Leviathan (1989)

Director: George P. Cosmatos

Starring: Peter Weller, Richard Crenna

Run Time: 98 mins

Certificate: 18

 

Plot Outline: Undersea miners come across the wreck of a Russian ship and they bring back a dangerous cargo to their facility on the ocean floor, which proceeds to get loose and begin to kill off the crew one at a time.

The Review: When The Abyss was being made, other studios thought it was going to be some creature-runs-amok schlock flick like Alien underwater and so a small batch of attempted "cash-ins" were made (and let's face it, they are cash-ins really). Utilising the extremely overused "people in confined space are killed off by monster" plot, Leviathan drags it's limp carcass onto the screen, practically being dead on arrival. It's got a reasonable cast of actors including Peter Weller, Richard Crenna and "the fourth Ghostbuster who no one remembers the name" Ernie Hudson. It's got a decent budget (over $20 million was sunk into this flick and you can tell by some of the impressive sets). It's also got Stan Winston doing the creature effects. How bad can it get? Well the direction is pretty soggy and there's not a great deal of tension cranked out with the confined setting. The script, when it's not ripping off Alien or The Thing, doesn't do the cast any favours at all. Maybe this is why the likes of Peter Weller and Richard Crenna phone in their performances. One-by-one the cast is picked off (and reasonably quickly too considering the creature doesn't turn up until about half-way through) quite generically and "absorbed" or mutated into the creature ala The Thing. Only this time there is no icky effects courtesy of Rob Bottin. Instead Stan Winston's creature is a total disappointment. For a start you don't get a good clean look at it for any period of time and it also seems to change sizes depending on what shot the director wanted to have. It's arguably his worst work to date but on the positive side, at least it's not CGI!

Final Verdict: Something of a minor cult favourite amongst horror/sci-fi fans, Leviathan still ranks as shoddy work considering the talent involved both in front of and behind the camera. It's not that isn't  entertaining because at times, it is. But with a bit of concerted effort this could have been a decent cheesy summer flick. Instead it's now confined to late night showings and bargain bins at the local video store.

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