We packed the truck that would travel to location in Palenque, Mexico a few days before we traveled via airplane. The set crew: Steve Wang, Matt Rose, Shane Mahan, Brian Simpson, Richard Landon and me. Stan Winston would be with us, supervising the set work, understanding that we would only be gone for two weeks. At least that is what our work visas indicated. Palenque, Mexico was not a location easily reached. It required one flight from Los Angeles to Mexico City, another to Villa Hermosa, and finally a long ride in a Volkswagen bus through miles of rough country until we reached our hotel that was, from what we were told, the best in the area. It sat in a large clearing, surrounded by trees; two wings of rooms branched out from a central building that housed a restaurant/bar. Later, we discovered that Arnold Schwarzenegger had taken over the entire upper conference room and had turned it into a gymnasium that was open to anyone on the crew. As we settled into our rooms we were told that there would be screening of the film the next day for the cast and crew. My understanding was that this was for the benefit of the new crew members to get a chance to catch up and understand the shots needed to complete the film. A screen and projectors were set up in Arnold’s gym.

By now, most fans credit Steve Wang and Matt Rose for the creation of the Predator. However, in my conversations with Steve, in particular, he feels that an unfair amount of credit has been given to him; it was a team effort bringing the Predator to life, and he couldn’t be more correct. During Monster Squad, Matt and Steve, who had been responsible for the Gillman, had worked through the weekend, grabbing precious few hours of sleep, while they established and painted the final suit. On Monday morning, it stood in the middle of Stan Winston’s satellite shop in all of its amphibian beauty. Stan saw it and his jaw bounced onto his chest. He had NEVER seen anything like it. It impressed him so much, that he, literally, stopped the work in the studio, gathered all of his employees around it and heaped praise upon these two kids (Matt was roughly 21 and Steve 20…maybe?). He said it was the best thing he had seen in his career thus far. Probably not the best strategy in the world. Months earlier, he was in England with his crew working on the Queen Alien, and now he was recognizing these two studio newcomers as the best. Where most of us in the shop agreed with Stan, there was some dissension.

There are events that define one’s existence that go beyond being learning or growing experiences. They become scars. Battle scars. They may fade in time, but they don’t go away. They persist. The memories of the events may become blurry, but every now and then, you run your fingertips along the raised, healed wound and remember. It all comes back like a punch in the nose. I had been on movie sets before and believed that I had been trained. The snarky ADs , the disinterested teamsters, the hustling, the waiting, they were all nearly second-nature to me, especially with the close of my on-set involvement with Monster Squad. However, nothing could prepare me for what I was going to face. My first location experience. My first time out of the country. My first time working set on a big budget film. My first time supervising a team. Predator would be all of those things and it would change my life forever.

And welcome back to Commentary Commentary, our weekly scouring of the DVD shelves and all the vast film knowledge held therein. It’s time once again to listen to a feature length film commentary from one of our most beloved films and go over all the great pieces of information we learn from it. This week, we’ve got another classic, a film that sparked a whole sub-genre of other films. And, before you pitch the idea of “Die Hard on a Film Blog,” know that Joel Silver probably has three screenplays in his office with that exact same pitch. That’s right. This week, we’re cracking open our copy of Die Hard and going through the commentary. So sit back, enjoy how not Christmas-y it is right now, and drink some eggnog anyway. Hey, it couldn’t hurt.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collector of film and television news and links that is currently working for the weekend. It certainly wants a little romance. You won’t catch it goin’ off the deep end. Da nanana na na… We begin tonight with more photos from The Amazing Spider-Man. Sony is hoping that its Comic-Con presence next week helps the webbed wonder get back into the public eye, as they’re counting on this franchise reboot to be a big earner. In the mean time, we get a few looks at a slick new costume, practical web-shooters and an intimate moment between our bloodied hero and his blond dame. All this and more in the gallery found over at /Film.

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; special orders upset us to no end. So you say you like bad movies, eh? Well grab a three-layer bologna and marshmallow sandwich and your coveted copy of Ishtar and welcome to the JFC family! Every week I dissect a particularly terrible film and spread the organs of its failure onto the damp paper towel that is the internet. Whoa, Bio Lab flashback. But once the film is hollowed out and fully exposed, I will then proudly don its carcass as a hat and profess my undying affection for it. As if this frog dissection metaphor wasn’t enough to whet your appetite, I will then pair the movie with a tie-in snack food item in the hopes that by the end you won’t be able to tell if it’s my writing or your atrocious diet that has you marathon vomiting like a supermodel. This week’s dish: Last Action Hero.

In the year of our lord 1993, when this movie was released to the world, I was 10-years old. It was a big year for me. In that summer I not only had my mind blown by Jurassic Park, I also learned a little bit about comedy from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There were a lot of bad movies released during the past decade. That’s not anything that distinguishes the aughts from any other decade before it, but then most of these movies were bad in the usual, torturous ways.