Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen eighty five
Speaker 3: sci fi thriller Creature, widely regarded as one of the
Speaker 3: many copycats of nineteen seventy nine's Alien, though I want
Speaker 3: to say, to be fair to Creature, it actually copies
Speaker 3: a number of different movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and he gets into you also end
Speaker 2: up getting into that area where it's like, all right,
Speaker 2: it was inspired by some of the films that inspired Alien,
Speaker 2: so you know, some of it kind of evens out
Speaker 2: in the wash, but it is. So I've been getting
Speaker 2: into Alien content a lot recently. I've been rewatching the
Speaker 2: original films. I'm gonna be running the Alien RPG aim
Speaker 2: from Free League here with some friends, and also we
Speaker 2: have a new Alien picture coming up in a couple
Speaker 2: of months, Alien Romulus. So you know, I'm geeking out
Speaker 2: for all of these things. So in addition to rewatching
Speaker 2: the original films, I've also been digging in a bit
Speaker 2: into some of these Alien knockoffs and Alien inspired films,
Speaker 2: some of which I've never seen before, some of which
Speaker 2: I have been avoiding, some of which I'll probably can
Speaker 2: continue to avoid. But this one is often held up
Speaker 2: as being one of the more entertaining ones.
Speaker 3: You know. I was having a thought about that Alien RPG,
Speaker 3: which looks very fun and I would like to play it,
Speaker 3: But I was thinking about how it shows the way
Speaker 3: that character cliches turn into character types, so that like
Speaker 3: things that are established in these movies as like, oh,
Speaker 3: here's just a type of character you see in Alien
Speaker 3: or Aliens, and then a lot of its copycats that
Speaker 3: apparently in this game becomes a class. Like you would
Speaker 3: have classes of characters in D and D, and you've
Speaker 3: got wizards and rogues and you know, and warlocks and
Speaker 3: all that, and apparently in this Alien game you've got
Speaker 3: company men. I think you can be like a Burke,
Speaker 3: You've got space marines, you can be a Vasquez. You've
Speaker 3: got like all those types of characters are classes, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like you can be a marine, you can be you
Speaker 2: can be a Marshall company agent.
Speaker 3: You can be a kid.
Speaker 2: Of course kids have special rules and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'm really excited to play it. I think it
Speaker 2: does a pretty phenomenal job of taking the Alien films
Speaker 2: like accepting everything and then managing to do a lot
Speaker 2: of great world building out of it. So solid recommendation
Speaker 2: thus far from me. But I'm not actually playing it
Speaker 2: for the first time until tonight.
Speaker 3: I would want to play as a slimy whyland UTAWNI
Speaker 3: suit that my class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty great. There's one of those in the
Speaker 2: scenario that I'm running tonight.
Speaker 3: Oh but wait, sorry, because you were in the middle
Speaker 3: of talking about how I know you haven't just been
Speaker 3: on a kick of strictly alien and Alien franchise stuff,
Speaker 3: but everything in that zone of storytelling and media, right,
Speaker 3: Like you've been going back to the the pre alien stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like one of the classics, of course
Speaker 2: is Mario Bob has Planet to the Vampires, which we've
Speaker 2: previously discussed on Weird House. Another one that I recently watched,
Speaker 2: probably for the first time in full, was John Carpenter
Speaker 2: and Dan O'Bannon Dark Star, which, on one hand, you
Speaker 2: have the Dan O'Bannon connection there. He's one of the
Speaker 2: screenwriters and one of the very instrumental in Alien obviously,
Speaker 2: but also Dark Star has this blue collar like space
Speaker 2: trucker feel to it, you know, something that is very
Speaker 2: much an essential part of the DNA of Alien, you know,
Speaker 2: because if you take out the creature and the setting
Speaker 2: is still a vital aspect of that picture.
Speaker 3: I've said this on the show before, but I have
Speaker 3: a theory that Alien is one of the best movies
Speaker 3: ever made about work, and that's kind of what makes
Speaker 3: it unique and interesting and realistic. The characters in Alien
Speaker 3: are not friends. They know each other reasonably well, not
Speaker 3: super well. They're not close, and the kind of relationship
Speaker 3: they have is the kind of relationship people often have
Speaker 3: with like co workers. It's like, you know, you got
Speaker 3: to get along to get the work done, but you
Speaker 3: don't even you know, you might or might not like
Speaker 3: each other, You might or not, you know, have all
Speaker 3: these conflicts. So it's not just a movie that features
Speaker 3: blue collar workers, but is itself about work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a solid point. There are
Speaker 2: some other films that are often thrown out as being
Speaker 2: like predecessors to Alien, nineteen fifty eight's hit The Tear
Speaker 2: from Beyond Space, which I haven't seen. I was looking
Speaker 2: at it the other day but that's one that the
Speaker 2: director of this picture points out as being one of
Speaker 2: his inspirations. I think there's some obvious inspiration here from
Speaker 2: Planet of the Vampires, but again, I think Creature is
Speaker 2: ultimately one of the more entertaining and also, as I'll
Speaker 2: discuss tasteful alien knockoffs that has come out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know what you're saying. Some of the Alien
Speaker 3: knockoffs from the eighties, which I have seen and have
Speaker 3: enjoyable parts, some of them just get kind of gross
Speaker 3: with like the you know, the weird sort of implied
Speaker 3: sexuality of Alien is realized in a nastier way in
Speaker 3: a lot of these copycats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because, I mean, you can't take topics and ideas
Speaker 2: of sexuality and reproduction out of Alien. It's very much
Speaker 2: part of the DNA, It's very much a part of
Speaker 2: hr Giger's visual surrealism that informs so many aspects of
Speaker 2: the film. But yeah, you'll look at various Alien knockoffs
Speaker 2: like the Corman produced Galaxy of Terror and the British
Speaker 2: and Seminoid, both from nineteen eighty one, and these are
Speaker 2: both examples of film that they end up just coming
Speaker 2: off sleazy and exploitive in my opinion, because they don't
Speaker 2: deal with these things with the nuance and that kind
Speaker 2: of almost subliminal energy that Alien does so well. Now,
Speaker 2: another thing to keep in mind about Creature here is that, Okay,
Speaker 2: Alien was of course a world class production. I think
Speaker 2: I had a budget of eleven million dollars. This is
Speaker 2: late seventies money. It had helming it one of the
Speaker 2: most visually visionary directors you know of our time, and
Speaker 2: on top of that, you know the work of hr
Speaker 2: Giger and so forth. Creature, however, was made for less
Speaker 2: than half of this amount of reported four point two
Speaker 2: million dollars, and it's a pretty ambitious project for what
Speaker 2: was reportedly even half that in budget at the outset,
Speaker 2: because you end up having multiple sci fi sets, like,
Speaker 2: you know, over a dozen different sets, including spaceship interiors,
Speaker 2: alien planets. You've got spaceship models, planetary surface models, various
Speaker 2: special effects, and ultimately a respectable cast. You know, this
Speaker 2: is not one of those casts where everybody's green and
Speaker 2: acting like they just though out of the back of
Speaker 2: a truck or something. It's ultimately, I think pretty commendable
Speaker 2: what they're able to do. When you remind yourself that
Speaker 2: this was low budget that was shot in a warehouse
Speaker 2: during like a super hot summer where they're just totally
Speaker 2: unable to cool things down enough and having to deal
Speaker 2: with everyone's sweating in their big spacesuits. You know, I
Speaker 2: think it comes together pretty well when you take all
Speaker 2: that into account.
Speaker 3: Oh, I wonder if they sort of improvised a way
Speaker 3: of writing that into the script, because there's a whole
Speaker 3: subplot in the middle of the movie where a couple
Speaker 3: of characters are able to figure out that another character
Speaker 3: is brain slugged and tricking them because they're sweating in
Speaker 3: this hot ship and he's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's so, because yeah, there are all these
Speaker 2: behind the scenes tidbits about just how hot it was
Speaker 2: and it was. There were sweating and it was like
Speaker 2: steaming up the insides of the helmets. So yeah, it
Speaker 2: sounds like it was a grueling, but most of the
Speaker 2: accounts seem to say it was.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a pretty.
Speaker 2: Pretty fun shoot for the most part, with some some
Speaker 2: key caveats that we'll come back to. All Right, Joe,
Speaker 2: what's your elevator pitch for creature?
Speaker 3: Oh, let's see how to create the perfect organism. Get
Speaker 3: a little bit of your Alien, a little bit of
Speaker 3: your the thing, and a little bit of your the
Speaker 3: brain eaters, and put them all into blender and here's
Speaker 3: what you got.
Speaker 2: I want to say that there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: dinosaur costume to this guy as well, especially if you're
Speaker 2: in the in the film when you see him more
Speaker 2: of a full body shot, there's kind of like a
Speaker 2: big rubber dinosaur costume sense to him. Yeah. Again, it's
Speaker 2: an unenviable task to try to create something that is
Speaker 2: alien esque but on a budget without a you know,
Speaker 2: visionary artist behind its design.
Speaker 3: Now, I think it would be impossible to deny that
Speaker 3: this movie is derivative of Alien in many ways. But
Speaker 3: one thing I think is kind of surprising about it
Speaker 3: is that it also feels derivative of Aliens, and yet
Speaker 3: it's not because this came before Aliens. So there are
Speaker 3: several things in it where I was like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is this is taking this thing from you know, the
Speaker 3: camera in movie, but actually it wasn't out yet, so
Speaker 3: this came first.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's also stuff in here that reminds me a
Speaker 2: little bit of things we would later see in Prometheus,
Speaker 2: with Prometheus reaching back and drawing from things like Planet
Speaker 2: of the Vampires. But like we have this scene with
Speaker 2: like the Black Ooze we'll talk about and yeah, and
Speaker 2: like the space zombies are abominations, so so yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a really fun one I think to watch as an
Speaker 2: alien fan. And again, it avoids, I think, most of
Speaker 2: the pitfalls of lewdness that you encounter with some of
Speaker 2: these other alien knockoffs. All right, let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: listen to that trailer audio.
Speaker 4: In the near future, in the shadow of Saturn's rings,
Speaker 4: stranded beneath the surface of the barren moon called Titan,
Speaker 4: scientists find the one thing they never expected.
Speaker 5: Is anybody here was expecting them.
Speaker 4: And suddenly those who had traveled across the galaxy had
Speaker 4: one out of space. Creature. It kills to live, and
Speaker 4: it lives to kill.
Speaker 2: All right. So at this point, if you were thinking
Speaker 2: to yourself, well, I would like to see Creature, I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it, or I would like to see it
Speaker 2: again before continuing on with this episode, well, luckily, Creature
Speaker 2: has been available in various home video formats for quite
Speaker 2: a while, but in my opinion, the twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: release from Vinegar Syndrome the Blu Ray is definitely the
Speaker 2: way to go for physical media on this one. I
Speaker 2: rented it from Atlanta's Videodrome. It's got some cool extra features.
