mainstream audiences know that The Brave and the Bold is coming, they may avoid The Batman II, like audiences avoided Blue Beetle and The Flash when they knew the DCEU was coming to an end. Conversely, if Reeves’ sequel is really great, The Brave and the Bold may suffer from comparison, with fans wondering why the latest DCU film can’t be as good as what came before.
Batman is my absolutely favorite superhero, so I’d love to be wrong about this. In my perfect world, The Batman II will be even better than the original, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold will be the best film in the DCU. But the failure of Supergirl (which had very little to compete with) has underscored how fickle audiences can be when it comes to superhero cinema. Delaying The Batman II for over half a decade may very well sink that movie’s chances at the box office even as it sabotages the next film featuring the Caped Crusader. Forget the Joker: as it turns out, Batman’s greatest enemy may be studio interference!
Entertainment
NYT Strands hints, answers for July 21, 2026
Today’s NYT Strands hints are easy if you’re a good writer.
Strands, the New York Times‘ elevated word-search game, requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There’s always a theme linking every solution, along with the “spangram,” a special, word or phrase that sums up that day’s theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.
By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.
If you’re feeling stuck or just don’t have 10 or more minutes to figure out today’s puzzle, we’ve got all the NYT Strands hints for today’s puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.
NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Write there
The words are related to paper.
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Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained
These words describe writing utensils.
NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?
Today’s NYT Strands spangram is horizontal.
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NYT Strands spangram answer today
Today’s spangram is Stationery.
NYT Strands word list for July 21
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Envelope
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Letterhead
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Stationery
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Notepad
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File
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Card
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Sheet
Looking for other daily online games? Mashable’s Games page has more hints, and if you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now!
Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Strands.
Wings' Paige Bueckers out vs. Liberty
Raunchy 1970s Cult Classic Changed Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Forever
