User reviews

Bob Keen (the make up and special effects wizard behind Hellraiser 2-3 and Candyman among many others) directed this alien film set in the oil rig. A bunch of drug smugglers have their boat sunk and they have to go to one oil rig they accidentally find while floating in the middle of the ocean. They go on board only to find it's completely abandoned with some menacing voices and dark rooms. Soon they learn there's something nasty and hungry in the rig and it's going to get the new visitors, too.

There are two things which make this film worth watching even couple of times. They are soundtrack and lightning with the usage of camera. The theme played during the credits and during the film isn't too effective or special, but the ominous and low sounds heard in the soundtrack to create suspense are indeed effective and creepy, thanks to the talented film makers who knew what sounds scary. The green and dark mist is present in the film all the time and the images of the abandoned oil rig are very scary again and show only little information about the place.. There are also some effective shocks which make the viewer almost jump, and fortunately they are not too plenty as then they would've lost their power and become gratuitous.

Otherwise this film isn't too noteworthy. The characters are not too deep or interesting and speak and scream things which reveal bad script. The ending is too cliched and the monster too big and becomes little unintentionally comic as the budget didn't make it possible to create more convincing monster. They should've kept the monster smaller in order to make the film look more serious. The ending has also one bit of unexpected gore as the full monster arrives, and it looks little different now that the entire film is practically bloodless and without gore. There is also one brief scene which raises the puke-o-meter pretty high as one nasty alien tentacle goes inside one character's mouth while she's sleeping!

After all, this film has enough atmosphere and horror elements to make it worthwhile for the fans of horror and scifi cinema, but otherwise this isn't too revolutionizing picture even in its own genre. If you appreciate the genre, rent or buy this (if you get it cheap) because it could be MUCH worse than this.

5/10

A group of heroin smugglers finds shelter on an abandoned oil rig after their ship had exploded. Soon they find that the oil rig was just a cover for biological experiments. One of the results is Charlie, a shape-shifting monster with the ability to absorb the memory of its victims.

The only really good thing about this film is the inclusion of cult actor Doug Bradley, and unfortunately he plays a very small role. The special effects and makeup are also pretty decent, but it seems like a waste to have included them in such a terrible film.

Maybe I should have caught on by the time they ripped off the "Terminator" theme song, but this was just a boring, none-too-interesting movie. The concept is good, even if not strictly original. But it is executed in a way that is quite boring and never allows us to actually care who lives or dies.

This is based on a book called 'Slimer' by Harry Adam Knight. Whilst the book is a tense, gripping and claustrophobic thriller packed with interesting characters and some truly chilling scenes, the film just stinks of a disgustingly wasted license. Another opportunity completely flushed down the drain by people not talented enough to produce and direct the home video footage of a family party.

The plot, for lack of a better word, involves drug smugglers who are shipwrecked and wind up on a deserted oil-rig where sinister experiments are taking place. After a lot of wandering around they meet a scientist with a Germanic accent which sounds nearly as realistic as Professor Tryst's in 'Dr Who:Nightmare of Eden' (which, believe me, is no great achievement). The characters are Z-grade and the film doesn't even attempt to follow the story in the original book. Before long the laughable monster (imagine a cut-price Jaws on legs) appears to sink the film to even greater depths. Doug Bradley (Pinhead in the 'Hellraiser' films) makes an appearance, but even he's wasted in a minor role as a rather cliched mad company boss.

A painful experience. That saying 'the old ones are the best' certainly applies to monster movies. Recent monster films like this waste of (very little) money aren't worth the tape they're printed on.

Basically a group is stranded on an abandoned oil rig where some testing has been going on and there's a monster. While that would be enough plot for people, the creators decided to add in some crappy drug smuggling story to it. It may give the group an excuse to be out there but, at the same time, it's pretty much unnecessary and leads to some mediocre subplots. My other issue is all the damn monster-vision shots. We have constant disruptions where we see everything through a blurry (green or red) lens moving quickly. To make it worse, half the time the monster isn't even doing anything! It's just running around, not interacting with the group or anything else. Plus, in the interests of being confusing, we'll occasionally catch glimpses of puddles of organic crap appearing and then transforming yet predictably none of the characters see this plus nobody ever seems to hear anything (an aggravating trend).

