Creature

Two corporations are competing to mine a 200,000 year old archaeological find on the Saturn moon Titan. The crew of the U.S. ship Shenandoah crashes on the lunar surface, only to find the Germans beat them there. But strange things are abound as the German ship is deserted except for a pesky alien. Lone survivor Hans (Klaus Kinski) tells of the horror his crew encountered from a mind controlling alien, but no one is quick enough to combat it this go around either. It's probably been about 20 years since I last saw this and this low budget production has held up really well. Director Malone is definitely trying to ape Ridley Scott's trend setter, but he ups the gore factor substantially. Malone also seems to be having fun here, as evidenced by the female lead coming up with a way to kill the creature by recalling a screening of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951). He even has a character reading a novelization of his debut feature SCARED TO DEATH (1981). The cast is good with the great Kinski doing his psycho German guy routine (shocking, right?). I wonder if he caused problems on the set as his character disappears, but then comes back zombified with clearly a double in his place.

Of course, this isn't a very good movie. In fact, it's pretty bad but I'm a whole different kind of movie-critic when I watch movies like this. Everybody needs some brainless and fun films to relax from time to time and William Malone's Creature is the perfect film for that. Creature is an shameless ripoff of Alien and it also stole several elements from John Carpenter's The Thing, but I hardly think that's a reason to ignore it completely. From the beginning of this picture you can easily point out those characters who're going to die but that's ok. You stay in your seat just to see in wich horrible ways they come to an end. These are the moments that make this film worth watching. Especially if you like a good share of blood, guts and gore. I tell you, some of the scenes are rated pretty high on the "vomit-scale". So, if you like to see heads flying around and love to see faces being ripped off...Creature is your cup of tea. All together, there are 2 major reasons to check this film out. The first one is the amazingly good musical score. I wasn't able so far to find out who made it, but I don't think they're big names in the field seeing the status of this flick. The score was a pleasant surprise and worth checking out. And last but not least... KLAUS KINSKI !! This guy is ( was...sorry ) a great actor. Without even trying he beats all the other acting-performances. Klaus clearly amused himself while playing the role of Hans Rudy Hofner and his own German accent really works here. I expected his role to be a little bigger but that's ok, the few times he's on screen are the most memorable ones. But it ain't really a big honor to be the best actor in this cast, though. All the others suck pretty bad. Wendy Schaal is very cute in her role of Beth but she can't act very well. That's ok, the girl who plays Susan can't act at all and above that she looks like David Bowie did during the 80's...and that's NOT a compliment !! I'm not even bothering to mention the rest of the cast. Oh, there is one last thing worth checking out on Creature. The very very stupid confession of Mrs. Bryce (Diane Salinger)at the end ...man, that's got to be the most ridiculous plot-twist I ever saw!! I laughed silly with that....4 out of 10

Maybe I shouldn't, but I feel like on a situational basis I can readily forgive clear aping of pre-established pictures. Maybe those involved wanted to tell their own vision of a similar story, maybe they were on contract, maybe they just wanted an easy paycheck. Certain similarities to 'Alien' and other properties are undeniable, and even the one-word title is decidedly on the nose. None of this inherently means 'Creature' can't be appreciated on its own merits. And hey, there are some recognizable names and faces here! Unfortunately, the moment we get past the superficial bits, the experience begins to degrade. It's not that this is altogether rotten, but the entertainment value never really rises above "moderate."

Imagine, if you will, browsing the Internet and stumbling across trailers for 80s or 90s B-movies, the type that are immediately so outlandish and blunt that one can only react with tempered bewilderment. Think 'Eliminators' (1986), 'Metalstorm: The destruction of Jared-Syn' (1983), or 'Nemesis' (1992) as points of comparison. Now imagine one of these trailers realized as a full-length film that rides on the coattails of a highly respected sci-fi horror flick. That's the experience of watching 'Creature.' A fair portion of the visuals are pretty well done: special effects, creature designs, blood and gore, aspects of the production design and art direction, costume design, makeup. Elsewhere, chiefly interiors, the sets are less readily impressive. All this would be fine if not for the writing and direction, which impact the acting in turn, and other fundamental building blocks of the project. The tone varies between heavy-handed and overdone, lackadaisical and sluggish, airy and nonchalant. Only in moments of abject violence or frightful imagery does the feature seem to strike the right chord, yet for otherwise lack of meaningful atmosphere, tension, or suspense, these peaks aren't enough to carry the day.

William Malone's direction struggles to attain balance between moments of heightened emotions and violence and quiet moments that lack tension, and the same can be said of the score. Though the effects and genre visual elements look great in and of themselves, how they're employed is often somewhat senselessly over the top and forthright, unable to achieve the desired effect. This applies as well to the acting, with infamous legend Klaus Kinski particularly standing out like a sore thumb. Ninety-nine minutes drag on nigh interminably as scene writing, dialogue, characters, and the narrative at large fail to build momentum, let alone sustain any; for all the good ideas here, the plot is kind of all over the place, and there's far too little of the necessary refined touch to make anything stick. However much one wants to draw comparisons to other movies, 'Creature' could claim some strong potential all the same - but as it presents, it's instead largely so uninteresting that the viewing experience becomes a question of keeping ourselves occupied so we can maybe watch it with half our attention, for that's all the more it really earns.