Speaker 2: It has the original Titan Find cut of the film,
Speaker 2: which is a bit darker compared to the main theatrical
Speaker 2: cut that you have on the disc, but still interesting
Speaker 2: to check out. You can also stream Creature digitally on
Speaker 2: multiple platforms, and there are multiple digital rental and purchase
Speaker 2: options as well.
Speaker 3: I'm in a weird situation that I watched the first
Speaker 3: half of the movie as the Titan Find cut and
Speaker 3: the second half in the theatrical cut, so I don't
Speaker 3: know what the difference is.
Speaker 2: Did you did you notice any changes in lighting, because
Speaker 2: I really didn't look at the Titan Find one much,
Speaker 2: so I can't speak to it.
Speaker 3: You mean, not darker in terms of tone, but darker visually, Yes,
Speaker 3: the Titan Find cut is very dark. In fact, we
Speaker 3: were talking off Mike about how one of my main
Speaker 3: complaints about the movie is that you can't see the
Speaker 3: sets at all. The characters are just standing around in
Speaker 3: darkness talking, so I can't even tell if the sets
Speaker 3: are good or not. In the theatrical cut. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was a little. It did seem a little bit more illuminated,
Speaker 3: a little bit brighter, but still you couldn't see a
Speaker 3: lot of the sets on the planet.
Speaker 2: Now, speaking of physical media, I want to give a
Speaker 2: shout out to Future Shock Video in New Orleans. This
Speaker 2: is a new video rental store that we just read
Speaker 2: about in New Orleans Magazine. It's operated by Eden Chubb,
Speaker 2: who was apparently partially inspired by Weird House Cinema and
Speaker 2: certainly inspired by Atlanta's own video rental store, Videodrome. The
Speaker 2: name of the store is also a nod to the
Speaker 2: concept of future Shock, which we've discussed on the show.
Speaker 2: So kudos to Eden for keeping the physical media circulating.
Speaker 2: You can learn more about Future Shock Video at Futureshockvideo
Speaker 2: dot diz, and you can follow the store on Instagram
Speaker 2: at future Shock Video. All right, Well, let's get into
Speaker 2: the people who made this film, all right. Starting at
Speaker 2: the top, director, writer, producer. It's William Malone born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty three, UCLA Film School grad, writer and director who
Speaker 2: started out in acting and some special effects work, but then,
Speaker 2: in the wake of nineteen seventy nine's Alien, which he
Speaker 2: was inspired by, he was able to raise a reported
Speaker 2: seventy four thousand dollars to make the film Scared to Death,
Speaker 2: in which a Giger esque creature runs amok in the
Speaker 2: La sewer system. I haven't seen this one, so I
Speaker 2: can't really to it, but I looked at a couple
Speaker 2: of stills in the Monster Man.
Speaker 3: This must have been a really precious project to him,
Speaker 3: because he works. I don't know if you caught onto this,
Speaker 3: Rob how many references too Scared to Death? He works
Speaker 3: into creature? Did you notice these?
Speaker 2: I didn't notice them so much, but you were pointing
Speaker 2: out some of them, and I guess you'll point them
Speaker 2: out as we go here. Yeah, maybe they're supposed to
Speaker 2: be the same cinematic universe.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't consider that. Well, but I don't know
Speaker 3: if that would work because one character is reading the
Speaker 3: novelization of Scared to Death.
Speaker 2: All right, So this film Creature, which was originally he
Speaker 2: talks about this on the extras. It was originally in.
Speaker 2: It originally had the working title Titan Fined, which the
Speaker 2: producers did not like the other like the main money
Speaker 2: behind it. They were like, it sounds too much like
Speaker 2: tight and fine. People are going to think it's something else,
Speaker 2: which seems like it's a little reaching there. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that connotation. I think Titan Fine
Speaker 2: sounds rather fascinating and very sci fi.
Speaker 3: It makes me think maybe they were thinking sounds too
Speaker 3: intellectual and they were coming up with an excuse for
Speaker 3: why they wanted to just call it monster.
Speaker 2: But anyway, this was the follow up. He mentions in
Speaker 2: some of those extras that he was always terrible at
Speaker 2: writing to meet a particular budget, and that was very
Speaker 2: much the case here. It was apparently a real struggle
Speaker 2: to go after everything they needed to make Creature, and
Speaker 2: at one point in the production, one of the producers
Speaker 2: I think this is Mush Diamond Diamant, It could be wrong,
Speaker 2: but he comes in and says, oh, you guys need
Speaker 2: more money for what you're trying to do here, and
Speaker 2: essentially double their budget at that point, which Malone says
Speaker 2: was of course it was a lifeline, but also it
Speaker 2: was a bit frustrating at that stage in the production
Speaker 2: because they were already a certain way into making everything
Speaker 2: based on what you had, and suddenly you have additional resources,
Speaker 2: which and you can't really redo what you've done already.
Speaker 2: You have to think of other other ways to make
Speaker 2: use of those funds.
Speaker 3: I feel like we have talked about more examples of
Speaker 3: it going the other way, where you start making a
Speaker 3: movie and then the budget gets cut.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean one of the things they ended up
Speaker 2: doing when more money came in on this one is
Speaker 2: hired klas Kinsky, which we'll get into, which I don't
Speaker 2: think is always I would go so far as to say,
Speaker 2: is maybe never a good use of extra money in
Speaker 2: your film, to say, well, let's bring in noted nightmare Kloskinski.
Speaker 2: That's gonna be great for the film and great for morale.
Speaker 3: Oh, we just got a bunch of extra money. We
Speaker 3: can use that to rent a jar of red back
Speaker 3: spiders and release them onto the set.
Speaker 2: Essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really spiced things up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's gonna make people more excited
Speaker 2: in front of the camera.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Well, more on that in a bit, But both Scared
Speaker 2: to Death and Creature we're apparently successful. Creature was a
Speaker 2: theatrical release, and Malone followed the film up with some
Speaker 2: TV projects. He directed three episodes of Freddy's Nightmares, and
Speaker 2: he also directed two episodes of Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 2: one of which he also wrote. He also did one
Speaker 2: episode of the short lived sci fi spinoff of Tales
Speaker 2: from the Crypt Perversions of Science, and after some additional
Speaker 2: TV projects, he directed the big budget remake of House
Speaker 2: on Haunted Hill in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: I know you remember this one, Joe. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't think there's any way to make the case that
Speaker 3: it's good, but it's very watchably bad. It has a
Speaker 3: great cast, kind of star studded, you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of great character actors running around doing ridiculous things. I
Speaker 3: remember it being really ugly, like a movie that's quite
Speaker 3: hard on the eyes, but it's I had a great time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember Jeffrey Combs has a fun, i think,
Speaker 2: non speaking role in it, and then Jeffrey Rush basically
Speaker 2: plays Vincent Price in the film, like in fact, the
Speaker 2: character's name is Stephen Price, and that is as fun
Speaker 2: as it sounds, you know, just letting Rush go wild
Speaker 2: for the duration of the film as Vincent Price.
Speaker 3: Just trying to remember who else is in it. I
Speaker 3: looked at up. It's got Tay Diggs, Chris Catan, fam
Speaker 3: Ki Janssen.
Speaker 2: It's oh Man. When Tay Diggs was in a lot
Speaker 2: of different movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway back to Malone.
Speaker 2: His only two films after that were two thousand and
Speaker 2: two is Fear dot Com, which I remember is being
Speaker 2: quite awful, speaking of.
Speaker 3: Ugly movies that are hard on the eyes, that we're
Speaker 3: right in that zone around the turn of the millennium
Speaker 3: where movies it seems we're just the color palette and
Speaker 3: the and the brightness level and everything was optimized to
Speaker 3: hurt the eyes to watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean, I don't even want to throw
Speaker 2: too much shade at Malone for Fear dot Com because
Speaker 2: Fear dot Com was exactly the sort of movie that
Speaker 2: the year two thousand and two wanted. And even though
Speaker 2: I do not like it, there are a number There
Speaker 2: aren't a lot of films from two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: I'm exactly going going back and feeling nostalgic for He
Speaker 2: did one more film in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 2: he also directed one episode of two thousand and six's
Speaker 2: Masters of Horror, The Fair Haired Child. As a writer,
Speaker 2: he also worked on nineteen ninety nine Universal Soldier, The Return,
Speaker 2: and the Year two thousand movies Supernova. Now there's another
Speaker 2: writer that is credited one Alan Reid. But I couldn't
Speaker 2: find much about them. This is not to be confused
Speaker 2: with the original voice of Fred Flintstone, different Alan Reid.
Speaker 2: But I could not figure out exactly who this individual is.
Speaker 3: Sorry, this is a completely out of order, but I
Speaker 3: just remembered another actor in his house on Haunted Hill,
Speaker 3: and that there's a cameo where Lisa Loebe plays a
Speaker 3: TV reporter. What yeah, why, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm good for her, all right, Moving on to the
Speaker 2: actors in this film. This is of course an alien
Speaker 2: esque picture. So we have a crew, and if you
Speaker 2: have a crew, you got to have a captain. And
Speaker 2: our captain is Captain Mike Davison played by Ivar born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three. Not only is he our captain in
Speaker 2: this film, he's he was. Also he's also a future
Speaker 2: actual ship captain according to Malone. So he chalks that
Speaker 2: up to good casting, like he saw this guy and
Speaker 2: realized this, this dude can command a ship.
Speaker 3: I mean, he is believable as a ship captain. I
Speaker 3: will say that no offense to Stan. I don't have
Speaker 3: a lot to say about his performance here. It's sort
Speaker 3: of a like a It's like a slice of white
Speaker 3: toast with no butter or Jam's there's nothing wrong with it,
Speaker 3: nothing to offend, but also it's very plain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's fitting that at this point in his career,
Speaker 2: mostly a TV actor, he had just played John Carter
Speaker 2: on Little House on the Prairie, along with some other
Speaker 2: various guest show spots, guest spots on shows. But you know,
Speaker 2: he is the kind of actor he can easily imagine
Speaker 2: doing a lot of scenes where he's just coming back
Speaker 2: from some farm work and he needs a nice drink
Speaker 2: of water back at the Little on the Prairie. Anyway,
Speaker 2: this sort of work would would continue with him doing
Speaker 2: a lot of one shots on popular TV series of
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties. His latter film credits include roles
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one's Harley Davidson and the Marlborough Man
Speaker 2: and nineteen ninety three's Aspen Extreme. His last credits were
Speaker 2: a pair of NCIS episodes in twenty ten. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he's he's solid in this, you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: he does a solid job. No notes really, but you know,
Speaker 2: he's no Tom Scarett, but he is maybe Tom Scarett esque.
Speaker 3: I think they were clearly going for a Tom Scarett type.
Speaker 3: They wanted to replicate Dallas as a relatively soft spoken, stoic,
Speaker 3: strong masculine captain, and he sort of gets there, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't really have Tom Skarett's quiet charisma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Now, he does have a girlfriend on
Speaker 2: the crew though. You know. That's of course, one of
Speaker 2: the very notable things about Alien is there are no
Speaker 2: romantic entanglements. Yeah, but that's not the here because his
Speaker 2: girlfriend is also a crew member. And this is the
Speaker 2: character Beth Slaton played by Wendy Shaw.
