Creature

The year is... Okay, so we're not actually told the year so we have no idea when this film is set. Let's assume it's the future though as we're sending manned missions to Titan. What we do know, according to the appallingly bad voice over at the start, is that there are two rival companies, one American and one German, both heavily invested in space and both vying to be number one. If you don't want to listen to the aforementioned terrible voice over, you can always mute the sound and just read the text because they are in fact EXACTLY THE SAME. Why have the voice over? Just the text would've sufficed. It's like having a bad voice over on the opening scroll in Star Wars. You just don't do it. If you're wondering what the voice is like, think of the voice that speaks the intro on The A-Team and you're pretty much there.

Anyway, so a couple of American astronauts are investigating the surface of Titan. They come across this site with strange artefacts and shit. Amongst the artefacts are these pod-like things. Okay, they're pods. Wiping away the dust from one of the pods the astronauts discover that there's an alien life-form inside. Their first instinct is to let the alien out of the pod. This is a mistake. Honestly, have these astronauts not watched any sci-fi? Everyone knows that opening the pod is a bad idea. But one of them surmises that whatever is in there has probably been dead for many centuries. Quite how he knows this I'm not sure, it's quite a big assumption to make. But then he did use the word "probably" so he's got himself covered if things go tits up. (Spoiler: Things go tits up). One of the astronaut guys sits on the pod while the other one takes a photo of him. The guy sat on the pod suddenly goes quiet. Blood spatters all over the inside of his helmet and he's dead. The other astronaut nearly makes it back in the space ship, but the returning space ship crashes into its home space station. Just before the impact the space station gets a visual of the astronaut and he doesn't look too special. It looks as though the alien thing got him too and zombified him. But at least it's useful to know that zombies are crap at flying space craft.

So the Americans assemble a team to travel to Titan and find out what the hell happened. You'll be glad to know that females are well represented in this film. There are in fact four of them. We have a doctor, a security officer who doesn't say a lot but has a big gun, a tech girl who's also the partner of the ship's captain, and Kim Wilde. With regards to male crew we have the commander who looks like Simon Cowell, a hotshot guy, and the captain who's partnered with tech girl. So our team is assembled and they have a bit of a chin-wag. Later we cut to a scene featuring Kim Wilde and hotshot guy. They're alone on an observation deck looking out into space. Kim Wilde gets all nervous about the mission and says "I'm not coming back. I can feel it". Quickly followed by "Make love to me. Please". Cue completely pointless 80's sex scene featuring cheesy music and soft focus camera.

Next we see the crew in orbit around Titan. They're looking for the landing site when they see another ship below. The ship checks out to be one of their German rivals. So they decide to land near the German craft and check things out. Sadly they have a bit of a bumpy landing due to a storm and are unable to take off again. They attempt to hail the German ship but receive no response. So they put on space suits and wander over to the German ship. The captain says that the security officer and hotshot guy should go with him into the German ship and orders the rest of the crew to wait outside. But Kim Wilde decides she's not going to leave hotshot guy so she tags on the end. They go inside and immediately split up (will these people never learn). Kim Wilde discovers one of the alien pod thingies, quickly followed by the remains of several of the crew. She runs and alerts the others. She then gets separated from the others behind a door. We see blood spurt up the glass followed by her body being dragged away. The remaining crew then discover more dead bodies and decide it's time to get back to their ship. Back onboard there's a scene with the captain and tech girl. Tech girl bursts into tears and says "I just can't believe that Susan's dead" in what is without doubt the worst acting I have ever seen.

We then cut to the security officer woman getting undressed in her quarters. Then she sees a face in the mirror. It's an old dude who grabs her and starts groping her. He says "I see you like guns. What else do you like?" in a German accent. Yes, this is an old perv who also happens to be the last surviving member of the German crew. I'm not exactly sure that's the best way to introduce yourself to fellow stranded astronauts, but never mind. So basically she kicks his ass and then takes him to see the rest of the crew. German perv admits that his crew made a terrible mistake in bringing the pod onboard his ship. He then fills the American crew in on exactly what they're up against. He says originally there were 22 German crew, now he's the sole survivor.