Once again I find myself in the position of wishing I could say I like the picture more than I do. There are surely some worthwhile components here and there. From top to bottom, however, the realization of it all just limps along so blandly that it struggles to produce or maintain excitement or basic engagement. Most action sequences are just uninspiring, even the climax, and the ending is plainly weak and ham-handed - including the abrupt cop-out excuse for why one character just vanished for a substantial portion of the runtime, as though Malone and co-writer Alan Reed literally just forgot about them for most of the screenplay. Maybe, after all, I'm being overly generous in my assessment. I suppose there are worse ways to spend 100 minutes, but that's just it: these are 100 very long minutes, and since that time is best spent only half-watching, why commit to it at all in the first place? 'Creature' isn't downright awful, but even if you're a diehard fan of someone involved, unless you're desperate for genre fare then I can't readily conceive of recommending this.

This movie is clearly a low-budget Alien knock-off. A hand full of explorers, comprised of a cast of television regulars, investigate Titan, one of the moons orbiting Saturn, for a life-form, that's seemingly done away with all of the previous crew that visited for the same reason. The acting is pretty much sub-standard, and the script is a case of sometimes it's so bad, it's funny, especially if you watch it late enough to grab you in a relaxed frame of mind. The ever entertaining Klaus Kinski makes a guest appearance here, albeit brief, gives this a bit of a shot in the arm, with some funny nonsensical lines and casual demeanor in what's otherwise meant to be a tense serious situation. The Creature itself is obviously a guy in a big rubber suit, but you could arguably say the same thing for Alien. The other effects in the movie are OK, with a notably gooey pumpkin head explosion in one scene. All in all, not altogether bad, but there's not enough here to sustain the 97 odd minute running time. Maybe worth catching on a slow night.

The director of the creature feature SCARED TO DEATH (1980) returns to familiar territory with this monster(s)-in-space flick; one of many similar films released in between the hits ALIEN (1979) and ALIENS (1986). Some time in the near future, rival corporations Richter Dynamics (out of Germany) and NTI (out of the U.S.) are competing for new materials to advance their manufacturing technologies. A geological research team stationed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, runs into trouble in the form of a vicious alien creature, who makes short work of the team. Not long after, an alien-controlled ship flies directly into the space station Concord and blows it up. Suspecting an other worldly force is perhaps responsible, a seven- member group of volunteers from NTI - headed by corporate honcho David Perkins (Lyman Ward) - hope to make the archaeological discovery of the century by discovering alien life on Titan.

Upon approaching their destination, Captain Mike Davison (Stan Ivar) is forced to crash land their ship, the Shenandoh. Suffering extensive ship damage and facing a quickly-dwindling oxygen supply, the crew set out to get help from a German ship stationed nearby but discover it littered with the corpses of the crew. A big, blood-thirsty creature soon pops in for a visit and makes short work of crew-woman Susan (Marie Laurin). And that large, somewhat awkwardly-designed alien isn't the only odd creature inhabiting the planet. Outside, they stumble across the remains of a crashed alien ship and it was hauling a collection of different alien life forms; some of which are still living. One species is able to use "collective intelligence" to impersonate its victims to lure the others to their doom, which mechanic John (Robert Jaffe) soon finds out first hand when the dead "Susan" pays him a visit and strips off her clothes. And then something truly weird and terrifying happens: Klaus Kinski shows up. Ahhhh!

Kinski's character - Hans Rudy Hofner - is the sole survivor of the German expedition, and he acts extremely weird and hilarious childish and giddy as if he's not taking a second of this seriously explaining that the aliens have "vaited fer dem fer two tousan zenturres." I've watched three Kinski movies this past month and in all three of them he plays a character who grabs one of the female cast members and then squeezes their breasts! The victim this time out is Diane Salinger, who plays a potentially fun character - a tough security officer - but, like Klaus, she's not given enough to do and vanishes from a large portion of the film. Most of the action centers around the two male leads and the cute Wendy Schall (who now voices the mom of the animated series "American Dad"), who plays some kind of electronics expert.

Overall, this is a watchable, albeit clichéd and wholly forgettable, movie. The script is generic but otherwise it's well-made, the cast, art direction and special effects are all competent and there's some nudity and some gore, including a face getting ripped off, an exploding body and a female doctor (Annette McCarthy) getting her head ripped off. But at the end of the day, it's really nothing more than a passable time waster. I guess there are worse things.

Despite being pretty mediocre overall, this 750K-budgeted film ended up becoming quite profitable; making back its entire budget opening weekend alone in less than 200 theaters. As a reference point, Tobe Hooper's messy LIFEFORCE, released just a few months later the same year, didn't even make back half its huge 25 million budget in 1500+ theaters.