Speaker 3: You know, Shaul is an interesting presence in this film.
Speaker 3: I think she is just very likable and very grounded.
Speaker 3: She feels like a real person. For the most part.
Speaker 3: Her portrayal of this character is strong in its understatedness,
Speaker 3: you know, like she she plays the character as kind
Speaker 3: of quiet and not super expressive, but that works well.
Speaker 3: But she does have a couple of unintentionally funny moments.
Speaker 3: For example, do you remember the part where she's telling
Speaker 3: the story of Hofner the of you know, Klauskinsky trying
Speaker 3: to kill her and in the scene, I could just
Speaker 3: imagine the director behind the camera gesturing at her to
Speaker 3: display more emotion, you know, like come on, make it bigger, bigger,
Speaker 3: And so she does, and it comes off very forced
Speaker 3: in a funny way. Also, at least at least three
Speaker 3: or four times, maybe more in the movie, she says
Speaker 3: another character's name wrong. She says Davidson instead of Davison,
Speaker 3: which you might think is simply realistic. Oh maybe people,
Speaker 3: you know, people get people's names wrong, Except Davison is
Speaker 3: supposed to be her boyfriend, and she's calling him by
Speaker 3: his last name.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's his middle name. We don't know his full name.
Speaker 3: He you know, maybe, oh, maybe that's her like cutesy
Speaker 3: nickname for him. Yeah, it's an inside joke, but on
Speaker 3: the whole, as I was saying, Shaul is quite good
Speaker 3: in this character and very likable. She brings a kind
Speaker 3: of human energy to the to the character, and I
Speaker 3: think without her we would not have a lot of
Speaker 3: reason to care about the humans.
Speaker 2: I agree, especially when you whittle it down to what
Speaker 2: we're left with towards the end of the picture, because
Speaker 2: that's always telling which characters have you chosen to sacrifice,
Speaker 2: in which characters are going to land a plane or
Speaker 2: a spaceship in this case. Yeah, so Shall born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four was a pretty seasoned TV actor by this point.
Speaker 2: I think it shows, having popped up on various late
Speaker 2: seventies and early eighties network series. She'd continue to work
Speaker 2: in TV, and her latter film credits include Film and
Speaker 2: TV credits include the likes of nineteen eighty seven's The Munchies.
Speaker 2: This is a Gromlins movie that I haven't seen, but
Speaker 2: we're not going to stop there. It gets better, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven's Inner Space Batteries not included from the same year,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine's The Birds, and such TV series as
Speaker 2: The X Files, Six Feet Under and Star Trek Voyager.
Speaker 2: She's also done a lot of voice acting for The
Speaker 2: Family Guy and American Dad animated series.
Speaker 3: I just had to check to make sure, but yes,
Speaker 3: Munchies is the Roger Corman produced, a Grimlins rip off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does not look good. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: It may be great.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I haven't seen it now. I mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier that there were some elements of this movie that
Speaker 3: I first mistakenly thought were lifted out of Aliens, and
Speaker 3: then realized, oh no, this movie came out before Aliens,
Speaker 3: and one of them is the next character we're about
Speaker 3: to talk about. Played by Lymon Ward. This is the
Speaker 3: Burke character, except he comes before Burke.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, lyman Ward plays David Perkins. Ward was
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty one Canadian actor, character actor, most famous
Speaker 2: for playing Ferris Buehler's dad in nineteen eighty six, but
Speaker 2: you also might recognize him from other things. He pops
Speaker 2: up in the likes of Independence Day in ninety six.
Speaker 2: He's in a nine Grand m Street Part two. He's
Speaker 2: done a lot of TV and film work over the decades,
Speaker 2: going back to seventy one, and he's apparently still active.
Speaker 2: His other credits include seventy three's Coffee, eighty four's Moscow
Speaker 2: on the Hudson, eighty seven's Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two Sleepwalkers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I think lyman Ward brings a kind of
Speaker 3: and I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way.
Speaker 3: I kind of welcome cheesiness that is in some ways
Speaker 3: inseparable from his recognizability as a minor eighties character actor.
Speaker 3: I would put him almost in the clue Gulager zone,
Speaker 3: if you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it makes it more surprising and enjoyable. In fact,
Speaker 3: when he starts like making brain slug zombie heads explode.
Speaker 2: That's a great scene. I can't wait to talk about
Speaker 2: that one. Also of note, he's interviewed in some of
Speaker 2: the extras on the Vinegar Syndrome disc and he's one
Speaker 2: of these individuals who says that he got along fine
Speaker 2: with Kinsky on the set and went out to lunch
Speaker 2: with him a couple of times. And I don't mention
Speaker 2: that as in any way an attempt to redeem Kinsky, who,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss, I think most agree, was an out
Speaker 2: of control monster. But it is interesting how seemingly there
Speaker 2: were folks that he worked with who didn't have absolute
Speaker 2: nightmares around him, And I wonder how much of that
Speaker 2: had to do with, like, to what degree Kinsky felt
Speaker 2: threatened by someone? Seems like the kind of guy who's
Speaker 2: going to be very threatened by anybody that is in
Speaker 2: a position of power over him, like a director or
Speaker 2: a producer, or or seemingly you know, female members of
Speaker 2: a cast, but here is just a male co star,
Speaker 2: perhaps one of the Perhaps this is one of those
Speaker 2: moments where you actually end up getting something a little
Speaker 2: more balanced out of Kinski because he's not threatened by
Speaker 2: you his.
Speaker 3: You know, his.
Speaker 2: Narcissistic view of himself. It does not feel in danger
Speaker 2: around this person.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Anyway, food for thought. Moving on, we also have Robert
Speaker 2: Jeffey playing John Finnel born nineteen forty nine, handsome young
Speaker 2: actor coming off of small roles in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: including The Mechanic, but by this point he'd largely moved
Speaker 2: more into the production and writing side of things. He
Speaker 2: was one of the screenwriters on nineteen seventy seven's Demon Seed,
Speaker 2: the out of control AI movie based on the novel
Speaker 2: by Dean Kotz, and he was also a screenwriter on
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty's Motel Hell, which he also produced and notable
Speaker 2: to the subgenre of space horror. At some point, it
Speaker 2: looks like Jeffy acquired the rights to George R. R. Martin's
Speaker 2: novella Nightflyers. He produced and wrote an adaptation of that
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven, though I believe it's based more
Speaker 2: on Martin's original short story version of that tale, and
Speaker 2: he was again listed as a producer on the twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen TV mini series adaptation I've only seen parts of
Speaker 2: the eighty seven adaptation and it looks really goofy and fun.
Speaker 2: I've seen the entirety of the twenty seventeen mini series,
Speaker 2: which has a great cast, looks phenomenal, but honestly kind
Speaker 2: of bored me to death after a while.
Speaker 3: Well, I've never seen the eighty seven movie, but I've
Speaker 3: wanted to for a while so that we may come
Speaker 3: back to that on Weird House. But I will say,
Speaker 3: as far as just his acting performance here, along with
Speaker 3: Wendy Shall, I think Jaffee is the other most sympathetic
Speaker 3: and realistic performance among the crew. He brings a kind
Speaker 3: of relaxed humanity that makes it all the more alarming
Speaker 3: when he starts trying to brain leach people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was kind of surprising that this is a
Speaker 2: guy who seemingly was, I'm assuming here making a lot
Speaker 2: of assumptions, but was drawn more towards the behind the
Speaker 2: scenes stuff as opposed to staying in front of the
Speaker 2: camera because he's great in front of the camera. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he is, all right. We also have a character by
Speaker 2: the name of Melanie Bryce who She is the security
Speaker 2: officer that's brought in on this, which is also kind
Speaker 2: of kind of something. I mean, this is obviously in Aliens.
Speaker 2: Like the whole plot revolves around, well, this is a problem.
Speaker 2: Let's bring in some muscle. Let's bring in the Colonial Marines.
Speaker 2: That's kind of her purpose here. They're like, we think
Speaker 2: there's going to be something Xena Morriphy going on. We
Speaker 2: better bring in some tall, mysterious woman who doesn't talk
Speaker 2: and has a big gun. Bryce here is played by
Speaker 2: Diane Salinger born nineteen fifty one, tall, striking American actor
Speaker 2: who prior to this had apparently done some stage work
Speaker 2: in New York and then moved out to la at
Speaker 2: the behest of her agent. But this wasn't her only
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five film. She also appeared in Tim bur
Speaker 2: Pee Wee's Big Adventure, playing Simone, a waitress that dreams
Speaker 2: of visiting France. After this, she'd remain friends with Paul Rubens,
Speaker 2: and Tim Burton directed her again as the Penguin's Mother,
Speaker 2: alongside Paul Rubens playing the Penguin's father in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: two's Batman Returns. WHOA Yeah Yeah. She's done a lot
Speaker 2: of TV and film work over the years, including such
Speaker 2: titles as ninety one's The Butcher's Wife ninety five's The
Speaker 2: Scarlet Letter, two thousand and one's Ghost World. I believe
Speaker 2: she plays a psychiatrist in that. She has a recurring
Speaker 2: role in HBO's Carnival, and she also did a couple
Speaker 2: of Star Trek Deep Space nine episodes.
Speaker 3: I want to say that there are some very weird
Speaker 3: things about her characterization here, but I think that's not
Speaker 3: her fault. It's like the character is written very oddly,
Speaker 3: that there's a complete mismatch between the ways she's portrayed
Speaker 3: in different scenes, and then when you get to the
Speaker 3: later way she's portrayed, it doesn't make any sense why
Speaker 3: they had her portrayed a different way earlier on. But
Speaker 3: doing what she can with what she has to work
Speaker 3: with in the script, I think she's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean added caveat. This was her first film.
Speaker 2: She has great energy and a unique look. I checked
Speaker 2: out some various behind the scenes interviews that she did
Speaker 2: about this in other films, and she's a real blast,
Speaker 2: like full of personality and insight. And we'll get back
Speaker 2: to some of that.
Speaker 3: In a bit.
Speaker 2: All Right, we have a let's see, we have a
Speaker 2: doctor on the crew. This is doctor Wendy h Oliver
Speaker 2: played by Annette McCarthy who lived nineteen fifty eight through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Mostly a TV actor with credits that
Speaker 2: include Twin Peaks. She played Evelyn Marsh on that and
Speaker 2: she also appeared on Baywatch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, her presence in the movie is more minor. There
Speaker 3: is one funny moment I don't know if it's supposed
Speaker 3: to be funny, where she's being lured off to a
Speaker 3: dark room by a brain slug possessed Robert Jaffey and
Speaker 3: she starts talking about how she's not a real doctor
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh, I have a secret too. Anyway,
Speaker 3: let's go into this room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting, and the character development went nowhere
Speaker 2: because she's killed the next scene, but it also was
Speaker 2: kind of a funny moment. And then we have the
Speaker 2: character Susan Delambrey played by Marie Lauren. Her birthdate's not
Speaker 2: public record, but she's in a number of the making
Speaker 2: of bits on the disc as well. Energetic American actor
Speaker 2: with a really solid supporting role in this film. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, like she's a doomed character, but she gets
Speaker 2: to do more than just be doomed, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: At this point in her career, she'd appeared in various
Speaker 2: TV series, and she went on to act in David
Speaker 2: Lynch's nineteen eighty eight short film The Cowboy and the Frenchman,
Speaker 2: and she's been active in recent years as a writer
Speaker 2: and producer on such films as twenty twenty three Is
Speaker 2: the Uncanny, in which she also stars.
