In the near future, the race for commercial supremacy of
space has come down to two companies: Richter Dynamics of West
Germany and NTI of the United States. As the film opens, two guys
from NTI who have never seen ALIEN are inspecting a large box they
have found at a site:
GUY #1: "It's a skeleton of something."
GUY #2: "Whatever's in here has probably been dead a
hundred centuries."
CYNICAL FAN WHO SAW ALIEN: "Then again, maybe it's going to
thrust it's slimy tentacles into your spine and paint the inside of
your helmet crimson red."
After this suspense-filled opening we're thrown into
another in the long line of ALIEN rip-offs which came down the pike
in the early 80s. CREATURE has the distinction of being one of the
more entertaining ones.
THE MISSION: Claim a geological site of alien origin. Now
that doesn't sound
tooooo dangerous does it? Well, don't ask the
psychic chick, 'cause she has "bad feelings" about the trip. How
bad???
PSYCHIC CHICK: "I'm not coming back."
HER LOVER: "Of course you are."
PSYCHIC CHICK: "No, I'm not. I can feel it. Make love to
me. Please."
END OF DISCUSSION!!!
And so, the doomed crew (whoops! did I spoil anything?)
sets off with all of the required stereotypes on board. Davidson is
the tough-as-nails ship's pilot. The navigator is the woman who
just wants to be treated like any other guy and not like a
breast-sporting hunk o' love. Perkins is the NTI employed mission
commander who usually plays a cop or an FBI agent. Brice is the
leather-wearin', gun-totin', silent wench from Hell who looks like
she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, but never got close
enough to any man to try. Along for the ride are the usual
characters who should simply be listed in the credits as "Alien
Chum."
Once the mission reaches the designated planet and the crew
disembarks onto the soundstage with flashing lights, er, I mean the
surface of the planet, they come across two mutilated bodies and
one freshly-killed crew member. Do we turn back and go to our ship?
No, but then again, the scenes on the planet and in the ship are so
poorly lit that we can't even make out what they're afraid of. For
all we know it could simply be Ernest Borgnine in a strapless
evening gown...Ew! that actually is kind of scary.
By this point we all know what is going to happen (that is,
if you've seen ALIEN, ALIENS, GALAXY OF TERROR, FORBIDDEN WORLD,
etc.) and we're chomping at the bit for a little of the Double K
action...and our prayers are soon answered as the Kinkster comes up
behind the leather babe, grabs a breast and says, "I see you like
guns. What else do you like?"
K2, as Hans "Rudy" Hofner tells the crew that he was
originally aboard a ship with 22 crew members, but now it's just
him. Then again, if I was a shape-shifting creature with (as K2
puts it) "zoom kind uv collactive intelligence" I wouldn't go near
him either.
At this point, Kinski teams up with the now-dwindling NTI
expedition, and we viewers begin to ask ourselves some questions:
One...Is Kinski the alien? Two...Would you trust Kinski even if
he
wasn't the alien? Three... Why do all the chicks look
alike? Four...If you take 24 Vivarin at once, will you stay awake
for the rest of your life, or will your brain simply shut down and
mutate you into a cross between Iggy Pop and those guys at the bus
station who drink kosher wine from a paper sack?
From here on out CREATURE is a rocking & rolling humans
vs. aliens tale as we get mutilations, mutations, exploding heads,
a lounge lizard Kinski-creature, a rip-off of the ending of THE
THING, and a finale that nearly borders on imaginative
B-filmmaking.
The acting all around is pretty wooden (especially from the
guy who plays Perkins), with only K2 attempting to breathe some
life into lines like "This creature is sly..."
Then again, the script by director William Malone and Alan
Reed doesn't give anyone much to do while they sit around and wait
to get turned into a face-sucking sack of shit. Gets the nod just
for having a sense of fun and Kinski.
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