CREATURE (1985)
William Malone
Diamond Entertainment

Scientists aboard a spacecraft arrive on Titan, a moon of Venus, looking for new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques. They discover that the crew of a competing German craft are all dead except for one member, a flake played by the venerable Klaus Kinski. A slimy alien creature wastes no time feeding off the rest of the cast, a handful of which become blood-raged zombies at the hands of some slug-like parasites.

Directed by the same fellow who recently gave us the appalling HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake, CREATURE is one of the many ALIEN rip-offs to turn up in the 80s. It heavily borrows elements from countless other sci-fi films, while its cast of familiar TV faces recites cliched dialog of the "We're in danger, what are we going to do?" ilk. The heroine (adorable Wendy Schall, star of the short-lived "It's A Living" series) even openly suggests killing the creature by recreating the ending of the original THE THING! "Star" Klaus Kinski only appears for minutes to chew some scenery, and actually is seen eating his lunch while filming his scenes. He turns into a mad zombie, and his character is then played by a golden-locked double about 30 years Klaus' junior.

With decent special effects and much vile gore about, CREATURE was a natural candidate for DVD, even though the "$4 million" epic is appearing on a budget label. Diamond's DVD starts out with a few video glitches, but luckily they make an exit and the rest of the presentation is quite satisfactory, especially considering I only laid out $6.99 for this baby. The murky-looking film has decent colors and minimal grain, and the mono sound is surprisingly effective.

Like most Diamond discs, there are only four chapters, ad taglines and a skimpy bio on cult fave Kinski. (George R. Reis)

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