Speaker 3: Okay, she has a different energy than any other character
Speaker 3: in this movie in that she almost feels like out
Speaker 3: of a story involving magic. She has prophetic visions of
Speaker 3: the fact that she's going to die, which it doesn't
Speaker 3: really fit with the story. Otherwise there's no other inkling
Speaker 3: of like magic or psychic powers, and she just happens
Speaker 3: to know that they're doomed and she's going to die.
Speaker 3: And she also kind of wanders around with a dreamlike,
Speaker 3: almost fairy like kind of spirit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. According to the extras on the disk, she
Speaker 2: was the one who came to the director and said,
Speaker 2: all right, this pivotal scene where my character seemingly comes
Speaker 2: back from the dead and lures another character there death,
Speaker 2: I need to be nude for this. And he was like, okay,
Speaker 2: let's do it.
Speaker 3: On the planet's surface. The surface of Titan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think the nudity does add to the
Speaker 2: creepiness of the sequence because it makes it even more
Speaker 2: of an obvious delusion, and ultimately I think one of
Speaker 2: the creepier sequences in the picture.
Speaker 3: She has multiple of the creepiest moments in the movie.
Speaker 3: There's that. There's also a scene later on where she's
Speaker 3: in a space suit and the characters come across her
Speaker 3: and they think that she is dead, but she suddenly
Speaker 3: like grins and all this blood bursts out of her
Speaker 3: mouth as she sort of like pops awake and smiles.
Speaker 3: It's gross, all right.
Speaker 2: And then of course we have Kloskinski playing the character
Speaker 2: Hans Rudy Hofner, which of course is an obvious nod
Speaker 2: to alien designer hr Gieger or Hans Rudy Gieger.
Speaker 3: There's a lot I could say about this performance. I'll
Speaker 3: maybe save some of it for when we talk about
Speaker 3: the plot. But also this character feels completely superfluous to
Speaker 3: the story, like it's just sort of copy pasted in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently it's very much the case that they got
Speaker 2: the extra money, they realized they could cast Kloskinski if
Speaker 2: they could get in touch with him. According to Malone,
Speaker 2: the only way to get in touch with Kinsky at
Speaker 2: the time was to send a telegram, and he was
Speaker 2: reportedly living in like a shack somewhere up in the
Speaker 2: California mountains, and he slept on straw on the floor,
Speaker 2: and they were somehow able to get in touch with
Speaker 2: him and cast him here. But then, of course, as
Speaker 2: one would expect, especially at this point in his career,
Speaker 2: he was a nightmare. You know. The thing about Kinski
Speaker 2: is that he's famous. He's infamous for being not only
Speaker 2: this ball of crazed intensity that can be captivating on
Speaker 2: the screen, but also being almost impossible, if not just
Speaker 2: almost universally impossible to work with. Like there's so many
Speaker 2: accounts of him being either insanely difficult or being just
Speaker 2: a loathsome human being, sometimes both, often both. You can
Speaker 2: get both from him, And so we've talked about him
Speaker 2: a little bit on Weird House Cinema before he was
Speaker 2: in the killer snake movie Venom in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: I would guess he achieved his most notable work in
Speaker 2: the films of legendary director Werner Herzog, who seems to
Speaker 2: have been one of the very few directors like capable
Speaker 2: of managing him to some degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by whatever means necessary. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now on this production, he notably harassed Diane Salinger on
Speaker 2: the set. Totally unacceptable. Would not fly it all today, obviously,
Speaker 2: But in interviews she has reflected on this, and she's
Speaker 2: talked about how she really had to check his bs
Speaker 2: and put him in his place at one point. So
Speaker 2: she's very tall, Kinsky was a short man. At one point,
Speaker 2: she says she had to like pick him up in
Speaker 2: a bear hug and just kind of like shake him
Speaker 2: and in doing so like largely put him in his place.
Speaker 2: So I get that after a while she did not
Speaker 2: have to worry about Kinsky, but you know, he was
Speaker 2: awful on the set and she had to put him
Speaker 2: in his place. But she reflects on some of this
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenty one documentary Creation Is Violent, anecdotes
Speaker 2: on Kinsky's final years. She also talks a little bit
Speaker 2: on the vinegar syndrome disc She points out that Kinsky
Speaker 2: did some brilliant takes for Creature, but they couldn't use
Speaker 2: a lot of them because he just refused to hit
Speaker 2: his mark, so he was often out of focus. You know,
Speaker 2: he was very much not going to listen to any
Speaker 2: director or cameraman or anything, and so they ended up
Speaker 2: losing a lot of footage. So what you see is,
Speaker 2: to a certain extent, what they could actually use, like
Speaker 2: is he in is he? Is?
Speaker 5: He?
Speaker 2: Is he blurry?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Is he eating a sandwich? Well? Yes, I guess we'll
Speaker 2: use it.
Speaker 3: That would explain it. He is he eating a sandwich?
Speaker 3: And it almost sounds like he's making up his lines
Speaker 3: while he choose Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, because I'm assuming he's probably gonna largely say
Speaker 2: whatever he wants either. So just an unenviable position to
Speaker 2: imagine anyone trying to direct this man and something. Even
Speaker 2: if you might get those moments of brilliance on camera
Speaker 2: where you know, you get that like that raw crackling
Speaker 2: kinsky intensity, but what what are you willing to sacrifice
Speaker 2: for yourself or for the cast in order to get there?
Speaker 2: All right? The music on this one the scores by
Speaker 2: Thomas Chase and Steve Rucker, both born nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: These guys went on to work extensively on animated series
Speaker 2: including boy Dooo, Powerpuff Girls, and various other projects. Looks
Speaker 2: like maybe some various other Cartoon Network related projects.
Speaker 3: I think the score here feels almost consciously like an
Speaker 3: attempt to reproduce the score of Alien. Yes, there are
Speaker 3: even similar dynamics, where like there's kind of a swelling
Speaker 3: of the orchestra, but then it dies away, and then
Speaker 3: there's a single high melody line that's carried by a
Speaker 3: woodwind like a clarinet or an obo, just like you
Speaker 3: get in some of the Alien music. It feels familiar.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, as far as the effects go, the main
Speaker 2: team here was the La Effects Group INK, which among others,
Speaker 2: included Suzanne M. Benson, who would go on to work
Speaker 2: on Aliens the following year and win an Oscar for it.
Speaker 2: In fact, Benson was the first woman apparently to win
Speaker 2: an Oscar for special effects work. Michael McCracken is credited
Speaker 2: with the initial design of the Titan Find Creature our
Speaker 2: Monster in this He also worked on nineteen eighty nine's
Speaker 2: of Iathan.
Speaker 3: Special effects in this movie are fun. They are. I
Speaker 3: would say they are mixed in terms of quality. You
Speaker 3: can tell there were some budget limitations at some points,
Speaker 3: but almost all of the effects shots are fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, obvious limitations, but yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: fun stuff in here, and sometimes it's hilarious. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, great effects team is only going to go
Speaker 2: so far when you're up against those budgetary constraints and
Speaker 2: you're working in this super hot warehouse in the heat
Speaker 2: of the summer in California. All right, well, let's jump
Speaker 2: into the plot here. Let's let's go into space and
Speaker 2: see if anyone can hear a screen.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, the first thing we get is intense music,
Speaker 3: minor chords, pounding, hollow drums, kind of a sweeping Doppler
Speaker 3: sound of symbols once again, I will say, quite reminiscent
Speaker 3: of the Jerry go old Smith's score in Alien. And
Speaker 3: then we get some text telling us about the setting.
Speaker 3: So we are told in the competition for new materials
Speaker 3: and advanced to manufacturing techniques, two multinational corporations have invested
Speaker 3: heavily in space. The rival firms of Richter Dynamics of
Speaker 3: West Germany and NTI of the USA are locked in
Speaker 3: a fierce race for commercial supremacy. So, first of all,
Speaker 3: we can note that space is being colonized for business purposes,
Speaker 3: but Germany is still divided here. And then also this
Speaker 3: will despite how much attention they give it by including
Speaker 3: a text legend right here at the top. This will
Speaker 3: play remarkably little role in the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's some nice background color that does feel
Speaker 2: very much in keeping with the alien universe, you know,
Speaker 2: with the corporations like Whyland Utani. But yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: particularly necessary.
Speaker 3: So next we get to Chiron saying that we are
Speaker 3: on Titan, which is Saturn's largest moon, on following a
Speaker 3: geological research team from NTI. And we're also told that
Speaker 3: it's April fifth, But is it April fifth on Earth
Speaker 3: or on Titan? So I don't know if there would
Speaker 3: be an April on Titan. Somewhere somewhere here on Titan.
Speaker 3: There's an opening scene where there are a couple of
Speaker 3: guys in bulky Eva suits exploring an indoor space, so
Speaker 3: it seems to be the ruins of an ancient alien civilization,
Speaker 3: though unfortunately we don't see all that much of their
Speaker 3: architecture or really much texture in here at all. It's
Speaker 3: just a dark room with some hard to identify objects
Speaker 3: scattered around on the floor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is true of either cut of the film,
Speaker 2: even in the brighter theatrical cut. It's like, I don't
Speaker 2: know they're they're really impressed. But this is this is
Speaker 2: not the egg chamber from the alien space ship and
Speaker 2: alien this is something more achievable based on their budget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the two geologists seem very excited about their find.
Speaker 3: This is a big discovery. It's some kind of ancient
Speaker 3: alien ruin. But I wasn't quite clear rob within the
Speaker 3: setting of this movie, do humans already know that aliens exist?
Speaker 3: Or is this the very first evidence of it.
Speaker 2: I mean, they've given us nothing to indicate that aliens
Speaker 2: were known of before. They mentioned new materials, but they
Speaker 2: don't say whether those are organic materials or inorganic materials,
Speaker 2: so maybe it's all new or I mean maybe they
Speaker 2: were expecting it. So they're like, yes, of course alien life,
Speaker 2: we don't know.