Finally somebody is grabbed then, while tracking them, they find an old scientist who tells them they're in danger and they should leave. He then promptly vanishes from a locked room. The story proceeds to get weirder from there. However, it never really gets good. The setting is great, though, and I like the concept. Some of the effects are really neat while others... well, not so much. I love the monster's true form. At the same time so much of the movie just isn't worthwhile and there are just so many pointless moments. And while the ending does help salvage other parts of the film, the whole thing feels like a half-rate rendition of The Thing.

Also, the title is a reference to a Greek mythological shapeshifter.

"PROTEUS" is a rather poor adaption of "LEVIATHAN" - an abandoned ship that houses a shape-shifting creature that multiplies in size for every victim it consumes.

In "LEVIATHAN", the premise was an undersea mining station that gets infected with an 'alien' life form once havoc breaks loose after an alien sample is discovered in a sunken Russian submarine. Each victim that the alien attacked was transformed into an alien life form that kept growing until extreme measures had to be taken to destroy it.

In John Carpenter's "THE THING", a scientific outpost in Antarctica is the setting for the alien life form which consumes its victims in the same manner.

In "PROTEUS", the 'alien' shape-shifts by turning its victims into luring devices to attract further victims. Much like plots for films such as "DEATH SHIP", "DEEP RISING" and "VIRUS", the setting for all of this is an abandoned ship/station in the middle of nowhere and is ultimately discovered by a group of yuppies (appropriately, three men and three women) who are picked off one by one by the 'sea creature' which assumes their profiles before attacking someone else (further saving on the 'special effects' budget). The hackneyed story-telling has the victims 'examining' strange noises or venturing down dark corridors where pipes and cables line the ceiling and steam fissures explode at inappropriate moments, almost always ending up in some ridiculous death scene with a fade-out scream.

This cheap straight-to-video trash plays out more like something you'd find on the Sci-Fi Channel at midnight. There really isn't any horror or suspense and certainly no gore. The only thrill here is seeing Doug Bradley (a.k.a. Pinhead of the "HELLRAISER" series) portraying a loony scientist who wears sunglasses and also happens to be behind the mysterious 'sea creature' operation. His demise at the climax of the film when the 'creature' is revealed in full scale is quite hilarious. One of the creatures' tentacles shoot into his open mouth as it lets out a huge roar, alikened to both a lion and an elephant, as it comes face to face with its tormentor and creator.

"PROTEUS" is generally just another 'run-of-the-mill' straight-to-video horror flick set at sea which provides neither thrills or chills but only the occasional unintentional laugh usually set off by bad special effects or laughable stereotypes. It is very disappointing.

My Grade: D-

Based on the novel "Slimer" written by Harry Adam Knight (AKA: John Brosnan), Proteus is just another low rent monsters on the loose picture. Plot has a bunch of drug smugglers initially thankful of finding an oil rig out at sea after their boat was wrecked by incompetence. But soon enough they realise they are not alone and floating out on a life raft may have been the better option.

So it's all nutty science gone wrong as a bunch of poor actors, headed by Craig Fairbrass with big muscles and a mullet, get involved in an Alien/The Thing amalgamation. Director Bob Keen ensures things are kept dark to hide the cheapness of it all, though some icky scenes keep the pic away from total damnation. But come the arrival of Proteus in its true form, you may find yourself laughing instead of being afraid. 3/10

Fairbrass and other actors including the sexy Jennifer Calvert don't do a bad job and this movie is Definitely worth watching. I bought this movie knowing it was a budget title but i have been surprised in the past by how good some of them are due to the actors trying there very best to go on the better roles.

i thought that this movie was very good for its low budget until the end.. i thought the monster was a bit over the top and looked a bit silly,and there was maybe a bit too much time wasted looking for people who had gone missing to fill in some time which was a bit of a let down , but overall the film is very good with some scary suspenseful moments and the gore is also quite well done,the monster at the end is unforgivably terrible though.

