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Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Michael Ironside, spaceships, aliens, cyborgs, incredible acting, makes no sense at all...what more could you want?

Leviathan is one of my favorite bad movies. You know how one studio develops a movie around a subject and another makes a remarkably similar movie to cash in.. well 1989 was the year of the underwater sci-fi/action/monster movie, when I believe 4 such movies were released and two the following year. What sets Leviathan apart is it's wholesale ripping off of Alien and The Thing to create it's plot and monster. The plot revolves around a deep sea mining crew who stumble across a derelict ship with holes ripped in it and when investigated they bring something back something that first infects and then hunts the trapped crew. The crew mirrors Alien right down to the engineers, one white and one black, who complain about completion bonuses. They also have two females, one of whom strips to white undies in a small shower stall, and a tough male leader but interestingly no android or Jonesy! The base interior is also Alien on a budget: dank pipe laden corridors, crisp lit futuristic medical bay, white panneled communal living areas. Interestingly one crew member tries an escape hatch escape that mirrors the attempt to blow the alien out of a hatch in the novelization of Alien. To spice things up they replace the Xenomorph with a 'The Thing' like monster, complete with body melding scenes and distorted body parts. They fear the monster is inside them even though they mostly trust each other, also they discover that human dead does not equal creature dead. Hudson, Crenna & Weller predictably provide good performances and keep the plot going and well enough to make an enjoyable action/horror story. The effects are pretty decent and the monster effects work despite being pretty static when Alien and The Thing were anything but. Watched in the light of two of the finest monster movies ever made the theft of ideas is staggering and fun to spot the pilfered elements so shamelessly used.