Creature

The source material of this TV movie is a novel called White Shark. It was a failure when published since the public thought it was about a great white shark, instead of what it was, namely a crazed tale about a Nazi experiment re-awakened. The novel's plot played like the movie Shock Waves, but gorier and loopier. It was a great read thanks to Peter Benchley's storytelling ability. It was nothing if not a wonderful guilty pleasure that would have made a great movie had they filmed it straight...

...The problem was the producers couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to take a grade Z plot line that worked because of the authors skill, and change it so that it was a grade Z plot line in the hands of a grade Z writer and director. The result is a laughably bad over long movie that has a laughable but cool monster and little else. This is a movie to get drunk and make fun of. Its a so good its great film, or would be except its way way too long.

From the author of Jaws comes this so, so tale of a military experiment that splices the DNA of a human and a Great White shark.

Yes, predictably the resulting uncontrollable beastie eventually gets loose and subsequently goes about terrorising a small beach side community.

Craig T. Nelson and the ever sexy Kim Cattrall headline and equate themselves well in their respective roles whilst the rather splendid shark creature is supplied by the fx genius of Stan Winston (who was also responsible for the wonderful looking Pumpkinhead).

A fairly run of the mill affair overall, this does nonetheless contain a fair number of exciting scenes to lift it above the average mark although the ending it has to be said is sadly a particular let down!

Final verdict? Fellow fans of aquatic beastie films could certainly do a lot worse than to give this a go.

I'm a sucker for monsters, so I decided to check out the first part of this mini-series, and I was marginally impressed. There were intelligent performances from the principles, despite the alteration of the original book's interesting WW2 origins of the creature, their limited dialogue and the stock disbelieving authority figure and local slimeball characters that show up in every other creature feature. Kim Cattrall is not only visually very pleasing, but she is a very skilled actress - hopefully part 2 will allow her to do more than the usual for a woman in a horror movie. As a rehash of a 50's creature-feature I found this fun, but not too taxing on the brain. Stan Winston's creature was nicely designed, but the scale White Shark puppet was incredible (speaking from the point of view of someone with zoological training)! Our titular Antihero moves nicely, though is still a bit too Black-Lagoon-ish. I knew the legs would be there, but I didn't expect them to grow in 20 seconds flat! My hopes are high, but this post-modern prometheus can only get worse when the army show up. I just hop e the Creature puts up a fight. So far, just for rubber work and nostalgic feelings, I'll give it 6 out of 10.

I managed to miss (purposely) this 'movie' when it originally aired and I should have heeded my own warning.

Someone said this movie was a 'gem'.. well, some gems need to be re-buried and covered by 48 billion tons of rock. I was saddened to see how the once semi-popular stars Craig T. Nelson (the Poltergeist series, Coach) and Kim Catrall (Sex in the City, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country) had waded into the dismal abyss of c-grade films. This film has it all, a dull plot, terrible acting, REALLY cheap effects. Wow... A shark that can walk. I remember the unfunny cartoon with the same premise: Jabberjaw, from way back in the 70's. The biggest difference is we were SUPPOSED to laugh at Jabberjaw.

Something tells me that Nelson was the real loser in this affair since some people can't recover from a somewhat tepid career after a run of moderate successes. Catrall is a decent actress, at least she had a longtime stint on the beforementioned 'Sex in the City', which is currently in reruns. The crazy islander / former lab technician looked like he'd sniffed about one too many tubes of Testor's Model Glue or worked in a factory that manufactures Sharpie's. The 'creature' was incredibly bad, which made it difficult to buy into the whole premise.

I'll save my time and not even comment on Creature 2, because I turned it off about 5 minutes into it. I'm at the point at wondering if the Sci-Fi Channel's budget is so meager it can't afford to show a decent A OR B-list film, they're even worse at making their own productions.

After Peter Benchley wrote «Jaws», he never actually managed to make a completely new original story. With the sheriff who refuses to believe in the hero who tries to warn people about the killing monster, the bad guy who mocks the hero, and the finding of a shark who everybody believes is the one who killed everybody but actually didn't, «The Creature» is just too much similar to «Jaws». The only real interesting bit is that this isn't a shark but a crossing between a shark and a dolphin. That reminds me very much about «Deep Blue Sea», but since «The Creature» was made first, that's forgivable.

Another thing that really bugs me in this movie, is the family morals bit. Except for the sheriff and the bad guy, everybody is really nice to each other, the father son relationship is a great example of how a good family should be, and the whole world is just a great place to live in. Well, the military people are real jerks, but luckily they don't ruin too much of this impression.

On the other hand, one shouldn't take this movie too seriously either. It's actionpacked, something new turns up in the middle of the film, and if you disregard the logical faults that often turn up, there's more than enough stuff to entertain you all the way through, and that's pretty impressive for more than three hours of sharks.

The opening sequences are really good.

6/10