40 Years Later, The Most Ambitious ‘Alien’ Knockoff Is Still Quietly Chilling

Perhaps the ideal fate for an obscure ‘80s genre film is to be rereleased as an upgraded 4K Blu-ray from a boutique label; a film’s troubled production and imperfect craft are ushered into an alternative canon of reclaimed genre cinema, and something resembling closure is afforded to a single thwarted vision. Thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, a curator of dubious cinematic wares, the blatant but earnest Alien rip-off Creature can now be enjoyed as a compromised attempt at sci-fi horror brimming with compelling choices that may replicate Ridley Scott’s formula, but that were made with an impressive intentionality. Creature knows why Alien works, which distinguishes it from the dismal crop of sci-fi slashers that followed in Alien’s wake.

The filmography of director William Malone may not feature any secret masterpieces, although anyone who directs an episode of Tales From the Crypt has their place in the C-tier of horror history canon. Beyond helming the internet-age slasher FearDotCom and sculpting the Michael Myers mask for the original Halloween, Creature is Malone’s strongest contribution to genre cinema.

In Creature (or The Titan Find, if you watch Malone’s director’s cut), space exploration is carried out by rival corporations, the American NTI and West Germany’s Richter Dynamics. Two clueless researchers fail to keep their guard up in an ancient alien lab on Titan, Saturn’s moon, and they’re mauled by a monster who vampirically preys on anyone stupid enough to cross its path. Plenty of explorers do, as the crew of the NTI’s Shenandoah discovers a distressed Richter Dynamics ship and succumbs to the “space vampire” that claimed their European competitors.

Creature may lean on the tropes of Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires more than Ridley Scott did, but every time our crew gathers in their ship’s whitewashed industrial rooms or ventures through the wispy, blue-tinted fog of Titan’s rocky surface, the film feels eerily like Alien has been fed into a B-movie translator. It drips pulp, but with streaks of striking detail and mood. The Shenandoah’s crew, like the Nostromo’s, struggles to formulate a clear plan, and is forced to abort an inter-spaceship expedition when they encounter the creature, who can puppet his undead victims. Both films build tension with extended build-ups: the borders between safety and danger can’t be marked, but they’re felt, and every crossed threshold releases a spell of dread.

By casting the notorious and noxious German actor Klaus Kinski as a lone Richter survivor, Creature automatically becomes a knockoff of note; when Kinski wasn’t slowing down production, he found time to give Creature’s midsection a sense of dramatic urgency. Like Alien, Creature understands the importance of putting great actors in a chilling slow-burn, even if none of Malone’s ensemble can match Kinski’s energy, while Alien was blessed with a cast of generational talents feeding into each other’s stern, agitated energy.

But like Scott, Malone doesn’t lean on actors to sell his vision. Creature is a tactile, physical film, hastily assembled on a makeshift soundstage near Burbank Airport with borrowed set dressing and a lot of hard-working craftspeople at a similarly early career stage. It feels like it was made by talented people hyper-aware of how the limits of the B-movie economy tempered their ambition.

By the time the gooey, insect-like monster finally rears its head, Creature has ticked the boxes of a cheap Alien clone, but those requirements feel like more of an industry imposition than a driving force for the filmmakers. Malone and his team may have been constrained in what they could realize on-screen, but their love of horror literature and classic sci-fi is evident, and unease and otherworldliness oozes out of Creature despite the visual imperfections and hokey line readings.

A year after Creature was released, James Cameron’s Aliens hit theaters, and its macho, wisecracking marine characters became the new standard for low-budget sci-fi copycats, as broad action replaced invasive, moody horror. Malone would try to work with central Alien designer H.R. Giger on a new film, but as their lofty vision of sci-fi horror went unproduced, Creature is the only testament to the fact that Malone didn’t just want to make a big of a hit as Alien; he wanted it to be as impressive and effective too.