Proteus is a film that not many people like, take a look at the user rating and 95% of the reviews on here for proof. However, I am one of the film's few fans and I'll explain why. I love 70s, 80s, and 90s creature features, this was the good old times of practical effects (men in monster suits, mechanical monsters), before the age of CGI which to be honest, I think ruined creature features at least the low budget films because in a lot of creature features now, either the creatures are completely ridiculous (Sharknado, Avalanche Sharks) or like in a lot of SyFy fare, they show the creatures throughout the whole film and leave no suspense. Those three decades were the best times for these films, leaving the audience to picture to creature through most of the running time until the big reveal. I know I've been rambling, now on to the film.

Proteus has a plot that I'm a sucker for, group of people stranded in a isolated location with a mutant monster. In this case, it's drug smugglers whose boat sank and they come across an oil rig where experiments have been going on and things have went awry. Nothing special but simple and appealing to me. Craig Fairbrass is the lead here and does a pretty good job actually, he is probably most known for his villainous role in Cliffhanger but he pulls off the tough guy role well. His character also has a nice character reveal halfway through the film. The other five main actors range from mediocre to bad but don't worry, most are there for the body count. Ricco Ross from Aliens has a solid small role and does a good job as well. Horror icon Doug Bradley shows up at the end as the owner of the rig in heavy makeup and does decent, obviously was in this film because he was probably friends with Bob Keen. The pacing is fast, I have heard people call it boring but I honestly don't see it, within fifteen minutes, they are on the rig and not long after does strange things happen.

The dialogue is passable at best but it does have a great line "You're a fu**in fish with a drug habit". The make up and mechanical effects is where this film really comes to life, Proteus has very interesting monster designs and makes the film an entertaining viewing especially if you're a lover of practical creature effects. The atmosphere is also quite good, it has a murky, sticky, gross atmosphere that fits with the film. The directing is average enough, nothing great but there's some cool shots.

I really like the film, I found it a very entertaining B horror film, it's not a good film when compared to the best horror film of all time The Thing (1982) which its rips off of shamelessly but I have a blast and a fondness for it. I would recommend it only to people who are fans of creature features of the 80s and 90s where practical effects was still key. Underrated B creature feature for sure.

Oh dear, "Proteus" has wandered into streaming, over twenty years since this mid-level scifi/horror flick bored its audience into comas.

"Proteus" was nothing more than an entry into a genre made bankable by Ridley Scott's "Alien", which was itself a pastiche of earlier scifi drive- in movies with a big budget and the hope that no one remembered the original material. Psst! Hey! "Alien" was the love child of 1958's "IT! The Terror from Beyond Space". You know, monster gets on spaceship of malcontents and kills everyone but a smart person who opens an airlock. ZZZzzzZZZZ. "Proteus" was just another entry into the monster/claustrophobic space/idiotic humans/corporate billionaire with immortality issues/muscleboy/ridiculous monster cycle.

Let's see: unlikeable drug smugglers foul up a deal and escape some mysterious Asian port in a yacht. In a hilarious scene that features a really unconvincing miniature, the yacht blows up real good. This was filmed in a dime store aquarium, or the director's bathtub. Smugglers find refuge on an equally unconvincing miniature oil rig. Bad scientists have made an ugly something that eats or slimes anyone available. Lead idiot and resident muscleboy Craig Fairbrass wanders the oil rig, which he knows because he "worked on a rig" back in the day. OK, yeah right.

Idiotic characters get eaten/absorbed by "Charlie" the monster. Charlie the Tuna would have been scarier. One by one, the stupid interlopers get got. Musclehead Fairbrass runs around and burns up the monster, which looks like the Hanna-Barbera 'toon character Jabberjaw. Monster shark tentacle thing moans and waves it's digits and gets burned up real good. Surprise ending!!

