Taking the plunge into Leviathan (1989)

I'm a fan of legendary production designer / conceptual artist Ron Cobb (1937 – 2020), who contributed to the iconic look and feel of movies such as Star Wars, Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, and Total Recall. One of his lesser known movies is Leviathan, which I finally got around to watching last night.

In brief: This movie is a real treasure, and I don't know why it has been so completely forgotten. Peter Weller of Robocop fame has the lead role as a geologist wrangling a motley crew of deep sea miners. When they stumble across the sunken wreck of a Russian ship that vanished in mysterious circumstances, they unwittingly bring a mutated and abhorrent life form back into their mining rig.

Some stray observations and minor spoilers ahead:

• Really, I watched this movie because of Ron Cobb's involvement, but was surprised to find out that special effects supremo Stan Winston was involved in creating the various creatures as well. This movie had more special effects talent than it knew what to do with.
• The poster and promotional material make it sound a lot like The Abyss (1988). The actual plot is much more like Alien (1979), with a little of The Thing (1984) sprinkled in.
• Ernie Hudson is immensely likeable as a workaday grunt. He really bulked up for this role, and I'm surprised that he never broke into the action movie A-list like Wesley Snipes or Danny Glover.
• Amanda Pays steals the show as a competent and capable cadette on her way to astronaut school. It's astonishing that her career never came to anything after this. This girl could act.
• It's odd to watch a movie as goofy as this where the adults still act like adults. They resolve conflicts at work by reading the rules and regulations to each other, kind of like how real adults resolve conflicts at work. In the superhero dominated world of today, they would be punching each other.
• Most movies these days feel about 30 minutes too long for the material they have. This one feels 30 minutes too short. They build an interesting world with compelling characters in a long first act, and then rush the rest. A lot about the creature they are fighting is left frustratingly vague.
• Meg Foster is on wonderful form as a coldhearted corporate executive. She's Reaganomics distilled into one woman. I remember her playing a similar role in They Live (1987). What a thing to be typecast as.

Overall, a solid 7/10 for me, and well worth a tight 98 minutes of your time.