Leviathan (1989)

"Underwater deep-sea miners encounter a Soviet wreck and bring back a dangerous cargo to their base on the ocean floor with horrifying results..."

Yes, "Leviathan" is just a clone of "The Thing" mixed with a healthy dollop of "Alien" and set underwater but it's not a bad film if you like that kind of thing.

With a cast full of lots of big names from the '80s including Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Amanda Pays, Ernie Hudson and Meg Foster, "Leviathan" can't really go wrong (and doesn't) except for being a knockoff of other films.

This is a great product of the late '80s with its original music by Jerry Goldsmith and creature effects created by Stan Winston (and his whole team!), but, even though I had it on VHS for years, I never made it through to the end for some reason. If I did, I simply can't remember.

Having recently purchased a DVD version, I endured once again the disappointment of never seeing Amanda Pays get naked and wondering how she ended up married to Corbin Bernsen. Ah well, they must be good together since they've been married since a year before she even made this film.

Except for Amanda Pays, everybody seemed to phone-in their performances but it didn't really matter for a film of this kind. I did enjoy seeing Peter Weller minus his "Robocop" gear and actually trying to act although he was clearly upstaged by Richard Crenna who had far too little screen time in comparison.

The effects were still pretty good but not as memorable as Stan Winston's other work, the characters were clichéd but likeable, and the story itself wasn't a bad way to pass 98 minutes of my time, however, I'm still only going to rate this as just average.