Special effects maven Bob Keen gives little, despite his credentials on "Hellraiser". Yes, this is a low budget affair, but its ongoing foolishness and adherence to the monster who's not a monster and eats you when you're not looking canon (which goes waaaaay back to "The Thing") just gets boring.

Drinking game! Watch muscleboy Fairbrass sweat! Every time you see him and his sweaty tshirt, throw a shot. His sweat stains change from scene to scene.

For claustrophobic monsters stuck in a small space with a twist ending enthusiasts only.

I used to have this movie on VHS back in the late 90's. I really enjoyed it, even though, the low budget does show in the lighting and special effects. No matter, the pacing is good and the acting decent. Also, I'm a big fan of Craig Fairbrass. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie so much, I managed to find a DVD of it on E Bay. It is a shame that the producers did not have more money for the budget. That would have improved the movie greatly.

The movie is about a group of narko-traders, who, after a bad heroin-trade gets their boat blown up in open ocean. They manage to rescue themselves onto an abandoned oil-rig, which turns out to be a scientific research laboratory, where "evil" scientist made experiments on sharks. It has got some nice make-up effects, but the characters has NO depth, and the horror is based on some large shocks. Imagine a weird mix of "Children of the Corn III," "Deep Blue Sea," "The Blair Witch Project" and "Resident Evil." By "wierd" I mean silly. If you have ever seen the movie "Creatures" you'd know what to expect. See it if... someone force you.

Right. First, lets discuss Proteus's good points...........Now that's out of the way lets discuss its BAD points. I thought films were supposed to have plots? Am I wrong, are The Silence Of The Lambs and Seven and The Usual Suspects, not films? Are films simply supposed to be a load of random images, designed to bore you rigid? If Proteus is anything to go by, then they are. The plot of Proteus is: Drug dealers go onboard an oil rig. There is a monster there. Some of them die. Some escape. That's IT. No riveting subplots, no amusing witty dialogue with which the film can redeem itself. This film is APPALLING in every conceivable way. The script writers have stolen every idea from every horror flick you ever saw, but the director has handled their material in such away as to remove every grain of suspense or horror. This film COULD have been dragged into the heady heights of mediocrity, is the actors had any talent to speak of. But the lead's (Craig Fairbrass) inability to sound anything other than a cockney wideboy, and his complete and chronic lack of charisma, throw THIS feeble idea firmly down the toilet. It turns out that the monster that is killing some of the drug dealers on board the ship is a shape shifter (that's handy guys, now you don't have to pay any money for a monster suit), invented by some scientists (supposedly brilliant, but haven't they learnt that genetic experiments in secret laboratories always end with disaster?). When the first scientist marches in and says "I am Dr Soames" in the worst German accent ever committed to screen, all that is missing is the boos and hissing from the kids in the audience. And surely, people in films like this, fighting genetic experiments gone horribly wrong are supposed to be heroic? The script and the acting are both so appallingly bad that you want every single character to die. In incredible pain. The film tries to redeem itself at the end with an explosion (wow, that was good. There was an explosion in "Leprechaun", for Christs sakes) and the appearance of the monster in its real form. It's a rubber shark. Ooh. Don't get too scared. I can't remember what happens at the end of "Proteus". But I don't care. I knew I wasn't going to care while I was watching it. To this day, I still want the people behind "Proteus" to give me an hour and a half of my life back, so I can use it for something useful, like watching grass grow in my back garden. I hope the rubber shark doesn't get me. I give this a generous 0 out of 10.

As far as the genre of monster movies go, the plot is typical, albeit really retarded. I wasn't expecting much, and I was not let down. Proteus was a lot more enjoyable than Octopus, that's for sure, but I still wouldn't recommend it. It's not even good to make fun of. I got bored very quickly. I stopped the movie somewhere in the beginning to go find food, and by the time I got back I was very reluctant to turn it back on. The acting is less than mediocre, and dialogue wasn't intriguing. Creature effects consisted mostly of the over-used drool to foreshadow an upcoming encounter. In the end when they reveal the creature, it's hardly something I wet my pants over. More of a snoozer than anything else, don't waste your time on Proteus. It's not even amusing to make fun of.

