Leviathan (1989)

Leviathan (1989)** 1/2 (out of 4) An underwater mining group led by Steven Beck (Peter Weller) are enjoying their last couple days on the job when a couple of their crew members stumble across a sunken Russian ship. They take a safe from the ship and soon realize something went terribly wrong but no one knows exactly what. They soon find out when one of the members pretty much begins to melt and soon a new creature is born.LEVIATHAN is often called an ALIEN rip-off but I guess if you want to be fair you should call it a rip of ALIENS since it had just recently been in theaters and made a small fortune. This film here obviously doesn't have the same budget but for the most part I thought it was a fairly entertaining mix of sci-fi and horror. It's certainly not a classic by any stretch of the imagination but there are enough good moments to make it worth sitting through.One of the funniest things watching the movie today is seeing all the familiar faces. Everyone will remember Weller from ROBOCOP but we've got a strong supporting group of character actors including Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern, Amanada Pays, Ernie Hudson, Lisa Eilbacher, Meg Foster and Hector Elizondo. While the screenplay certainly doesn't have much character development you can still like and enjoy them because you're so familiar with the actors. There's no doubt that liking the actors help keep you more interested in everything that is going on.On a technical level the film is quite impressive. We're given some brilliant cinematography and there's also an effective score and some very good editing. At just 98-minutes the film begins to lose some steam in the second half but the biggest problem is the actual monster. For the majority of the screen time the monster is just a slug like creature, which eventually turns into a monster but it comes way too late in the game. I really think the film would have been much better had it been given a more interesting monster.With that said, LEVIATHAN is a mildly entertaining film that has enough going for it to make it worth sitting through.

I liked this movie even though it got a lot of ideas from the movies Alien and The Thing. This movie is about underwater miners mining silver; and discover that a lethal life form gets aboard their ship.When " Sixpack"(Daniel Stern) and "Elizabeth"( Amanda Pays) get caught pulling pranks on the ship; "Beck"(Peter Weller) assigns them to work duty the next day. The next day the two are venturing out on the ocean floor, ready for work. When Sixpack and Liz discover a Russian Ship(Leviathan) they explore it. Sixpack finds this box and they both take it back to see what's inside. The crew is stunned and find a videotape of the Captains Log. On the video the Russian Capt.(Eugene Lipnski) is explaining that his crew is dying off, due to some deadly virus. When Beck and his crew finish watching the tape they are stunned,they believe the Leviathan was deliberately sunk. They think the remaining crew sunk it to save the rest of the crew; and possibly to keep their virus secret. When Sixpack hides a flask of vodka in his pants he as well as the rest of the crew are doomed.Sixpack and Liz drink from the flask and the next day Sixpack realizes he has caught some type of virus. He goes to see "DOC"(Richard Crenna). The virus starts to get so out of control it ends up killing Sixpack in 8 hours. The crew panics and when Liz finds out what happened to Sixpack and how it transforms him she kills herself. The virus lives in it's host for awhile then it kills them, consumes their intelligence; and starts to form into some type of monster. It knocks a majority of the crew, and after each kill become more intelligent.When Beck contacts "Ms Martin"( Meg Foster) she gives him some crap story for not rescuing them right away. She explains that a hurricane is coming and their trip to the surface is delayed. so for the next two days the remaining crew will have to fight for their lives against this life form in order to survive. In the end 3 members to escape, but two only make it all the way back. The ending is priceless, and somewhat the AHHHHH moment of the movie.Even though this movie is not an original I still like it. The story a simple one about big corporations that value profit over human life. Those that have worked for big companies in the past know what I am talking about. This movie has some known names in it and some I never heard of, still good acting from all. So if you like Alien or The Thing you should like this movie. It is one of the better Sci-fi/horror films from the 80's so give it a watch.

I have now seen this film a few times, and have come to the conclusion that Leviathan is a shallow movie about the deep ocean. The premise is really the only interesting aspect of Leviathan, while the special effects, story line, and character development are lacking in quality. First, the SFX of this film are truly sub-par. Even though I understand the limits of practical effects, the effects in Leviathan are not convincing at all, and the designs are poor and lifeless. Compared to similar films, such as Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982), the special effects come off as cheap. This pulled me out of the film every time I saw the ridiculous lumbering mountain of wet rubber that was the ultimate monster. Second, the story line is basically a rehashing of Alien, expect taking place on Earth. It borrows heavily from The Thing as well, which all three have the archetypal scifi-horror story of finding a horrible creature trapped for eons, that is freed and subsequently wrecks havoc on the human characters. This in itself not a huge issue for me, but Leviathan added no interesting twist on this template, it just filled in the blanks. Third, the character development remained a low priority on the filmmakers mind. The characters are flat, and expendable. Peter Weller's character is the most developed, but still doesn't fill the necessary depth I need to care about him. In fact, the characters felt like a rip off of The Thing, even the Doc had a similar fate to Blair in The Thing. The spoiler part of this review is about the atrocious ending. It felt slapped on and shallow. The ending made this film go from just okay to bad.

