I am a fan of monster movies, creature movies, and alien movies too. Call them what you will, I will lap them up. When I came across Creature (1985) on Amazon Prime I was aware that I might have watched this movie many years ago, but I couldn't remember much about the movie. Time for another viewing followed by a review. Unfortunately there was a good reason why I didn't recall the movie, it simply isn't an interesting or entertaining movie.
The films begins with two astronauts from a multinational Amrrican company NTI on a geological discovery mission. They are exploring Titan, the largest moon orbiting Saturn. After some searching they discover an alien laboratory with a creature trapped in some sort of container. The alien manages to break out and kills the two astronauts. Two months later a new discovery ship is sent to Titan by NTI Whilst in orbit around Titan they pick up a distress signal from another space craft on the surface of Titan. This craft is from Richter Dynamics, a rival West German company. They then attempt to land on the surface but the ship falls into a large cave like structure. As you can probably guess they encounter the creature and the rest of the movie involves their attempt to survive and escape from the creature.
Within a very short space of time it was apparent to me that this was a movie "inspired " by the 1979 classic Alien. At times the sound track seemed little more than a note different to that of Alien. There were also nods to the classic The Thing with one character mentioning the trap that was devised in The Thing to kill the monster. Low and behold they employ the same trap. I won't tell you if it works. Some people might say it was simply copying other movies, some might see it as a sort of respectful nod to them. I will leave it up to you to make up your mind.
From a more technical stand point the movie is simply not good. The acting is, generally speaking, awful. The ironic thing is that Klaus Kinski is in the movie in a relatively minor role, but in his short time on screen he shows more charisma and ability then the entire cast. I can only presume that Klaus was being akward, he was apparently a difficult actor to work with, so they wrote him out quickly. Just a theory. The dialogue is stilted and awkward, even for an 80s movie! The set design is good, at least the parts I could see, the movie is dark in places. Some might think given it's low budget perhaps they are hiding the set design and creature as much as possible . Certainly in Alien Ridley Scott appeared to take a less is more approach to the creature reveal. Creature takes a similiar approach until about the halfway point, then the creature is revealed for all to see, and unfortunately the creature suit is a very unconvincing movie monster.
Unfortunately this movie just doesn't meet the grade, even considering it was apparently made on a low budget , allthough that said the people involved in the special effects went on to work on Aliens. Don't quote me on that, I took it from IMDB. That said Aliens had a monster budget, I am sure, compared to this movie so there was more potential to create convincing special effects. Creature is also simply too long, the movie just drags and lurches on, and on.
4 out of 10
Summary: unless you are the type of person that likes literally every alien movie I would avoid, there are better movies out there.