Featured Creature: The one that put Robocop under water

 

Title: Leviathan

What Year?: 1989

Classification: Runnerup

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

 

As I write this, I’m just past 10 reviews for this feature, and it’s crossed my mind that I haven’t done any that I have given the lowest rating. On consideration, this is in no small part because I set out to cover movies that were already of a higher level of quality than I usually dealt with under my other features. I will also admit that there have been several movies that I went easy on (see especially Congo and Starship Troopers 3) because they hit my soft spots. Starting the double digits, I finally decided I had to review a movie that really deserved the lowest rating, and not just some obscure or infamous piece of kaka I might otherwise ignore. That brought me straight to one that I had already purchased with this feature in mind, only to be baffled and disappointed enough that I set it aside until now. It’s with a genuinely heavy heart that I present Leviathan, a movie that put Peter Weller under the sea.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to a deep-sea facility mining for silver and other precious metals from the ocean floor. We meet the usual motley crew, including a surprisingly authoritative geologist, a crusty doctor, two attractive ladies who clearly aren’t both making it to the end, a familiar-looking irritating comic relief character and a black guy who might have a chance. The story gets in gear as they discover a mysterious sunken military ship, which should either have been there the whole time or hit the bottom on their watch. Aboard the craft, they discover evidence of a genetic experiment that would normally have been defunded with a tactical nuke, without giving it more than a casual mention to their corporate backers. Of course, something gets aboard, a pathogen whose mutating victims don’t stay dead. The geologist’s best plan is to keep it secret from the crew and his superiors until he and the doctor can find a way to stop the creatures. But when the doc becomes the next victim, their only option is to fight their way to the surface, and hope decompression doesn’t finish them off!

Leviathan was a science fiction/ body horror film produced by Aurelio and Luigi De Laurentiis, a father-son team from the clan of Dino De Laurentiis. The film was directed by George P. Cosmatos, a low-budget Italian filmmaker who had broken into the mainstream with Rambo (I know, First Blood 2) and Cobra. It was widely regarded as a knockoff to James Cameron’s The Abyss, which was released the same year, with further ties to Alien and The Thing. In fact, the production reunited at least three figures from the Alien franchise, production designer Ron Cobb (see Dark Star and Robot Jox), effects guy Stan Winston (see Invaders From Mars) and composer Jerry Goldsmith (see Deep Rising and its soundtrack). The film starred Peter Weller of Robocop and Ghostbusters’ Ernie Hudson, with Robert Englund (see Galaxy of Terror) as “Six Pack” and They Live's Meg Foster as the executive Martin. The movie had a limited box office of $15 million. It has been released on VHS, DVD and Blu Ray, as well as digital formats.

For my experiences, this is a movie I long knew of, but only ran down when a correspondent described the film and the talent assembled to me. What intrigued me most was the parallel history with The Abyss, a movie that was among my favorites in the 1990s-2000s. From my own research and experience, deep-sea sci fi was a quite reputable genre that got a head start with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and continued with the likes of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Deep Range, Harryhausen’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and even the Bond outings Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me. Given that context, the late ‘80s-‘90s wave was a belated revival, which in further hindsight never really got off the ground. What drove it wasn’t the modest success that came with The Abyss, but the self-fulfilling expectation of a “trend” to be followed. In those terms, Leviathan is perhaps the most instructive example, unfortunately rarely in a good way.

What can be said right off the bat is that the cast is top-notch, perhaps even better than The Abyss for the 1980s landscape. Weller is engaging as always, drawing on Buckaroo Banzai (which I’ve never quite found room for) more than Robocop. Hudson easily runs away with the movie without hamming it up, while Englund proves he can do creepy and funny without murder-based puns. We also get a fine performance from Richard Crenna as the doc. Then the bang-for-the-buck standout is Foster, appearing almost entirely on the undersea habitat’s viewscreens, as ethereal and lethally indifferent as ever. Of course, the real stars for fans of is type of movie are Winston and Goldsmith, who along with Cobb give this the feel of a revival tour. However, it is their contributions that give this movie the unavoidable feel of a second-rank entry. Their work is as good as ever yet not as effective in ways that are difficult to pin down. All in all, the strongest, if perhaps misleading, impression is that they were simply left to their own devices rather being led by creative minds that could take full advantage of their talents.

That brings me to the monsters, and I’m going to have to go longer than usual. What we encounter here are among the most unusual creatures on record. What we see in the first phase of the outbreak are more like zombies than anything else, lending itself to some very creepy moments (including a darkly comical botched burial at sea). As the creatures mutate, they remain effective and interesting, as exemplified by shots of a mouth sprouting like stigmata on a victim’s hand and an unnerving tentacle/ worm with teeth and lips. Coupled with ramped-up paranoia, this leads to the strongest moments in the film’s middle act, with extra fun as the crew arms themselves with power tools. Once we get into the finale, however, it’s a case of each new phase being less interesting, until we end up with a conglomeration of human, fish and invertebrate parts that makes no sense and still isn’t interesting. And don't get me started on the handling of decompression, which at least isn't a unique problem.

Meanwhile, what really bothers me is the weak setup, which is exactly where genre fans may say they don’t care, yet it does make a difference. In The Abyss (see also the novel Sphere, which I don’t rule out as an influence), what we see is a highly specialized team sent to respond to a very unusual situation. Here, what we have are people who make a discovery in the course of their routine duties, perhaps in a nod to the Alien space truckers. The problem is, the logic doesn’t check out even on that debatable level. The Nostromo crew are shown responding to a deliberate communication; here, the crew simply happen upon something that others have tried to hide. (And why wouldn’t the Soviets scuttle their ship somewhere off Siberia where the ice would cover it most of the time?) On a more fundamental level, the whole habitat is the kind of setting that exists for the needs of the story instead of providing its ground rules. A genuine permanent mining facility would be much bigger than anything we see, and if it was run by such a small crew, they would be doing little more than babysitting automated machinery. The alternative would be a mobile base capable of surveying large territories, which is exactly the kind of operation that might uncover an anomaly without looking for it. The lesson is that a few changed details could have given us a much more convincing story without costing time or money; instead, the filmmakers gambled that nobody would think this through further than they did.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one that’s pretty funny. As we approach the midpoint, Six Pack has succumbed to an infection, but the commander and the doctor simply tell the crew that he has been isolated for treatment. However, they haven’t locked the room, which allows Hudson’s character to walk in. There is a darkly comical touch as he gives a reconciliatory speech, and takes it for granted as his crewmate shifts beneath the sheet. As he walks away, something moves much more suddenly and dramatically. Then the blonde half of the female crew enters, looking fatefully despondent. She says almost matter-of-factly, “I’m losing my hair.” And then she pulls back the sheet…

In closing, I come as usual to the rating. Here, the real question is, is this really the worst movie I’ve reviewed for this feature? I will freely admit the answer is no. (If anything, that distinction goes to Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster, with Congo not far behind.) What sets this one apart is that almost all the movies I have covered before deliver on what they clearly intended to do. This film, on the other hand, is the first to leave me disappointed, and even more frustrated. It’s a subjective call, but it’s a real one, especially when the talent involved is taken into account. With that, I can finally say I found a movie that I can give a 1 out of 4, and I can also say I didn’t set out to find it. Now, I’m done for another day.