This movie has all the hallmarks of a *great* Stupid Sci-Fi Flick... stupid scientists, dumb hi-tech gadgets, shape-shifting aliens who seduce their prey, expository videos labeled "Watch Me"... the list goes on. Don't expect much from the plot or special effects... watch it for the cliches...

Slimer by Harry Adam Knight is one of my favourite horror novels. It's creepy, funny, creative, well written and just a blast from start to stop. I always thought it would make for either, a cool movie or a bad but fun one. And with Proteus, I found my answer to be somewhere between the two.

Proteus basically follows the book, with some minor and some major tweeks. Basically The Thing on an oil rig, a group of 6 people find themselves at the mercy of a genetically engineered shapeshifter. But who or what is it really, and what does it want? A good story to be sure.

First the bad. This film is cheap. Really cheap. The sets are obviously sets and the cast is lacking in big names, outside of a 2 minute cameo from Hellraisers Doug Bradley. The film is dark, as in some one really should have turned the lights on for most of these scenes. And, even though it does have differences from the book, there are places where I would have been confused or lost if it wasn't for me having read the book first.

That said, Bob Keen does the best with what he has. It is a visually interesting film, with some truly jaw dropping special effects. The music is nice and haunting. And it was great to see this film embrace its own absurdity. Its an odd film to say the least.

A 4/10 is an understandable score, but it honestly isn't that bad a film. I wouldn't even say it was bad, just cheap. If you are a fan of low budget b movies or creature features then it is one to give a go.

I watched this one expecting to be nothing special, i was wrong. Proteus is a well made B movie creature feature which is a treat for those who enjoy retro FX, rubber monsters and slimy abominations. The whole movie absolutely might be heavily influenced (or ripped off) by Carpenter's The Thing, but this little fact doesn't hartly bother. I just enjoyed it, only thing that could bother some is that it takes a while before the action really starts. But it's worth it.

This movie is terrible, simply awful, the script has no plot and makes no sense, the actors act as if they have been drinking straight vodka the night before whilst the filming and soundtrack is annoying.

I have never been so bored and depressed watching a movie, no offence but whoever funded this shambles must have been from another planet or possibly Norfolk.

Worst of all the paper mashie shark-zombie-rubber duck mutant looks like a 4 year olds attempt at something out of Blue Peter.

Eco Warrior out!!!

The acting is teriible, the special effects are passable up until the climax that looks like a man in a rubber suit. the story is complete and utter nonsense about a group of drug smugglers including Craig Fairbrass (yes-Dan from Eastenders!) who end up on a abanodoned oil rig which just happens to have a nasty shape shifting monster on board. all of the movie is shot in darkness - at times complete darkness so you can't see what's going on - It might as well be a radio show. The movie is awful but somehow it keeps you watching just to see how hilarious it gets.

My vote:- 6.5/10

A group of drug smuglers are ship wrecked, and seek shelter on a near-by oil rig. As it turns out, it's not a oil rig at all, but a high-security genetic engineering where things went wrong, now there's monsters running around. This has to be one of the best film's I've ever seen! Excellent special effects, spectacular monsters, creative premise, a refreshingly non-routine script.....This is perfect! I want it on DVD!!!!!!!! Great twist at the end, too.

This is a surprisingly decent science fiction horror movie, that rivals some big budget movies of the same genre.

First, there's solid story in this movie, and the delivery by the actors were good. Second, the production was very good for a low budget movie. There's no corners that were cut to make it look as authentic as it can. Third the special effects were more than decent. In fact, in this area, it was much better done than more famous films such as the "Relic" and "Dog Soldiers", and many other movies that had bigger budgets.

So, the producers of this movie has made careful planning of how to make this movie, and all the details came out right.

The movie is almost in the league of Deep Rising, but that movie had much bigger budget, and it shows. Good science fiction horror, that's worth watching.