Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Revenge of the Revenant Review 13: The one with zombies and a generic alien


Title:
Creature

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Knockoff/ Mashup

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (1/4)

 

When I (re)started this feature in October, one thing I knew going in was that I wasn’t going to be able to cover everything I had in mind. My decision as to focus on the ones I found most unusual and significant, and that meant making some hard decisions even when I was in the process of viewing the movies under consideration. As a follow up, I decided to cover a few more that I was considering all along. The first up is the one that gave me the closest call, to the point that I made the last-minute substitution after viewing it. Still, after a little further thought, I decided this one belonged here rather than elsewhere. With that, I present Creature.

Our story begins with a brief introduction to an ill-fated expedition to the moons of Saturn, including a glimpse of a cool space station that is promptly smashed by an out-of-control ship. We then meet another expedition, sent to discover the fate of the first. On landing, they soon discover a single survivor. He recounts the discovery of something like an abandoned alien zoo or museum, which he compares to a butterfly collection, but, “Some  of these butterflies were not too friendly.” The reawakened organism proves to be a large and stealthy creature that can reanimate its victims with smaller parasites. But the revived are not just mindless drones, but seemingly intelligent and able to retain or access the host’s original memories and personality. The dwindling group of survivors must figure out who is infected and find the weakness of the monster before it finishes them off.

Creature was directed and cowritten by William Malone, under the title The Titan Find. The cast included Wendy Schaal (featured in Joe Dante’s Innerspace) as the heroine and Klaus Kinski as the survivor Hans. The monster design was undisputedly based on Alien, though it included visible eyes. The film was distributed by Trans World Entertainment, also responsible for Deep Space, under the title Creature for its US release. It had a very successful VHS release, which made it well-known and remembered even among those who had not seen it in the 1980s-90s era. DVD and digital releases were based on direct transfers from the VHS release, reflected in a full-frame format. In 2013, Malone released his own cut of the film in widescreen format. This was reportedly halted by a threat of litigation from MGM, which claimed the rights to the film, along with further plans for a Blu Ray release.

Like quite a few people, my experience with Creature began with seeing it in the video stores. I mostly noticed the picture of the monster in the box art, which I always thought looked like a moray eel. (The image here is from a Spanish language blog.) By my usual uncanny recollections, it was still on the shelves for a very, very long time, certainly into the late 1990s and maybe after 2000. I finally watched it through Netflix streaming, and liked it well enough. A while after that, I picked it up on a used DVD from the early 2000’s. The disk then sat on my shelves literally for years before I got to it for this review. I thought of reviewing it initially and very early for Space 1979, but still put it off until I had already decided to bring back the Revenant Review from my old blog. I finally watched it with the intention of including it in a list of zombie movies I covered for Halloween, but I found enough issues with it that I stretched definitions to review An AmericanWerewolf In London instead. At that point, I seriously considered putting it back in the Space 1979 lineup, but I felt like I had already forced my own hand. It simply had to be here, if I was going to cover it at all.

The main thing I can say about this movie is that it’s deceptively unremarkable, and that was the central problem in deciding where it belonged. The production values are just high enough to make it feel like it belongs in the 1960s rather than the 1980s. The space suits in particular look straight out of 2001 (which I still haven’t seen!). The actors are competent, but most of the characters are just bland. This is especially noticeable with Beth, who is spunky and reasonably smart, but more like Lambert than Ripley. The exceptions are Hans and Amazon-stereotype Melanie, played by Diane Salinger, but that does not improve matters. Their roles are outrageously exaggerated and acted accordingly, colliding like the Alien and the Predator in a series of surreal and clearly one-sided flirtations. The “creature” itself is entirely underwhelming. In the shots where we can see the damn thing, it just looks cheap and awkward, further hindered by a particularly severe lack of agility already common to Alien knockoffs.

Against this background, the zombie element is what keeps the movie interesting enough to watch or remember. The premise of a possessing parasite is not especially novel, though the movie covered it ahead of Night of the Creeps and The Hidden. What is unique is that these revenants are able to pass muster among the living, at least for a while. This allows some further nuances of behavior. One of the first hides the parasite with a bandage, while another spares Beth long enough to carry as a human shield. As a further consequence, the infected seem brainwashed more than zombified, though none of them are looking fresh by the end. The problem is that the story never explains or develops the concept, or does much with it. The infected never attack en masse like Romero-style zombies, nor do they keep in hiding long enough to carry out any strategy more complex than a surprise attack. The lack of development shows especially in the ending, which hinges on a twist improbable enough to hint that at least one of the reanimated might still among the crew, but mostly just doesn’t feel thought out. What zombie fans are likely to end up wishing for is that the filmmakers had gone all in with the parasites and left the generic alien on the cutting room floor.

This brings us to the “one scene”, and it is tellingly early. After the expedition’s first casualty, the rest of the crew is in mourning, particularly her boyfriend. As he sits disconsolate by a porthole, his lady love suddenly appears outside and beckons him. He goes out after her, with enough presence of mind to put on a spacesuit but not to alert his crewmates. We then see the reanimated lady moving away from the ship, pausing long enough to ensure that the guy sees her. By the time he has caught up, she is entirely out of her space suit. There is a genuinely eerie moment as she approaches the boyfriend, who merely stands in shock. Then, seemingly nonchalantly, she removes his helmet and kisses him, even as he collapses. It’s a truly unique and unnerving scene, all too much so for this movie.

With all that said, it will be obvious that this movie isn’t great. What kept me reserved about including it here, however, is whether it is truly “weird”. For pure randomness, this one is way up there, but is it really any stranger than, say, Lifeforce? The Video Dead? The Cemetery Man? Or (dear Logos) Shanks? If anything, this movie cops out where their like charged ahead, for better or worse. It’s the counterintuitive conventionality that brings this one down, to the point that I might have rated it better if it had been “worse” in ways that actually pushed the envelope. It may not be a full blown baddie, but it’s a self-dated artifact that’s overdue to be laid to rest.

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