Speaker 3: So they perform some analysis to figure out that these
Speaker 3: structures are more than two hundred thousand years old. And
Speaker 3: on the floor of this room they find a number
Speaker 3: of large, damaged capsule shaped objects that have like viewing
Speaker 3: glass on the upper lids, and they look inside one
Speaker 3: of them and believe they see a skeleton of something amos,
Speaker 3: almost like these are some kind of sarcophag guy. And
Speaker 3: then they find one capsule that is actually still intact,
Speaker 3: and they look inside. They look through the glass and
Speaker 3: they see the face of some kind of creature. So
Speaker 3: they start trying to move the capsule, and then one
Speaker 3: of the scientists says like, m you know, this has
Speaker 3: been here for a quarter of a million years. If
Speaker 3: we wake it up, it's likely to be very pissed
Speaker 3: and very hungry. What And then they move it anyway,
Speaker 3: and while they're examining the alien remains through the glass
Speaker 3: that the creature inside moves, and then they're like ah.
Speaker 3: But then they just kind of like, ah, there's probably nothing.
Speaker 3: Let's forget all about it. And then one of the
Speaker 3: two guys sits on the capsule to pose for a
Speaker 3: photo with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love this bit because the other guy that's
Speaker 2: taking the photo is like, all right, move into the shot,
Speaker 2: and then he's telling him I need you to set
Speaker 2: on it for scale. Can you imagine if this had
Speaker 2: happened in Alien, if they were like, hey, Caine, go
Speaker 2: ahead and sit on one of those egg things because
Speaker 2: we need folks back home to know how big it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, put your face right by it, open your mouth.
Speaker 3: I need your mouth open for scale.
Speaker 2: And so he sits on it, of course he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, all right, let's do this photo, and.
Speaker 3: Then chocolate syrup starts leaking out of the container and
Speaker 3: we get an attack. There's there's actually a really good
Speaker 3: FOLI here. There's like a good squishing sound effect when
Speaker 3: the alien is popping out. Maybe this squishing something inside
Speaker 3: the guy's body. But they get attacked first the goo
Speaker 3: and then the creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like this. The goo's good. Again. This reminds
Speaker 2: me of the black goo that would pop up in
Speaker 2: the more recent alien films. And you know, it's a
Speaker 2: good Like in Spacesuit Death, we get they'll they'll return
Speaker 2: to this basic effect time and time again. But a
Speaker 2: quick splat of blood and the inside of the EVA
Speaker 2: helmet and you're good to go. I don't know how
Speaker 2: it got him. I guess it came up, like I
Speaker 2: guess through the butt that's he's setting on it.
Speaker 3: After all, it's the it's the Ghoulies approach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the actual like biology of our creature here, there's
Speaker 2: a lot left to interpretation, but I agree that the
Speaker 2: foley work the sound effects quite nice. And credit on
Speaker 2: this apparently goes to Marvin Kerner.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I liked a lot of the sound effects in
Speaker 3: the movie, though there are some that are a bit puzzling.
Speaker 3: Did you notice how whenever a door would open or
Speaker 3: close it played a Star Wars blaster sound effect.
Speaker 2: I guess it did. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, on the whole, I felt like the
Speaker 2: sound effects helped elevate things. I should also go ahead
Speaker 2: and point out we'll probably come back to this, but
Speaker 2: the spaceship scenes look really good. The model work, the
Speaker 2: lighting of the model, shooting the models, space sequences in
Speaker 2: general look great. So there's a lot in this film
Speaker 2: effects wise that was done really well considered, especially considering
Speaker 2: the budget, and serves to elevate the picture.
Speaker 3: Now here's a random note about this opening scene. I
Speaker 3: believe one of the scientists in this scene is named
Speaker 3: Ted Laandergan, and because you see the last name Laudergan
Speaker 3: on the space and the other guy repeatedly refers to
Speaker 3: him as Ted. Now, that is not really notable, especially
Speaker 3: since this character just dies and doesn't come back, but
Speaker 3: it is notable within the meta context of the film,
Speaker 3: because apparently that is the name of the private detective
Speaker 3: who takes it too personal. In William Malone's previous movie
Speaker 3: Scared to Death. So this is one of the many
Speaker 3: Scared to Death references within Creature that I brought up earlier.
Speaker 2: Oh man, this one's just for the Scared to death heads.
Speaker 2: That's what we call themselves.
Speaker 3: Anyway, After this, we get a title. The version I
Speaker 3: was watching for this part of the movie was called
Speaker 3: The Titan Find. An other cut is called Creature once Again.
Speaker 3: I think I said this earlier, but I watched half
Speaker 3: of the movie and the Titan Find cut half of
Speaker 3: the movie and the Creature cut. And I don't know
Speaker 3: what I missed one way or another.
Speaker 2: I think I've read that it's mostly a little exposition,
Speaker 2: so and I don't know that a little makes a
Speaker 2: whole lot of difference.
Speaker 3: All Right, after the titles, we are moving again. So
Speaker 3: next we're told it's June twenty I assume Earth calendar,
Speaker 3: and we're looking at the space station Concord, which is
Speaker 3: a wheel shaped sort of the Stanford Tourists space station. Uh,
Speaker 3: and we're told that it is owned by the NTI Corporation,
Speaker 3: that's the USA based one in orbit around the Earth's Moon.
Speaker 3: And we get one of you know, a classic radar
Speaker 3: room scene where there's somebody sitting in there, and they say, sir,
Speaker 3: we've got we're picking up something on the on the computer. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's headed right for us. So the command center detects
Speaker 3: a spacecraft on a collision course. Then they say, we've
Speaker 3: got a visual here, and they tune all these TVs
Speaker 3: into I guess the like a stream from the cockpit
Speaker 3: of this space ship and they go, what the hell,
Speaker 3: and the pilot of the incoming ship is a fallout gool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like it's like a space a zombie from
Speaker 2: Planet of the Vampires. It's like one of the abominations
Speaker 2: that you counter in Prometheus is that, like, well, I
Speaker 2: guess one of the guys from our opening scene is here,
Speaker 2: like just fully zombified and is driving straight towards the
Speaker 2: space station, no brakes or anything.
Speaker 3: And then it hits and the space station explodes, which
Speaker 3: I wasn't quite expecting.
Speaker 2: So I was not expecting it either, Like this feels
Speaker 2: like the worst case scenario. Like it's so bad that
Speaker 2: I assumed, Okay, we're going to get a one week
Speaker 2: earlier bit on this because this maybe this isn't the
Speaker 2: same guys from the beginning. Clearly somebody returning with an
Speaker 2: alien pathogen and destroying a massive space station. That's as
Speaker 2: bad as it gets, and we have to work backwards
Speaker 2: from this disaster.
Speaker 3: But that's not the case, right, No, we're time to
Speaker 3: meet our crew, so we go to a different ship.
Speaker 3: We're cutting around a lot. Now we're on a mission
Speaker 3: to Titan. So NTI has sent a second ship called
Speaker 3: the Shinandoah to Titan with instructions to claim the artifacts
Speaker 3: discovered by the original team of scientists. So the artifacts
Speaker 3: it melted the last guys made them into space zombies.
Speaker 3: You need to go get that stuff now. And it
Speaker 3: starts off when we meet everybody. They're gathered in a
Speaker 3: room that clearly looks like the interior styling of this
Speaker 3: set is supposed to be similar to the Nostromo and Alien.
Speaker 3: It's got these, you know, just a lot of the
Speaker 3: same textures, the kind of white walls with the hoses
Speaker 3: and tubes and the ridges and all that. And everybody's
Speaker 3: sitting around and they're getting a briefing by Perkins, which
Speaker 3: is the company man, the guy played by lyman Ward,
Speaker 3: and he starts off telling them like, well, whatever reasons
Speaker 3: you had for signing up for this mission, you've got
Speaker 3: to do what the company says, which you know, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: they probably know that. And he says, you got to
Speaker 3: get these these artifacts from the alien site. You've got
Speaker 3: to market, document it, and return any samples to NTI.
Speaker 2: And everyone I think is mostly okay with it. They're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's not as much conflict over it.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, that's what's going on except one crew member. Actually,
Speaker 3: this is I think Slaydon, Beth Slaydon played by Wendy Shawl.
Speaker 3: She's like, wait a minute, if this is a research
Speaker 3: mission where we're just supposed to recover artifacts, why do
Speaker 3: we need a security officer? And then everybody looks over
Speaker 3: at Diane Salingers, just standing there in the corner of
Speaker 3: the room. She's looking very creepy at this point. She's
Speaker 3: looking very stern and robotic. It almost seems like they
Speaker 3: are setting her up to be revealed later to be
Speaker 3: an android, but they're not. She's, as far as I
Speaker 3: could tell, she's just a regular human.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, this is one of those characters it feels
Speaker 2: like the character was changed either in the course of
Speaker 2: writing or in the course of shooting the film, and
Speaker 2: they just like left previous incarnations of her there because
Speaker 2: what we have here is not what we get later on,
Speaker 2: and it's not one of those things where we feel
Speaker 2: like there's significant development to get to that change.
Speaker 3: She looked very stern, and they've almost given her I
Speaker 3: don't know what you call it. It's not like gothy makeup,
Speaker 3: but she looks like she looks like she's a member
Speaker 3: of a German industrial metal band, but she's also wearing
Speaker 3: the uniform of a Formula one driver.
Speaker 2: Yeah, her look is kind of I would say Zuole esque.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, Yeah, that's good. And so Perkins can
Speaker 3: offer no explanation for why Bryce is here. He just
Speaker 3: walks away. And then the next scene is the ship's doctor,
Speaker 3: doctor Oliver, arguing with Bryce here because Bryce is confiscating
Speaker 3: and impounding drugs from the ship's onboard pharmacy and she's like,
Speaker 3: you have no right to take those, and Bryce doesn't
Speaker 3: speak at all. She's completely like zipper, lips, not a word,
Speaker 3: giving this glower at the doctor. The doctor eventually backs
Speaker 3: down like she's afraid of her. She leaves. Later dialogue
Speaker 3: reveals that she was mostly making heavy sedatives, and then
Speaker 3: the doctor talks with a couple of other crew members.
Speaker 3: This is Finnel and Delambre about how they've been on
Speaker 3: the ship for three months and no one has heard
Speaker 3: Bryce talk. Isn't that weird? Once again sets it up
Speaker 3: like she's going to be a robot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was expecting that to be the twist. And
Speaker 2: you know, this is another one of those cases where
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of something in a film that would have
Speaker 2: something in a film that would come much later. But
Speaker 2: she reminds me a bit of the Android ENFORCERR character
Speaker 2: that pops up in Jason X. She does, you know,
Speaker 2: right down to like the black Vinyl you know style outfit.
Speaker 3: But without the cutesy attitude. Right, Okay, next scene, we're
Speaker 3: gonna meet some more characters we get We get a
Speaker 3: moment with the captain and with Slayden. This is Wendy
Speaker 3: Shawl again, so Slayden. When we first meet her, she's
Speaker 3: absorbed in a book and she's sort of ignoring the captain,
Speaker 3: Captain Davison, who's trying to talk to her. And what's
Speaker 3: that book she's reading that she just can't put down
Speaker 3: because it's just so good. This plot is so great.
Speaker 3: It's scared to Death, the novelization of Scared to Death
Speaker 3: once again, the previous film of William Malone.
Speaker 2: Love it in general, I love a fake book and
Speaker 2: a film. If it's central to the plot, great, If
Speaker 2: it's incidental, I'm also there for it.
