Hey there fright fans. We recently added a new ghoul to the Dr. Death-Threads team. Keith Abt “The Dollar DVD Guy”, will be supplying you with his horror-filled movie reviews. Debating on wether or not to watch that fright flick? Don’t worry, we have you covered. Keith will be your go-to-ghoul on all good and bad from the horror bin. His first review is the Klaus Kinski 80’s classic, “Creature“. Enjoy!

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I was a teenager when “Creature” had a short run in theatres back in 1985. Even then I thought it looked like a low budget “Alien” ripoff, and though I loved a good sci-fi B-Movie back in those days (and still do) I never got around to seeing the film for one reason or another. Many years later, thanks to the magic of Public Domain, “Creature” turned up on the DVD rack in my local dollar store (on a double feature disc paired with Mark Hamill’s “Slipstream” no less), so I snagged a copy and sat down for some retro ’80s sci-fi cheese. Call me crazy, but I feel that the B-Movies from this era have more charm and character than any of the CGI-blasted so-called “B’s” that roll into our video stores on a regular basis nowadays, and “Creature” was no exception. It is definitely not original in the slightest but it was still a fun ride.

The plot is serviceable: a future archaeological team on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, finds a collection of preserved alien life forms in stasis tubes, some of them dating back 20,000 years. Of course, they accidentally break one of the tubes open and the occupant wakes up and has the explorers for lunch. Sometime later a search team is sent from Earth to find out what happened to the first squad, and when they come in for a landing on Titan they find a ship from a rival German corporation already in their planned landing zone. They hurry down to the surface, thinking that their competition has beaten them to the find, which results in their ship crashing and becoming damaged beyond repair. The astronauts explore the seemingly-deserted German ship and are attacked by the title Creature, who looks pretty much like you would expect a low budget ripoff of Giger’s “Alien” to look like… rubbery and toothy. (The creature is kept mostly in shadows for most of the film, doubtlessly to prevent the audience from seeing its threadbare construction in full lighting.) Eventually the lone “name” actor in “Creature’s” cast shows up in the form of Germany’s Klaus Kinski (who usually appears in higher-brow films than this) as the only survivor of the German ship’s crew. He explains that “We’ve found someone’s butterfly collection… but some of these butterflies are not so friendly,” then makes plans to help the American crew reclaim the German ship from its nasty stowaway so they can all return to Earth together. Needless to say, these plans go horribly wrong, so the Creature gets to chow on a few other cast members (and take over using their minds/bodies using parasitic little sucker-creatures attached to their heads) before the remaining survivors manage to mount a final assault and take the critter down.

“Creature” was obviously pretty low budget but despite that it has pretty decent sets and costumes, and a sense of humor that’s often missing from other flicks in this genre. The cast (made up mainly of character actors from television) do their jobs well enough, and the action scenes are better than I expected. I seem to remember this film being rated PG-13 when it was released back in the ’80s but I wonder if that is accurate because of the presence of a few “F-bombs,” some pretty decent gore on display (including a head explosion, a decapitation, and a guy’s face being peeled off of his skull) and some female boobies would’ve definitely called for an “R” in those days. “Creature” kept my interest throughout and is something I’d watch again. Worth a look even if you’re tired of the “Alien” saga and its endless retreads.

Brought to you by Keith Abt, the Dollar DVD Guy. He suffers through these movies so YOU don’t have to!

3 Headstones out of 5

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.