10 Weird Early Appearances By Iconic Film Characters

6. Jean Claude Van Predator

Isn't Predator brilliant? Surprisingly, too, because if you recited the synopsis to somebody - Arnold Schwarzenegger fights an invisible alien in a jungle - it sounds like the worst sort of B-movie guff. Somehow that got elevated into one of the most thrilling, terrifying and badass sci-fi action films of the early nineties, thanks to a genuinely charming Arnie performance, a cast which includes the equally awesome Carl Weathers and veteran screenwriter (and Iron Man 3 director) Shane Black who helped add some quips to the script, and the seriously ground-breaking design of the titular alien adversary; not to mention the still pretty impressive €œcloaking€ effects when the Predator invisibly stalked its prey through the forests of Central America. We could have seen a very different take on the Predator, however, if early test footage is to believed. At first producers wanted to use a chimpanzee in a very different looking suit to give the monster a suitably inhuman gait; when that (obviously) didn't work out, they got a different kind of monkey in the suit. Unfortunately Jean-Claude Van Damme wasn't much cop in the role, either, claiming the suit was "too clumsy and too hot". The alien design itself is the real shock, a disproportionate, ungainly creature with large yellow eyes and a dog-like head which wouldn't scare a fly. The entire project was shut down until the iconic movie monster we still have nightmares about today was designed, which is a dodged bullet if you ask us.