LEVIATHAN was released in the same year as two other underwater movies- James Cameron’s THE ABYSS (the best of the three movies)and the Z grade DEEP STAR SIX.  LEVIATHAN was in the middle as a B movie underwater rip-off of ALIEN.   LEVIATHAN featured the creature effects talents of the Stan Winston Company where two of the artists would go on to work on ALIEN 3 after this movie and also Jerry Goldsmith did the music score for this movie (when he did the score for ALIEN ten years before).   What does set LEVIATHAN on a slightly different path from ALIEN is the way the movie decides to sometimes do the opposite of what happens in ALIEN.   Peter Weller is like Ripley and Amanda Pays is like Jones the cat (I was able to draw parallels between two characters in this movie to ALIEN).   The company would rather forget the underwater mining crew (and the creature) in LEVIATHAN where Weyland-Yutani (in ALIEN) wants the alien back at the expense of the crew.   The movie follows the crew of a deep underwater oil platform and their final days of their tour of duty there and things go wrong when they come across a sunken Russian freighter called Leviathan.  Something from that ship is mutating the crew into amphibian monsters and the rest of the crew fights to escape with a hurricane above the ocean.

 

SPECIAL FETAURES:

MONSTER MAYHEM- 40 minute interview with Creature Effects Artists Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr on the time crunch they were under, the megalomania of the film’s director, forming their own company after this movie (and Stan Winston sending work their way),and how one of them was dubbed as the director’s psychiatrist.

 

DISSECTING COBB- Interview with actor Hector Elizondo where he talks about his character and why he decided to do the movie

 

SURVIVING LEVIATHAN- Interview with actor Ernie Hudson who thinks the mutated creature looked like a chicken and he disagreed with the director on how his character died.

 

The original theatrical trailer and previews for WITHOUT WARNING, LAKE PLACID, SATURN 3, and SWAP THING are also included on the disc.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS: LEVIATHAN is a wonderful b movie ALIEN underwater rip off to watch for the cast, production design, and the twists on the ALIEN plot.   The interviews gave some insight into the production and the director.   This blu-ray is another stellar effot from Scream Factory.

 

This Blu-ray review is ©9-10-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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