Director: William Malone
Written by: William Malone & Alan Reed
Starring: Klaus Kinski
Taglines: “It’s been sleeping peacefully on a moon of Saturn for 2000 centuries … until now!”
“It’s Been Sleeping For 2000 Years, Until Now.”
“First you die. . .Then the terror begins”
In many ways, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Ridley Scott’s 1978 classic Alien Quadrilogy was a very common source to borrow from during the following years. Despite the incredible set and creature design, near-flawless character acting and intensely, almost perfectly directed suspense sequences, it was a very simple movie. In short: small group of people in space find an alien creature who picks them off one by one. It’s simple, straightforward and kind to a low budget (small cast, sparse sets, though the creature itself may need a cash injection).
As with Friday the 13th Uncut and Jaws, a lot of independent directors realised the box-office potential of creating a small-scale rip-off. It almost didn’t matter if the script was any good, just show a few moments of a reasonably convincing creature on screen, a few gory deaths and you’re there! Of course, most of these movies sucked the big one and… well, this isn’t any different.
I originally saw this movie under the UK VHS title Titan Find, which intrigued me a lot more than the insanely generic “Creature”, and… it bored me senseless. So much so that it wasn’t until a recent free screening (thanks Joost!) that I never even made it to the 30 minute mark where the movie’s “name” actor Klaus Kinski even shows up.
The story’s pretty ordinary. Some idiots in space suits happen across a storage unit with an alien creature inside it. While taking photos (!), they manage to let the creature out and one of them dies a horrible death. We then switch to a team of scientists who are on their way to the same planet. They discover the bodies of a rival German team, all slaughtered in some gorily unknown way. However, one of their number isn’t quite dead yet, nor quite human.
I can’t hold the film’s very low budget against it, and I like director William Malone’s later work (such as the House on Haunted Hill remake – why didn’t they keep the deleted scenes in the movie! – and especially the Masters Of Horror episode “Fair Haired Child“). But, there’s nothing in here to do anything but fill time – thoughts that apply equally to his numbing début Scared to Death, though at least there were was some variety in the locations in that movie!
There’s a few interesting attempts to borrow the look and feel of Alien, but it all falls flat without Giger’s design, more so than other similar movies. I never once believed any of the characters, and the idea of having the alien infect people was clearly a way to not have to show the shoddily designed monster – nothing to match The Thing here! Kinski is watchable as always, but by the time you get to his appearance, you might not care – check out the loopy Crawlspace, Venom or even the excellent sci-fi movie [/Androidcbc]
[...] … with the award-winning trial team of Malone and Scarlett to help revise the trial story …Creature (1985) (a.k.a. Titan Find) 80s FearDirector: William Malone. Written by: William Malone & Alan Reed … budget against it, and I [...]