Speaker 3: This has got to be at least a second run.
Speaker 3: That's a paperback. I don't know. Maybe they never did
Speaker 3: a hardcover of Scared to Death. So anyway, this is
Speaker 3: a scene where we get to see a bit of
Speaker 3: Slayden and Davison's relationship. They are clearly they have romantic
Speaker 3: interest in each other, and they're kind of playful, like
Speaker 3: she's playfully ignoring him and reading the book. He's fussing
Speaker 3: over an asynchronous chess game that they've been playing for
Speaker 3: a while, and she's gloating about how she's going to
Speaker 3: beat him soon. She's like, removes, I'll have checkmate, and
Speaker 3: she's like a commander doesn't need to have any brains,
Speaker 3: just a strong voice, and he's like, yeah, well, by
Speaker 3: the way, he's the captain, but she's like an engineer.
Speaker 3: She's like the tech whiz on the ship. On top
Speaker 3: of this, there's another scene where we get a romantic development,
Speaker 3: which is between these two other crew members, Fennel and Delambre.
Speaker 3: They're like looking at Titan in the observation bay. She
Speaker 3: starts talking about how she knows that they're going to
Speaker 3: die there, and then they have some space romance.
Speaker 2: Which you know it will become more important later on,
Speaker 2: and it leads into again some of the better sequences
Speaker 2: in the picture.
Speaker 3: So when the ship arrives in orbit around Titan, they
Speaker 3: discovered there is another ship already there, a Richter Dynamics
Speaker 3: Dynamics ship that those are their West German corporate rivals. Remember,
Speaker 3: and Captain Davison here is mad at Perkins. It seems
Speaker 3: you know, Perkins, the company man, he knows about this already,
Speaker 3: but everybody else was kept in the dark about the
Speaker 3: fact that it was a corporate arms race here and
Speaker 3: the captain is like, these crew members are civilians, they
Speaker 3: aren't trained to handle this kind of conflict, implying that
Speaker 3: things are likely to get violent between the two corporations,
Speaker 3: and Perkins is like, I don't worry about it. Bryce
Speaker 3: here can handle any rough situations that come up. She's prepared.
Speaker 3: So it seems like they're going to be competing with
Speaker 3: Richter to get to the alien stuff. But again this
Speaker 3: is something that's like as with many things in this movie,
Speaker 3: like it sets up a plot dynamic only to not
Speaker 3: really have it go anywhere. But there's conflict in this
Speaker 3: scene established between the captain and the company man. So
Speaker 3: Davison is like, okay, before we land, let's do it
Speaker 3: the safe way, and the company man is like, no,
Speaker 3: I insist you do it the stupid and dangerous way.
Speaker 3: That's an order, yep yep. So they do, and of
Speaker 3: course it's a bumpy landing. Once the ship lands, it
Speaker 3: ends up sinking through the surface of the planet and
Speaker 3: falls into an underground cavity, which I thought was a
Speaker 3: cool set piece. I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this possibility has come up on stuff to
Speaker 2: blow your mind before and talking about you know, landing
Speaker 2: on on on the Moon or on other planets, like
Speaker 2: this is an actual consideration that is taking into account,
Speaker 2: like can where can you land? Where can you land safely?
Speaker 2: Where can you land and have like a stable place
Speaker 2: for the spacecraft? So yeah, I don't know that I'd
Speaker 2: actually seen it explored in this fashion in a film before,
Speaker 2: so I like it.
Speaker 3: The ship is damaged, of course in the crash landing,
Speaker 3: so They're really in a pickle now. They're like, how
Speaker 3: are we going to get out of this? Davison's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we got a radio the Richter ship for help. We
Speaker 3: got to say, you know, please help us, even though
Speaker 3: you're our corporate rivals. You know, our lives are in danger.
Speaker 3: And Perkins is like, no, no, we will not do that,
Speaker 3: and he threatens the captain's job. And the captain doesn't care,
Speaker 3: you know. He's like, the lives of my crew are
Speaker 3: more important than your profits. And Perkins isn't so sure
Speaker 3: about that. Yeah, but it's time to suit up, go outside.
Speaker 3: I guess I don't remember how they get to that point.
Speaker 2: But I think they have to basically, like they try
Speaker 2: hailing the Richter Dynamic ship and they're not hearing anything back,
Speaker 2: so they basically have to go and knock. And there's
Speaker 2: added back and forth where our corporate stooge is like, well,
Speaker 2: we got to bring Bryce and the big gun, and
Speaker 2: they're like, we're not bringing the gun. We're going to
Speaker 2: ask for help, and they're like, okay, she can bring
Speaker 2: the gun.
Speaker 3: So they do that. They suit up, they go outside.
Speaker 3: Basically everybody goes except I think a couple of people
Speaker 3: and they find some kind of so did you understand
Speaker 3: what they're going to? Hear as the German ship. They
Speaker 3: go to some kind of built infrastructure, and at first
Speaker 3: I thought this was more of the alien ruins. But
Speaker 3: do you think it's actually the German ship they're going to?
Speaker 2: I believe so, but only because I went back and
Speaker 2: rewatched the first portion of the film and felt a
Speaker 2: little more confident that that's where they're going.
Speaker 3: So the team, you know, they do very it's your
Speaker 3: standard kind of like sci fi environment exploring thing. The
Speaker 3: team splits up, and then the parts that's up split
Speaker 3: up again, so everybody's getting isolated so they can have
Speaker 3: scary little experiences. Inside the ship, they find breathable air
Speaker 3: and decide to remove their helmets. Always a good choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, the air's good, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Inside the labs within the ship, they find some large
Speaker 3: capsule shaped chests that viewers may remember from twenty minutes
Speaker 3: ago in the opening scene, and Delambre is looking at
Speaker 3: a capsule. She thinks it looks like some kind of
Speaker 3: egg and starts to examine it. There's one part here
Speaker 3: where she just like eats something sitting on a table
Speaker 3: and I was like, like, did you know a jolly rancher?
Speaker 2: And she just sticks it up and eat it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like it feels natural for her. Like, but I'm like,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? This is this is a this
Speaker 2: is a biologically unstable environment. I don't eat random jolly
Speaker 2: ranchers or whatever.
Speaker 3: But it looks so good. You know, I had to
Speaker 3: get this jelly roll here.
Speaker 2: The West Germans. They have great confections. You know. You
Speaker 2: can't say no to it.
Speaker 3: Ik benin contaminant. So she eats whatever it is and
Speaker 3: then oh, and then she stumbles across a bunch of
Speaker 3: dead bodies in the room, and then an alien pops
Speaker 3: out and is like ah, So she runs away and
Speaker 3: finds her crewmates and they investigate and who's coming to
Speaker 3: save the day? Of course it's Bryce, the security officer.
Speaker 3: She's got her weapon drawn, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: just like, here's the creature. I don't know if they
Speaker 3: paste this out the right way. Getting to the creature revealed.
Speaker 3: It's true that you don't get a good look at
Speaker 3: it yet, but I feel like its presence and in
Speaker 3: this moment is too sudden and overt. It doesn't really
Speaker 3: have a good build up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we don't. I mean they do hold back
Speaker 2: a little bit like we're not full reveal, but I
Speaker 2: think too much is revealed, and then it ends up
Speaker 2: feeling like, Okay, here's our monster, but our monster just
Speaker 2: kind of like ends up working through underlings for the
Speaker 2: rest of the picture before coming back once more at
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Bryce kind of blasts at it with her
Speaker 3: ray gun, but that does and do anything. So the
Speaker 3: crew members have to run away and they slip through.
Speaker 3: This is a set piece I often like in sci
Speaker 3: fi movies when there's like an automatically closing mechanical door
Speaker 3: and the characters are trying to get through it fast enough,
Speaker 3: and one character is not able to get there before
Speaker 3: it slams shut. It's Delambre. She's stuck outside and the
Speaker 3: creature gets her.
Speaker 2: We get it, and again we get another the fact
Speaker 2: that this movie really loves quick splash of blood against
Speaker 2: the glass on that door.
Speaker 3: I remember her boyfriend was Finnel and he's right there
Speaker 3: when it happens. He freaks out and Bryce just jabs
Speaker 3: him in the head with an injector. Everybody's like, what
Speaker 3: are you doing? And then for the first time Bryce speaks,
Speaker 3: she's like, don't worry, it's just a tranquilizer. Oh okay, cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess this is what she was stealing
Speaker 2: all those drugs for, so that she could trank crew
Speaker 2: members at a moment's notice.
Speaker 3: Right, if you just saw your lover get killed by
Speaker 3: an alien, I can stab you in the head with
Speaker 3: a tranquilizer and you will fall instantly unconscious. That makes sense.
Speaker 2: She doesn't want that those stressed eyes to stack up
Speaker 2: too much, I guess.
Speaker 3: So everybody leaves the labs and they come back out
Speaker 3: into the caves where the rest of the crew members
Speaker 3: are waiting, and then here for some reason, even though
Speaker 3: there may have been a good reason for this, but
Speaker 3: I don't recall what it was. Even though one member
Speaker 3: of the crew has just been killed by an alien,
Speaker 3: they just keep exploring the caves and they come across
Speaker 3: the lab where the two geologists got gooped in the
Speaker 3: intro I believe, And then we get a jump scare
Speaker 3: with one of them uncovering something. I think it's one
Speaker 3: of the bodies from the first mission. But eventually they
Speaker 3: go back to the ship and here we get some developments. First,
Speaker 3: there's sort of a quiet, tender, nice conversation between Davison
Speaker 3: and Sladen. She's like, do you think we're going to die?
Speaker 3: And he says no, but he gives her a task.
Speaker 3: He asks her to put together a certain kind of
Speaker 3: transmitter device to radio the space station for help. But
Speaker 3: then I was thinking, wait, the space station that exploded?
Speaker 3: Do they know it exploded?
Speaker 2: Maybe there's a closer station, A little sketchy on what
Speaker 2: all's out there?
Speaker 3: Maybe it only partially exploded. But then the movie kind
Speaker 3: of kicks into high gear because we're about to meet
Speaker 3: klaus Kinski in fact, so we see like Bryce the
Speaker 3: security officer is alone, she's like in her quarters, like changing,
Speaker 3: and suddenly she is attacked from out of nowhere by
Speaker 3: klaus Kinski. Fortunately she manages to subdue him. But I
Speaker 3: was just thinking, no, kill him now.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, because he comes off like he's just a
Speaker 2: complete animal, like he might. You're like, maybe he's even
Speaker 2: a zombie at this point and you should just put
Speaker 2: put one in his head.
Speaker 3: But no, he reveals himself to be not zombified yet
Speaker 3: he is human and he's just he's just all over
Speaker 3: the place. I mentioned her, I was going to come
Speaker 3: back to this, Kinski as usual in any movie, Like
Speaker 3: you know, whenever he's on screen, it's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to take your eyes off him. He is, he has
Speaker 3: that spellbinding quality on screen, but it's like he's doing
Speaker 3: a completely different take on the character in every shot.
