Creature (1985 film)

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
This entry is for the film in 1985. For the film that was aired as Creature on SciFi UK, see Alien Lockdown
Creature
Creatureposter.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by William Malone
Produced by William G. Dunn
Screenplay by William Malone
Alan Reed
Starring Stan Ivar
Wendy Schaal
Lyman Ward
Robert Jaffe
Diane Salinger
Music by Thomas Chase
Steve Rucker
Cinematography Harry Mathias
Edited by Bette Jane Cohen
Distributed by Trans World Entertainment
Release dates
 <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
  • March 1985 (1985-03) (Brussels International Festival
    of Fantasy Films)
  • May 8, 1985 (1985-05-08) (United States)
Running time
 97 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Creature (aka The Titan Find or Titan Find) is a 1985 science fiction horror film directed by William Malone, featuring Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Lyman Ward, Robert Jaffe and Diane Salinger. It features early special effects work by Robert and Dennis Skotak, who would go on to design the special effects for Aliens.[1]

Plot

In the film's prologue, two geological researchers for the American multinational corporation NTI encounter an ancient alien laboratory on the moon Titan. In the lab is an egg-like container which is keeping an alien creature alive. The creature emerges and kills the researchers. Two months later, the geologists' spaceship crashes into the space station Concorde in orbit around Earth's moon, its pilot having died in his seat.

NTI dispatches a new ship, the Shenandoah, to Titan. Its crew is accompanied by the taciturn security officer Bryce. While in orbit, the crew locate a signal coming from the moon—the distress call of a ship from the rival German multinational Richter Dynamics. Their own landing turns disastrous when the ground collapses beneath their landing site, dropping the ship into a cavern and wrecking it. When radio communication fails, a search party is sent out to contact the Germans.

In the German ship, they find one of the containers from the prologue breached, as well as the dead bodies of the crew. Then the creature appears, and kills Susan when she lags behind the escaping group. Fennel enters a state of shock at the sight and Bryce sedates him. When they return to their own ship, the Americans find that one of the Germans, Hofner (Klaus Kinski), has snuck aboard. He tells them how his crew was slain by the creature, which was buried with other organisms as part of a galactic menagerie. He proposes returning to his ship to get some explosives, but the crew are unwilling to risk it.

However, it emerges that the victims of the creature become undead controlled by the creature through parasites. Unsupervised in the medbay, Fennel sees the undead Susan through a porthole and follows her outside. She strips naked, and he stands transfixed while she removes his helmet. He asphyxiates, and then she attaches an alien parasite to his head. Now under alien control, Fennel sends a transmission to his crewmates, inviting them over to the German ship. Hofner and Bryce are sent to get some air tanks for the Shenandoah and stand guard over it, while the rest of the crew go over to the Richter ship.

Hofner and Bryce stop over at the menagerie on their way, and are attacked by Susan, who has also had a parasite attached. The rest of the crew go over to the Richter ship, and find Fennel with a bandage on his head to conceal his parasite. Captain Davison insists that medical officer Oliver examine his head, so Fennel has her accompany him to the engineering quarters to feed her to the creature. Davison and Perkins notice Fennel doesn't sweat and go check on them. They are too late to rescue Oliver who is decapitated by the creature, but Perkins blows up Fennel's head with his pistol.

Soon afterwards Sladen runs into an infected Hofner. She escapes the ship, and in her hurry only puts on her helmet after exiting. Perkins spots her outside and opens the airlock. Now unconscious, Sladen is carried in by Hofner to lure the others. They fight, and Davison manages to defeat Hofner by ripping off his parasite. The three survivors formulate a plan to electrocute the creature with the ship's fusion modules, which can only be accessed by going through the engineering quarters.

Suddenly some alarms sound: a creature is making its way through the ship, committing sabotage. Sladen and Davison go through engineering to make their electrocution trap, while Perkins goes to the computer room to monitor the creature. Sladen finishes rigging the trap just in time for the creature's arrival, and they apparently electrocute it to death. However, when Davison leaves, it captures Sladen.

Davison and Perkins follow her screaming and find her locked inside engineering. Studying the ship's blueprints, they find another entrance to engineering and send Perkins to lure away the creature while Davison retrieves Sladen. On the way, Perkins locates one of the bombs Hofner had mentioned just before the creature jumps him. The dying Perkins manages to attach the bomb to the creature and set off the countdown so Davison can jettison it through the airlock.

It climbs back aboard, however, so Davison tackles it, throwing himself out the airlock in the process. When the bomb fails to explode, Bryce appears and shoots it, which sets it off and kills the creature. She recovers Davison and dresses his wounds, and they finally launch the ship.

Cast

  • Stan Ivar as Mike Davison
  • Wendy Schaal as Beth Sladen
  • Lyman Ward as David Perkins
  • Robert Jaffe as Jon Fennel
  • Diane Salinger as Melanie Bryce
  • Annette McCarthy as Dr. Wendy H. Oliver
  • Marie Laurin as Susan Delambre
  • Klaus Kinski as Hans Rudy Hofner

Accolades

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Nomination

  • Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Best Horror Film; 1985.
  • Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Best Special Effects - Lawrence E. Benson; 1985

DVD release and other viewing media

Sometime after the film's release, the film fell into the public domain and received numerous VHS and DVD releases. In 2007, Creature was shown on the horror hosted television series Cinema Insomnia.[2] Apprehensive Films later released the Cinema Insomnia-version onto DVD.[3]

In March 2013 director William Malone independently released Creature under its initial title of "Titan Find" fully uncut and in widescreen for the first time.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Creature at IMDb.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Creature_(1985_film)&oldid=1180635"