Nomads

Nomads is a 1986 American horror film written and directed by John McTiernan, adapted from the novel by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. It stars Pierce Brosnan, Lesley-Anne Down, and Anna Maria Monticelli. The story involves a French anthropologist who is an expert on nomads. He stumbles across a group of urban nomads who turn out to be more than he expected. Plot Jean-Charles Pommier, a French anthropologist, dies violently and painfully. The moment he dies in the emergency room of a Los Angeles city hospital, the physician treating him, Dr. Eileen Flax, becomes possessed with his memories. Dr. Flax relives the last week of Pommier's life until the moment of his death. After travelling abroad and studying the religious beliefs and spiritual rituals of non-Western cultures, Pommier finally settles down with his patient wife Niki in Los Angeles to teach at UCLA. His home in the suburbs is vandalized one night by a gang of street punks who travel about in a black van. They are very interested in his house, and he finds that they have built a macabre shrine in his garage to a murderer who recently killed two girls who lived in the house. He studies them because their subculture exhibits similarities to the ones he has studied. He begins to observe them, following them and covertly photographing them. He develops the pictures and is puzzled to find that they do not show up in them. He realizes that they are actually the Einwetok, demonic Inuit trickster spirits that take human form, commit acts of violence and mischief, and who are attracted to places of violence and death. They become aware of him, so they plan to claim his soul to keep their existence a secret.