So back in 89 there was a spate of deep sea movies which included James Cameron's 'The Abyss', that movie was the only one to actually do well. I guess its a little ironic that the only other deep sea flick that was of any worth at this time was this movie which just happened to completely and utterly rip off Cameron's previous two mega hits of the era.So the plot here is basically 'Alien' combined with 'Aliens' and 'The Abyss' along with various other horror movies such as 'The Thing'. A small team of undersea miners are on the ocean floor erm...mining stuff, when along the line one crew member discovers a sunken Russian vessel which contains a deadly secret. This turns out to be a mutagen of some kind that infects a crew member killing him, his body then begins to mutate into a sea creature and I'm sure you can guess how this goes.The general idea is not completely identical to the James Cameron 80's filmography, the creature is basically a toxic mutant which is made up of the various dead crew members. This thing absorbs its victims intellect and is physically formed by the crew members bodies...or something like that. The crew members don't appear to be completely dead, more like trapped within this creatures body or they are being slowly absorbed/digested (?). Anyhow the visual design is not entirely shown in the movie, its kept out of sight and hidden behind lots of steel pipes, but what you do see revolves around tentacles (as usual) and snapping maws. The look of of the beast and the way it mutates does run along similar lines to John Carpenter's 'The Thing' where as everything else is 'Alien' within the set of 'The Abyss'.Put it this way the special effects are a solid example of old fashioned hands-on craftsmanship with plenty of blood gore goo and body shock horror, the good old days. Despite the fact Stan Winston, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. worked on the effects they aren't the best you will see, like I say they are solid and fun for fanboys of the craft but the other movies of the day were better examples. I think the creature is mostly hidden because they knew it wasn't too good, earlier in the film the smaller leech type things were effective but the main creature is a bit of a lifeless lump.The deep sea base set does actually look pretty good with some obviously solid production values in play. Again if you think of the Nostromo and the Deep Core combined then you have a good idea of the visuals. Lots of metal corridors, pipes, gratings, the odd beige coloured medical bay, beige living quarters etc...its all too familiar really. I did like the deep sea diving suits they use which have a nice futuristic realistic look, more like space suits admittedly but that tends to be the way with these types of movies.Although not actually filmed under the sea the film does look very good with some brilliant use of indoor sets, heavy mist and lighting, it does look as though its on the ocean floor. This is helped by good camera angles with the crew in their suits when walking around, a great submerged Russian shipwreck and lots of little floating bits in front of the camera to simulate the deep moving ocean.I guess overall this movie is just way too much of a carbon copy of the other movies I've mentioned. The characters are all extremely clichéd and look like they've just stepped off the set of the 'Alien' franchise. Richard Crenna would be the Ash/Bishop character, Ernie Hudson is Parker, Daniel Stern would be Brett/Hudson, Eilbacher would be Lambert etc...and yes I did just mention Daniel Stern who was totally miscast incidentally oh and his characters name is Sixpack. Along with that the plot trundles by exactly the same as the Scott/Cameron flicks. I mean exactly the same right down to the self destruct finale with loud computer countdown, the company knowing all about the mutagen and setting the crew up and ridiculously similar weapons including the obligatory flame thrower. The finale doesn't really help its case either with a brief shark attack that ends just as quickly as its starts, the coastguard flying overhead at the exact moment the survivors surface and the fact the beastie seemingly comes back from its watery grave. Its a bizarre finale really as we see the creature getting crushed and then the entire deep sea base implodes...yet it manages to survive.The movie then still continues as we see Peter Weller getting his own back on the company director or representative by punching her out!! he knocks out a woman! Everything about the finale just feels tacked on and rushed, as though they weren't sure what to do...and it really shows. It is a fun deep sea thriller but its not very scary truth be told and in an era of sci-fi classics this movie fell well short I'm afraid, but its not a total loss.6/10