CREATURE (1998)
Director: Stuart Gillard
Genre: Horror/Survival/Sci-Fi
THE MOVIE
This 1998 television miniseries is perhaps better known as Peter Benchley’s Creature, itself based on Benchley’s novel White Shark and delivers some solid monster movie thrills for a TV movie. Benchley was best known as the author of Jaws and had made a career of aquatic thrillers and his later book borrows some elements of that story such as a seaside community setting with its own internal economics and politics, a shark expert tracking a man-eater and some other specific scenes and plot points.
However, the novel differs from the movie in several important ways. In the novel, the titular monster is a surgically enhanced shark man created by Nazi scientists. The movie takes this very campy premise and changes the monster to be a genetically engineered creature bred by the U.S. Navy that is a hybrid of shark, human and dolphin DNA which, while still ridiculous, is not quite as silly as a razor-toothed Nazi shark man. The movie also exchanges a Jaws-like New England setting for a south Caribbean locale. These changes make the movie better and less campy than it otherwise would have been and they make for a more interesting monster.
Also, interesting is a change in point of view for Benchley himself, who made a fortune off of the novel and movie version of Jaws, a piece of popular entertainment that framed a whole generation’s perceptions of sharks. I have a “Shark Week”-loving friend who hates Jaws with a passion because he feels it misrepresents sharks. Benchley is said to have regretted the success of his novel and its adaptation and later in his life became somewhat of a shark crusader. This point of view comes across in the protagonist of Creature. Simon Chase, who throughout the movie goes to great lengths to protect a pregnant Great White shark that has been mistakenly believed to be preying on the islanders.
Ultimately, “Creature” is surprisingly good for a TV movie, most of which are notoriously bad. It features a unique monster and some unsettling and genuinely scary moments. The movie has a somewhat Resident Evil kind of feel to it. I’m not talking about the movie but the game series, which has a rich cinematic heritage but manages to create a feel of its own that often features eerie decaying laboratories, engineered human monstrosities, and convoluted stories of corporate experimentation. Creature has a lot of those elements going for it, so if you are a fan of the Resident Evil games, you may really like Creature. The Creature itself looks like something that you would see in a Resident Evil game (Incidentally, the original Resident Evil game came out in 1998 as well and both Creature and Resident Evil seem to bear a passing thematic resemblance to The X-Files, which was still very hot at the time.)
THE MONTER/EFFECTS
While the effects in Creature leave something to be desired the monster itself is pretty cool. It is very shark like at first but it is also mammalian and has the ability to breathe air and walk around which is cool and unexpected (although I couldn’t help think of the “Land Shark” sketches that they had on Saturday Night Live in the '70's, ). When we finally get a good look at the monster we see that he is a perhaps 8 foot tall hunchbacked creature with a head that combines features of a man and a shark with long arms that end in vicious claws. Good stuff.
HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
Recently released on DVD and available on Netflix.
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE
While exploring a spooky, long abandoned and partially submerged navy research station, our heroes encounter the creature that chases them through the water and plops down on dry land where he undergoes a painful transformation to an air breather.
SEQUELS
None. Although, the idea is introduced that the creature can breed with a female great white…
SEE ALSO
Jaws 1975 Deep Blue Sea 1997
Patrick Garone
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