Vile 21 (V)

Vile 21 begins in the year 2020, when a monster is discovered in a cave. The beast battles soldiers in the woods to the strains of some faux-Sepultura death metal, and Dr. Walter Hall has an extended flashback to 1995, when he had been working for the government and was forced to experiment with bacteria from a meteor which contained living alien cells. Hall took the cells and mixed them with those of a dog and a komodo dragon, then injected the resultant serum into a cat. But it was his test on a local bum named Jon, which resulted in a hideous mutation as Jon burst from his clothing as a ghastly horned reptile beast, trashing the lab and escaping into the streets. The monster (often presented in Ray Harryhausen-style stop motion) grew to huge size, flipping over a car and setting a man on fire as it wreaked havoc on darkened roads and the night streets of the town, with Hall and government agents Tom and Steve in hot pursuit. Their boss, Jack Patruski (Sinyster director Ronnie Sortor) rushed to the scene too late for the agents, who were gorily ripped apart by the creature. Naturally, Patruski had to cover up the incident, a secret that haunted Hall for a quarter of a century. The action of the story then returns to 2020, where Hall and the soldiers battle the monster in a darkened forest.