Review: Creature (1985)
(aka Titan Find)
Directed by: William Malone
Starring: Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Klaus Kinski
Written by: William Malone, Alan Reed
Music by: Thomas Chase, Steve Rucker
IMDb
Creature was director William Malone’s foray into milking the Alien cash cow. In this, a group of scientists from a multinational space corporation that is definitely not Weyland-Yutani is dispatched to investigate an incident involving their colleagues on Saturn’s moon, Titan. They receive a distress call from a ship belonging to their employer’s rival and, of course, what they discover is pretty nasty. Nothing about this movie strays too far from its inspiration — the creature design is very H.R. Gigerian, although it’s more of a lumbering dinosaur version of the xenomorph; the plot and set-pieces are similar; and even the score, while quite good in its own right, is borrowing generously from the Jerry Goldsmith playbook. This film is one of the most competent rip-offs from the ‘80s, though. The cast, featuring an adorable Wendy Schaal, a nutty Klaus Kinski, and a very goth-looking Diane Salinger (Simone from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure), is solid and does its best to sell the lesser caliber of filmmaking here. Literally everything about Creature is slightly better than average but never exceptional. It’s doing just enough to stand out from the morass of bad sci-fi horror — and this is fine; it’s a perfectly enjoyable movie to satisfy a craving for ‘80s monster action. However, some tightening of the pace and a few additional gory kills would have done wonders. I do think the film is a victim of its awesome marketing: The fantastic poster art, which is among the best of all time in my opinion, really elevates expectations to a point where nothing that actually made it on screen could ever match them. Sadly, every version of this movie I’ve seen looks so dark and muddy. Supposedly Creature is now in the public domain, which makes it especially puzzling that no one has stepped in to restore it for Blu-ray. Hopefully that will come to pass in the future, because this is a film that probably deserves some TLC.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10