Next we see the undead Kim Wilde return and tempt hotshot guy outside. She strips naked and (cough) pulls off his helmet. She then starts to kiss him as he falls to the ground. Meanwhile on the ship the lack of air is starting to become an issue. German perv volunteers to go outside with security woman and remove the air tanks from his dead crew mates. German perv has another grope once they're outside. Back on the ship they receive a communication. It's from hotshot guy. He says he's on the German ship, he's checked the ship out and that it's completely safe for the others to go over. He says the ship has minor damage and that he can have it repaired and ready to go by the time the others arrive. Then we cut to German perv and security woman who find the dead German crew, only some of them appear to be members of the undead club and they attack German perv.

All the crew except for tech girl head over to the German ship. Tech girl is instructed to wait behind for German perv and security woman to return. Soon after the crew arrive on the German ship hotshot guy reveals his true zombie colours. Thankfully the commander is able to blow his head off with a gun, but sadly not before he kills the doctor woman. Back onboard the American ship, tech girl encounters zombified German perv. She manages to put on her space suit and escape, but she passes out just as she reaches the German ship. Zombie German perv picks her up and carries her onboard the ship. As the captain and commander are attending to tech girl, zombie German perv attacks them, but thankfully once again they manage to kill him.

Tech girl thinks she can wire an area of the ship to electrocute the original alien creature. Oh yeah, that finally puts in an appearance now, looking a bit like the alien from Alien, if that makes sense. Well an extremely low-budget version of it anyway. Okay, it looks like a bloke in a suit with a big alien head on top. Thankfully we don't have to look at it for long as it does indeed end up being electrocuted. Our remaining friends celebrate with 20 minutes of the film to go, which as we all know is extremely foolish. (Seriously, if these guys make it out alive they should be forced to watch A LOT of sci-fi movies). So yeah, the alien isn't dead and it ends up capturing tech girl. She ends up suspended upside down but still very much alive. Meanwhile the commander comes up with a plan to dump the alien outside by luring it to the cargo bay and opening the hatch in the floor. While he's doing this captain guy manages to rescue tech girl. The commander finds a bomb on the German ship which he plans to detonate once the alien is outside to hopefully blow it to shit. Sadly the commander gets his brain chomped by the alien, but not before arming the bomb. Captain guy then opens the hatch in the cargo bay floor and the alien and the commander are dumped outside. The alien tries to come back onboard, so the captain guy ends up fighting with the alien on the surface. The captain guy is flung clear of the alien but sadly the bomb doesn't detonate. Suddenly security woman appears with her gun and blows the alien to shit (oh yeah, I wondered what happened to her). She drags captain guy back to the ship. Captain guy, tech girl and security woman successfully blast off and head for home. The end.

This film isn't great. But then it's not utterly terrible either. IMDb currently rate it at 4.1 out of 10 and that seems like a fair score to me. A bit below average seems like a fair assessment. This is obviously a blatant, low budget Alien rip-off. But if you go into this film knowing that I don't think you'll be too underwhelmed. This is sci-fi which is more at the horror end of the spectrum, which is reflected by its 18 certificate. Although to be honest, these days you're likely to see more gore, sex and violence in an episode of Postman Pat. If this film were released today it would probably receive a 15 certificate, and be laughed at for its crappy looking effects. I don't think the sex and nudity added anything to this film at all. But then I guess if they were going for an adult audience they might as well throw some of that in too. But as I said, it was completely unnecessary and did nothing to further the plot. My summarising of the plot in this review may seem to jump about a bit, but that's because that's exactly what the film does. There are several short scenes and a lot of jump cuts, but not to the point of it becoming too annoying.

The highlight of this film for me has to be the pervy German astronaut played by the late Klaus Kinski. The character is so unbelievably creepy, I love it. He just makes your skin crawl and yet you still have some sympathy for him (well I still had sympathy for him anyway, but maybe that's because I'm a bit of a perv too). I'm not saying his acting is outstanding by any means, but in comparison to the rest of the acting dross in this film it definitely stands out.

I was glad that some of the crew made it out in the end, so in that respect the film definitely worked for me. It didn't enthral or captivate me, but then again I wasn't checking every five minutes to see if it would soon be over (I'm looking at you, Battlefield Earth). This 1985 film is definitely a film of its time. It hasn't aged terribly well, but if you'd like to see a bit of mid eighties sci-fi horror you could do a lot worse than watch this.