Rating: N/A
Dir: George P. Cosmatos
Star: Peter Weller, Amanda Pays, Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern
[5] Why does Pays only appear in films with slimy creatures? The Kindred had the a slimy genetic experiment, this has a slimy undersea monster and Max Headroom had, er, Max Headroom. The next film in the Jacques Cousteau season (we’ve still got Roger Corman’s Lords of the Deep to come) steals a lot from Alien, a fair bit from The Thing and a tad from Jaws, adds Weller and comes up with a workmanlike movie that is the best of the submarine bunch I’ve seen, though that’s not saying much. Workers in an undersea mine discover “Leviathan”, a sunken Russian ship that isn’t supposed to be there.
The reason it’s not marked is it’s holding an especially nasty creature which wiped out the crew before it was scuttled – before you can say “Nostromo”, it’s chewing through the workforce, mutating them as it goes. Out with the weaponry – circular saws, chainsaws and flamethrowers, all of which do no good. Their employer writes them off as a tax loss (icky things at the AGM would be embarrassing), the escape capsules are blown by the doctor to save the rest of humanity from the creature, and it’s exciting climax time. Totally predictable (5-4-3-2-1-SHOCK!), but I find it impossible to actively dislike – the acting is decent, the dialogue is plausible (one up on The Abyss there!) and Amanda Pays gets damp.