Halloween Horror: Levithan (1989)

The next movie this month comes from the depth of the ocean in 1989. It is the film Leviathan and it wants to know……”How long can you hold your breath?”

Actually, for little over a minute and I think that is ok for a non-professional swimmer/diver. It is also a tagline that has literally no connection to the film.

PLOT

Set in the near future (so I guess this was supposed to be like now or a few years prior?) a group of underwater miners working for the Tri-Oceanic Corporation are almost at the end of their 90 day work rotation. They have almost their quota and their also their wits end with their, work, crew and life under the sea. While finishing their mining for precious sea bottom minerals, one miner (the over sexed goof-off of the crew named known as Six Pack) wanders off and happens to fall into a random ravine. As the crew rushes to save him he reappears with a discovery. He has found a sunken Russian ship!

Well, of course they are going to investigate this sunken ship and bring back some loot! I mean if they didn’t there would be no real story right? A safe is retrieved from the wrecked ship by the drinky horn-dog Six Pack. Once opened the crew finds a bottle of vodka, some personnel files and a few VHS casettes. The vodka gets pilfered by Six Pack and he skirts off to share it with female crew member Bridget.

Meanwhile….the ship doctor and the mining rig C.O. Beck (Stephen Beck, but everyone calls him Beck )investigate the tapes and the ship, which is named Leviathan. Low and behold the Russian ship Leviathan is currently sailing ocean and not at the sea floor. Wyrd!?!?!?! Also the video tapes show various Russian crew members in various states of being bed ridden, ill and possibly mutated?!?! The doc pieces together that the Russians were trying to make under water soldiers and failed. So they apparently sunk the Leviathan and scrubbed all information about this.

 

Well just then Six Pack and Bridget get all virus-like sick. Six Pack dies from this “virus” but not before getting all fish scaly and gross. OH NO!!! The vodka was the carrier for the Russian mutation stuff! Bridget sees this and kills herself not wanting the same to happen to her. The doc and Beck decide to dump the bodies and hide the fish man story. This sounds great until the dead bodies begin to struggle as they are dumped out into the briny deep. Of course a random leg gets clipped off and squirms away into the depths of the mining rig habitat.

 

"Hey doc does this look infected?"

 

It soon mutates into an eel monster and begins to terrorize the crew. Hell, it eventually forms itself into and amalgam of fish, eel and crew members. Then it begins to destroy the mining rig and chase down the remaining crew. Beck and the remaining gang have to fight for their lives and try to make it back to the surface and safety.

 

Hello there!

BUT WAIT!!!!

There is also the whole story thread of the Tri- Oceanic Corp. keeping the miners below the surface. See there is an approaching hurricane and they can’t bring the crew up at the 90 day limit. They will have to stay down there for safety and might as well work a few more days until the storm passes. Harsh, but fair? Right? Well then the doctor also tells the corporation bosses about the deadly genetic mutation outbreak by calling it a virus. He does this to keep this genetic mutation from getting to the surface. This leads to the Tri-Oceanic corporate goons to make a story of a horrible mining accident and all the crew members were killed. It will hurt their stock, but not as much as a virus or giant fish man mutation getting out to the world. Yup! The evil corporate entity is evil bit.

  

Robocop hashes it out with evil corporate figurehead

 

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!"

STAR POWER

Peter Weller- Robocop, Buckaroo Banzai and that is all he ever needed to do as those movies are both just amazing pieces of work!

Richard Crenna -Colonel Troutman from the Rambo series

Ernie Hudson- just off Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2

Daniel Stern- Wonder Years, Home Alone, City Slickers, C.H.U.D.

Hector Elizando- Necessary Roughness (a wonderfully terrible football film everyone should see!!!!) a ton of t.v. work too

Meg Foster- They Live and ton of t.v. work

Lisa Eilbacher- Beverly Hills Cop…and that is all I know her from

Amanda Pays…. I have never seen here in anything but this movie.

Michael Carmine….ummm….nothing I have seen besides Leviathan…. NO WAIT!!!! There was the Band of the Hand movie that nobody remembers! He was in that audio/visual turd of a film.

I would say there is sufficient star power in this film for 1989. Enough noticeable faces to hopefully make audiences want to see his film at the time.

WHY GOOD?

First off Stan Winston did the fishman mutant monster. We all know his studio has done amazing work in the past. The monster is a big practical effect suit and when it finally arrives it looks fairly menacing.

There is a fairly good body horror element that is fun in not David Cronenberg, but kind of David Cronenberg way.

This is a big isolated group vs a monster movie, which has been done a 1000 times, and I still enjoy that stuff!

The acting is good, but it should be above par with the majority of the cast here.

Hell, Jerry Goldsmith did the music and he has some great movie scores under his belt. Yes I know he is not John Williams or Danny Elfman, but he has some real musical chops.

WHY BAD?!

OH MY GODS! THIS MOVIE IS JUST ALIEN AND THE THING MASHED TOGETHER AND THROWN UNDERWATER!

Let me compare with a list of utter plot rip offs from both the better films….

Evil corporation putting blue collar workers in peril to enhance their bottom line- Alien

Creature that mashes everyone/everything together- The Thing

Highly dubious doctor- Alien and The Thing

Creature that attacks blood supply- The Thing

Doctor who becomes creature and tries to kill everyone- The Thing

Spidery creature that attacks by jumping- Alien

A location that is dark, full of pipes, grates and is huge and yet remarkably claustrophobic- Alien

Crew member infected and then monster sprouts form their dead body- Alien

Flamethrowers to fight the beast- The Thing

Creatures bursting into and out of crew members- Alien

Desolate location with no way to help the crew- Alien and The Thing

One liner followed by thrown explosive while fighting beasty- The Thing

Even a black guy as a mechanic- Alien

Stan Winston delivered an amazing looking fish-man mutant….from the waist up. We never see the entire creature on screen. Even better is that the beast barley moves and when it does it is stupid slow and clunky. I have no idea what happened to this beast to make it be both awesome and horrible at the same time!

There is a few predicable jump scares, but nothing else that I would classify as scary.

Did I mention that this is just The Thing and Alien mashed together and underwater?!?!?

RECOMMEND!?

I really can’t.

First, and once again, there is nothing really scary here. There are a few jump scares and attempt at some gooey gross blood stuff, but it fails as scary.

Stan Winston and his crew make delightful and amazing movie monsters. Here they made half of one and then seemed to stop or had some horribly issue. We get a great looking head and torso of a fish-man mutant, but that is it. The beasty just looks pushed around slowly on a cart and can swing it’s arms a bit. A great monster concept that falls flat.

There are two better films that cover this same type of story in The Thing and Alien. Just go watch those instead.