Speaker 3: In some takes, he's playing him as like an obsessed,
Speaker 3: paranoid madman who's trying to warn everyone else of the danger.
Speaker 3: In other takes, he's playing as a kind of relatively calm, friendly,
Speaker 3: helpful guy making good sense. In other takes, he's a
Speaker 3: malevolent sexual predator who's like violent to the rest of
Speaker 3: the crew. There's like no consistency whatsoever from moment to
Speaker 3: moment with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it reminds me again of that famous
Speaker 2: moment at the famous scene at the very end of
Speaker 2: Herzog's Gary The Wrath of God, where Kinsky's character has
Speaker 2: this like final monologue and it's rather subdued and very powerful.
Speaker 2: But according to Herzog, it's like Kinsky didn't want to
Speaker 2: do it subdued. He wanted to do it high energy
Speaker 2: and raging, and so Herzog just made him do it
Speaker 2: over and over, were in over again, until he was
Speaker 2: just so like weakened that he actually delivered it at
Speaker 2: the level that Herzog wanted. So it's like, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of stuff you apparently had to do to get
Speaker 2: what you wanted out of Kinski. So yeah, and then
Speaker 2: add into the fact that some of the shots that
Speaker 2: he did for Creature were unusable because he was out
Speaker 2: of focus. So you know, they're left just having, I guess,
Speaker 2: to to use what they were able to get from him,
Speaker 2: no matter how different it is seem to see.
Speaker 3: So from here we get a number of different plot developments.
Speaker 3: One is that the crew is running low on air,
Speaker 3: so Bryce has to go out to collect air tanks
Speaker 3: from the dead astronauts, and for some reason, Hoffner is
Speaker 3: allowed to go with her, even though he has already
Speaker 3: violently attacked her earlier and he will continue to do
Speaker 3: so as they go out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, completely nonsensible.
Speaker 3: So they then they see a bunch of dead guys
Speaker 3: while they're collecting the air tanks, and then something pops
Speaker 3: out at them and we assume they were attacked by
Speaker 3: the alien. By the way, Hoffner does deliver some lines,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of hard to process the content of them.
Speaker 3: He's talking to the crew and he talks about how
Speaker 3: the alien let's see. He reveals that he has a
Speaker 3: bunch of bombs on his ship that they could use
Speaker 3: to destroy the alien, and he also reveals that it
Speaker 3: wasn't just the alien attacking them, but it used the
Speaker 3: crew members to get each other. He said that it
Speaker 3: was which this doesn't really match with what he was
Speaker 3: just saying, but he says it's a form of collective intelligence.
Speaker 3: And we will see how this works in just a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of these sequences is where he's eating
Speaker 2: the sandwich right, yes, where that just took me out
Speaker 2: of it because I'm like, did they want him to
Speaker 2: eat the sandwich or is he like I'm eating the
Speaker 2: sandwich in the scene? I don't know.
Speaker 3: So we come to another scene where Finnel this is
Speaker 3: the character played by Robert Chaffey, is lying by a
Speaker 3: window in the ship. He's recovering from his wounds and
Speaker 3: from the tranquilizer dose after he saw his his lover
Speaker 3: killed by an alien, and then suddenly outside the window
Speaker 3: on the surface of the planet, he sees Delambre. She's
Speaker 3: there and she asks for his help, and despite having
Speaker 3: seen her die, Finyl does go out to find her,
Speaker 3: he puts on his suit, he goes to get her,
Speaker 3: and she is, of course now a zombie working for
Speaker 3: the alien. With this dynamic that develops is that a
Speaker 3: character who you thought was killed will come back with
Speaker 3: some kind of brain slug attached to their head. So
Speaker 3: like one side of the head, they've got a throbbing,
Speaker 3: slimy mass there and it's controlling their activity. And so
Speaker 3: the zombie brain slug Delombree seduces Phinyl on the planet's
Speaker 3: surface and then seemingly infects him with the brain slug
Speaker 3: of his own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like pulls his helmet off on the planet's surface.
Speaker 2: This whole sequence is great. Like I think Malone said
Speaker 2: that originally they were going to shoot it entirely within
Speaker 2: the ship, but then they ended up going with this.
Speaker 2: You know, she's outside, she's almost like finds me of
Speaker 2: scenes like I guess this was in Salem's Lot with
Speaker 2: the vampire on the outside of the window asking to
Speaker 2: be let in.
Speaker 3: You know, very spooky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has that power to it. So Yeah, for
Speaker 2: my money, this is the creepiest sequence in the whole picture.
Speaker 2: Doesn't have a outright monster in it, you know, has
Speaker 2: a like a brain slug controlled vampire and it's really effective.
Speaker 3: After this, the crew that's left on the Shenandoah, they
Speaker 3: get like a zoom a call from Finnyl. He video
Speaker 3: calls them and he's like, hey, I'm over here on
Speaker 3: the German ship, and they're like, how'd you get there?
Speaker 3: He's like, I walked. I came over here because it
Speaker 3: has air, and you know you're running out of air
Speaker 3: over there, so come join me. So Davison, Perkins, and
Speaker 3: the Doctor all go over to the German ship and
Speaker 3: join him there because because they can get air there,
Speaker 3: Sladen stays behind on the other ship. They are greeted
Speaker 3: by Finnel, who has a mysterious dig around his head,
Speaker 3: and they're like, hey, what's that. He's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: there were some caustic chemicals that burned me, so that's
Speaker 3: why I've got this. By the way, doctor, come with me.
Speaker 3: Let's get away from everybody else. And there is actually,
Speaker 3: I think a quite effectively staged creepy moment here where
Speaker 3: so Jaffy is, you know, leading the doctor character alone
Speaker 3: down a hall. She's supposed to be, I think, checking
Speaker 3: out his wound while he fixes something in the engine
Speaker 3: room and he opens the doors to the engine room
Speaker 3: and it's just black inside. There's no light, and he's like, ah,
Speaker 3: darn it, you know the lights are out. Just let
Speaker 3: me go fix it. I'll be right back, and then
Speaker 3: he just goes in the door, and we don't cut away.
Speaker 3: The camera stays on the doctor just standing there at
Speaker 3: the open door leading into the dark room, and then
Speaker 3: we don't hear anything inside, and it goes on for
Speaker 3: a bit, and I thought this was a really effective
Speaker 3: moment where it just goes on and on a little
Speaker 3: bit and you don't know what's happening, and she starts
Speaker 3: calling out to him, like what's going on, and then
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, yeah, I'm in here. I'm almost done,
Speaker 3: and she eventually goes in and of course gets zombiefied.
Speaker 2: Yep, they get her.
Speaker 3: Now. Eventually, the captain and the company man, who have
Speaker 3: been at odds the whole time, they grow suspicious because
Speaker 3: they're like, man, this ship is so hot and we're
Speaker 3: sweating through our outfits here. But they recalled that Finyl
Speaker 3: was not sweating. That's weird. So they get suspicious and
Speaker 3: they're like, we got to go check things out. But
Speaker 3: by the time they get there, the doctor has already
Speaker 3: been killed, and then zombie Finnel attacks the captain, only
Speaker 3: to have his zombie head blown off by Perkins with
Speaker 3: his blaster. So the company man comes to the rescue.
Speaker 2: Yep, Ferris Bueller's dad blows the head off of the
Speaker 2: Jaffy zombie s face zombie and it's a great head explosion,
Speaker 2: like it's a full on like Scanner's esque sloppy head explosion,
Speaker 2: but also a little bit funny, like it's the right balance,
Speaker 2: the perfect bounce.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, back on the other ship, remember Sladen's the
Speaker 3: only character left there, so she's doing her engineering work.
Speaker 3: I think she's trying to fix the radio or something.
Speaker 3: And oh, here's Klaus Kinski, but he's zombie Fyte also,
Speaker 3: so he's also been killed and brain slugged, and he
Speaker 3: is attacking Sladen though you know he was attacking people
Speaker 3: before he had a brain slug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's even more terrifying now because, like the Kinsky
Speaker 2: skull is a great skull upon which to build your yeah,
Speaker 2: your special effects makeup. So he looks terrifying.
Speaker 3: So he chases her outside and eventually into the German ship.
Speaker 3: There's there's a fight where Davison and Perkins have to
Speaker 3: save her from the Kinsky zombie. They rip the slug
Speaker 3: off of Hoffner's head and throw it on the ground
Speaker 3: and stomp on it and squish it. A good conclusion,
Speaker 3: and thus concludes the tale of the Hoffner Zombie. So
Speaker 3: there are apparently only three characters left. We've got Captain Davison,
Speaker 3: the company man, Perkins, and Sladen the engineer. They're the
Speaker 3: only ones left. And what are they going to do
Speaker 3: to defeat the big alien? Because remember there's also the
Speaker 3: different thing. There's the alien they encountered at the beginning
Speaker 3: in the ship here, apart from all the zombies that
Speaker 3: it is apparently making. I think maybe the brain slug
Speaker 3: is like part of the alien that comes off of
Speaker 3: it and reanimates the corpses of the humans that it
Speaker 3: has killed.
Speaker 2: I don't have a clear understanding. I don't know if
Speaker 2: the yeah, these are part of the alien's anatomy, or
Speaker 2: these are other organisms that it is using, or this
Speaker 2: is biotechnology. It's left wide open, so I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't have any strong theories.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we get to a thing next that I
Speaker 3: absolutely love, which is Slayden's plan for defeating the alien.
Speaker 3: And what she says is, I have an idea. I
Speaker 3: saw a movie once where people were trapped on an
Speaker 3: ice station by a carrot from outer space and they
Speaker 3: killed it by electrocuting it. They set up a grid
Speaker 3: on the floor as a trap and they lured it
Speaker 3: onto the and they electrocuted it. And I realized, and
Speaker 3: they for Perkins and Davison laugh at her, but then
Speaker 3: they end up going with her plan. And I think
Speaker 3: this is great because she is accurately describing the plot
Speaker 3: of the thing from another world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's I really enjoyed just how overt it
Speaker 2: was too. It would be like if like what if
Speaker 2: Ripley an alien had said, you know, I saw a
Speaker 2: movie once where a little boy was left home alone
Speaker 2: at Christmas and he outwitted the enemies with a series
Speaker 2: of clever traps. Let's do that. Let's do home alone
Speaker 2: on this alien.
Speaker 3: Do we have a BB gun on board? I need
Speaker 3: paint cans.
Speaker 2: But they agree, like this, we can do this. We
Speaker 2: can we have even more power on the ship. We
Speaker 2: can route into this system.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Yep. So they do it, and it's
Speaker 3: Layton's plan and they have to like, you know, guard
Speaker 3: her while she's doing all the electrical work that needs
Speaker 3: to be done. But she she arranges it and it works,
Speaker 3: or so it seems. They zap the monster with all
Speaker 3: this electricity. It falls dead, apparently, and then the two
Speaker 3: guys wander off to go, I don't know, do something else.
Speaker 3: But then Slaydon is like, oh, she's a little curious.
Speaker 3: Maybe she's not sure it's dead. So she goes over
Speaker 3: to give it a little nudge with the tip of
Speaker 3: her shoe, and then we get a classic dead monster revival.
Speaker 3: It pops up. We get the monster pop up. Gotta
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're gonna have to move on to Plan B. Right,
Speaker 2: you know what B stands for.
Speaker 3: It stands for better depend on the company.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: See, he actually has a surprising arc so per So
Speaker 3: the monster pops up, it seizes Slaydon. The two guys
Speaker 3: go to investigate, and they like look through the glass
Speaker 3: in the hallway and they see that Slaydon is there.
Speaker 3: She's alive, but she is unconscious, being held hostage, like
Speaker 3: hanging upside down, guarded by the alien. So they're like,
Speaker 3: what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?
Speaker 3: And Perkins comes up with the plan. He's like, we
Speaker 3: got to blow it out of the airlock. There you
Speaker 3: go in the medh And while he's trying to set
Speaker 3: up this plan, he finds the bombs that Kinsky was
Speaker 3: talking about, so he's like, oh yeah, here are some
Speaker 3: bombs also. So while he's like setting up that blow
Speaker 3: it out the airlock trap, Davison goes into the room
Speaker 3: and rescues Slaydon and meanwhile the alien attacks Perkins. The
Speaker 3: company man. It attacks him, and then the other two
Speaker 3: characters come and find him as sort of in a
Speaker 3: gory embrace with the alien. It's like ripping out his neck.
Speaker 3: They're both sitting right on the trap door of the
Speaker 3: airlock and Perkins looks at them and he's like, you've
Speaker 3: got it right where you want it to do it.
Speaker 3: Do it. So they hit the button and Perkins and
Speaker 3: the alien get dumped outside, so company Man to the
Speaker 3: rescue in the end. And I think it's an interesting
Speaker 3: arc because it's the opposite of the Burke arc in Aliens,
Speaker 3: where in Aliens Burke seems like a nice guy at first,
Speaker 3: and then as the story progresses, he is revealed to
Speaker 3: be a a through and through slime ball and a
Speaker 3: complete coward and only interested in himself. Perkins is kind
Speaker 3: of the opposite. At first. He's he's a you know,
Speaker 3: a hard nosed, you know, totally selfish, bottom line kind
Speaker 3: of guy who doesn't care about anybody else. But he
Speaker 3: sort of saves the day here. Yeah, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: last because well, they dump it out the airlock. But
Speaker 3: then the alien just sort of comes around the side
Speaker 3: of the building like it comes in through the other entrance.
Speaker 3: But when it does, it's still got the bomb that
Speaker 3: Perkins had stuck to it. So Davison is like, well,
Speaker 3: I gotta deal with this, and so he goes and
Speaker 3: meets it at the airlock and drop kicks the alien
Speaker 3: back outside. Great, yes, very good. He's like fighting it
Speaker 3: outside where it said that the temperature is like negative
Speaker 3: two hundred degrees fahrenheit, and like he can't breathe, there's
Speaker 3: no atmosphere he can breathe. So he's like choking and
Speaker 3: he sees the bomb timer on the alien go down
Speaker 3: to zero, but then it doesn't explode, and Davison, lying
Speaker 3: there on the exposed surface of Saturn's moon titan, chokes
Speaker 3: out the line it didn't go off to no one
Speaker 3: in particular. There's nobody out there to hear him, except
Speaker 3: suddenly a character who we thought was dead, the security
Speaker 3: officer Bryce. She appears from out of nowhere in a
Speaker 3: spacesuit with her blaster and shoots the bomb and then says, oh,
Speaker 3: yes it did, replying to his it didn't go off,
Speaker 3: and then the alien explodes and that's the end.
Speaker 2: That's great. They do a Jaws on it, basically, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: something explosive strapped to our monster. Shoot the object, blow
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 3: You see it.
Speaker 2: You see a Jaws pulled on monsters now and again
Speaker 2: in these types of films, it's always a nice moment.
Speaker 3: What did you so? Then we so this time it's
Speaker 3: defeated for real, and our survivors blast off and head
Speaker 3: back to Earth, I guess. And the survivors again are Davison, Slayton,
Speaker 3: and Bryce, And what did you make of the I
Speaker 3: got lost thing? They're like, what what happened to you?
Speaker 3: We thought you were dead? And then she sort of
Speaker 3: sheepishly admits I got lost, and I think she says
Speaker 3: it multiple times. What's going on there?
Speaker 2: I have no idea, no idea what they intended with
Speaker 2: that if it's supposed to just be funny, or if
Speaker 2: it was just kind of like a patchwork, like they
Speaker 2: felt like they had to acknowledge it. I didn't feel
Speaker 2: like they had to acknowledge where she was at all,
Speaker 2: Like she almost died in some encounter with a with
Speaker 2: the alien that ended up turning Hans Rudy into a zombie.
Speaker 2: So I don't really think I needed an explanation of
Speaker 2: where she was, but I guess the film felt otherwise.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, they're headed home. Oh and then a laugh
Speaker 3: out loud moment for me was Bryce hands Slade in
Speaker 3: her copy of the novelization of Scared to Death, the
Speaker 3: director's other film, like oh great, thank you, and that's
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 2: She points out earlier that it's the only book she brought.
Speaker 2: That's why she keeps reading it, and she likes it. Yes,
Speaker 2: so there's not a great library on the Shenandoa a
Speaker 2: lot of hallendin Foster.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, you just basically they got Scared
Speaker 3: to Death and dianetics.
Speaker 2: You know, you're just speaking of novelizations. I noticed that
Speaker 2: there's like a contemporary author who has gone back and
Speaker 2: made novelizations for various films that didn't have them, including Creature.
Speaker 2: So there is a novelization of Creature out there, but
Speaker 2: it's like a recent work of fiction, so don't I
Speaker 2: don't know what it's like, but I admire the hustle there.
Speaker 3: Maybe it'll fill in some of the plot gaps and
Speaker 3: make more of like the okay, so things we mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier that did not really end up playing a big role.
Speaker 3: The corporate rivalry. I mean it's a little bit there
Speaker 3: in the setting, like, okay, so there's another a ship
Speaker 3: from another company, but like they play it up like
Speaker 3: the corporate rivalry is going to be a conflict within
Speaker 3: the plot, and it just isn't really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's the whole issue robot and she doesn't talk,
Speaker 2: doesn't really go anywhere. There are a lot of things
Speaker 2: like that in this film, which you know, you don't
Speaker 2: have to you don't. You don't have to fire every
Speaker 2: canon you bring on the deck, you know. I recently
Speaker 2: reread Frank Herbert's Done Again, and honestly, one of the
Speaker 2: pleasures that I really love in that book is are
Speaker 2: the various ideas and tangents that that aren't explored that
Speaker 2: we the places where it seems like the plot could go,
Speaker 2: but they don't. Like, there's this whole, this brief bit
Speaker 2: where they're like where it's mentioned that that pider de
Speaker 2: vere the twisted mentat of the Baron Harken and may
Speaker 2: be intending to obtain a Chris Knife, and then since
Speaker 2: he has blue the blue eyes of the Fremen, he's
Speaker 2: going to potentially go out and pretend to be a
Speaker 2: Fremen to work his evil on the surface of Aracus.
Speaker 2: And that never comes to fruition. But it's just one
Speaker 2: of those little teases of like, wow, what if what
Speaker 2: if it had gone in that direction? What would have
Speaker 2: that consisted of? So you know, it's you know, you
Speaker 2: can you can lay out possibilities and not follow through
Speaker 2: on them. But there are a number of those moments
Speaker 2: in this film that ultimately feel again more like in
Speaker 2: the moment editing and changing rather than an exploration of possibility.
Speaker 3: They feel more accidentally abandoned rather than intentionally abandoned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but still, I have to say, a really fun flick,
Speaker 2: some fun effects, some fun performances, and some legitimately creepy moments,
Speaker 2: coupled with some moments that are a little wonk here,
Speaker 2: Like we were saying when the monster is finally fully
Speaker 2: present in these final moments, there's often an undeniable, like
Speaker 2: rubber suit feel to it. It's a pretty good rubber suit,
Speaker 2: you know, but it's you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 3: I liked it when we saw the monster. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously it's supposed to look like the monster from Alien
Speaker 3: and it doesn't look realistic. But I love the look
Speaker 3: like it's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's nice and greasy
Speaker 2: and oily, and it's got It looks a lot like
Speaker 2: a xenomorph in some respects, but it has like big
Speaker 2: red eyes that glow. And then of course it's slinging
Speaker 2: brain slugs at people, and we're not entirely sure if
Speaker 2: those are of its body, if those are biotechnology, or
Speaker 2: if it's another species that he uses who knows.
Speaker 3: Well. I in the end also very much enjoyed creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, enjoyment is key. Absolutely all other concerns secondary.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna gohea and close the book on
Speaker 2: Creature aka Titan find here, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from everyone out there if you have thoughts on it
Speaker 2: from watching it back in the day, from watching it
Speaker 2: for the first time now or rediscovering it and so forth,
Speaker 2: or if you have thoughts in general on Alien and
Speaker 2: Alien clones that came out afterwards, films that led up
Speaker 2: to Alien. All of this is stuff we would love
Speaker 2: to talk about. And we still may come back and
Speaker 2: do Ridley Scott's Alien here on Weird House Cinema in
Speaker 2: the future, or maybe we'll just do another knockoff at
Speaker 2: some point. I don't know that both are fun possibilities.
Speaker 3: I think it's unavoidable that we will do multiple Alien
Speaker 3: knockoffs in the future. There are a lot of them.
Speaker 3: We'll we'll get around to.
Speaker 2: Them, all right. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film here on Weird House Cinema. You want to
Speaker 2: see a list of all the all the films we've
Speaker 2: done over the years, the best place to do that
Speaker 2: is go on over to letterbox dot com. It's l
Speaker 2: E T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 2: Our username is weird House and we have a list.
Speaker 2: There you can look at all the films, you can
Speaker 2: look at all the box arts, almost like a little
Speaker 2: little digital version of of a movie rental place. And indeed,
Speaker 2: you know, it's hooked up so that when you click
Speaker 2: on a title, you can click at where to find
Speaker 2: and it'll tell you, oh, well, you can buy it,
Speaker 2: rent it digitally here, you can stream it here, you
Speaker 2: can buy a physical copy here. It's often a great
Speaker 2: like a great resource for me when I'm looking at
Speaker 2: potential films to cover on Weird House and I have
Speaker 2: to tackle that big question, how are we going to
Speaker 2: watch it? Where are you going to seek it out?
Speaker 2: Can we stream it? Can we get a hold of
Speaker 2: a digital release? Has it been remastered? Or are we
Speaker 2: going to have to you know, look for some sort
Speaker 2: of a what was the way that we watched the work?
Speaker 2: Best movie? That was like a Dutch subtitled YouTube rip
Speaker 2: or something? Yes, yes, not the preferred format.
Speaker 3: Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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