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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: August 19th, 2014.
Director: George P. Cosmatos
Cast: Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Ernie Hudson, Amanda Pays
Year: 1989
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The Movie:
Directed by George P. Cosmatos and released in 1989, Leviathan takes place at the bottom of the sea where a mining operation set up by The Tri-Oceanic Mining Corporation's is taking place. Lead by a geologist named Steven Beck (Peter Weller), the crew is eighty-seven days in to their ninety day tour of duty and they're still a ways away from hitting the quote they need in order to receive their full payout. Steward Cobb (Hector Elizondo) and worker Justin Jones (Ernie Hudson) are losing faith in his leadership skills and getting pretty vocal about it. As such, tensions are running high and they only get higher when the ship's doctor, Glen Thompson (Richard Crenna), has to rush in to save Dejesus (Michael Carmine) when he has a suit malfunction. Female miner Bridget Bowman (Lisa Eilbacher) is stressing out about getting paid while Sixpack (Daniel Stern) won't relent with his terrible practical jokes that are quickly getting on everyone's nerves, especially Elizabeth Williams (Amanda Pays). Everyone on the crew is running out of patience.
While working one day, Sixpack messes up and falls into a crevice where the team discover the wreck of a ship called Leviathan. They explore and find a safe that they figure will contain some valuables but nope, it's just leftovers from the ship's crew, all of whom seem to be dead. The weird thing is that when they look up the ship, a Russian vessel, on their computers there is no report of it going down. At any rate, at least Beck finds a flask full of booze on the wreck. He takes it back and he and Bowman slug it back but the next day Sixpack gets sick and it isn't just a hangover. The rest of the crew go out to work but when they come back, Sixpack is dead and Thompson starts to investigate. It turns out that some sort of mutant was on board that ship and that the reason it went down was because it was hit with a torpedo by Russian armed forces. It would seem that they didn't want whatever was onboard to get out and spread - but now it might be too late for that, especially when Sixpack's corpse starts to mutate…
The film benefits from a solid cast, top billed by Peter Weller. Now Weller has a tendency to play the same kind of character in many of his films. He does disinterested and monotone better than pretty much everyone out there and that's the style he goes for in this film as well. Some might not like that, but if you appreciate Weller's style, this ought to work for you. Lisa Eilbacher and Amanda Pays are good here too, and Pays in particular adds a fair bit of sex appeal to the movie. The rest of the cast provide more enthusiasm, with Hudson and Crenna standing out and Daniel Stern providing some comic relief, at least until he mutates.
Featuring some excellent monster effects by Stan Winston and his team and an impressive score from composer Jerry Goldsmith, Leviathan is a solid monster movie that does a fine job of exploiting its undersea locations in some effectively claustrophobic ways. It's also paced quite well, building nicely in the first hour before really throwing it all at us in the last half hour. Much like John Carpenter's take on The Thing, where the characters are basically trapped, the crew of the mining operation is likewise stuck on the ocean floor when it all hits the fan. Though the movie borrows elements from The Thing and from Alien and a few other popular, similar films, it still manages to entertain thanks to some good suspense scenes, good production values, solid set design and nice camerawork.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Shout! Factory presents Leviathan in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed in its original aspect ratio of 2.35.1 widescreen. The underwater scenes in the movie weren't actually shot underwater, they were shot on a studio stage and then, in post-production, slowed down and hit with a filter to create the illusion of being underwater. Because of this, detail in those scenes is not on par with the rest of the movie because the filtering means that it really just isn't there to see. So keep that in mind during those scenes, the movie has always looked like this. As to the rest of the movie? It actually looks very good here. Granted, most of the movie takes place inside an industrial complex so this isn't the most colorful film you're ever going to see but the detail is there and the colors that do appear throughout the movie on top of the greys and whites that make up the interiors are reproduced accurately and faithfully. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and there is no evidence of noise reduction so humans look like humans and not wax dolls. No issues here, really, this is a solid transfer of some quirky source material.
Audio options are provided in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with optional closed captioning provided in English only. While the 5.1 track does a nice job of spreading things out in the mix, mostly the score and effects bits, there are a few spots where the dialogue does get a little bit buried when the subwoofer springs to life. The 2.0 mix doesn't have this problem, but obviously lacks the directionality of the remix. Overall though the movie sounds quite good here, no hiss or distortion on either track to note and decent depth, range and clarity throughout.
The main extras on this disc come in the form of three featurettes, the first of which is the forty-minute Leviathan: Monster Melting Pot, which is a thorough and fascinating look back at the making of the movie by way of a series of interviews with the effects team that worked under Stan Winston on the shoot. There are some great war stories here about what went right and what went wrong and this is an interesting 'warts and all' look at making of the movie from that perspective. The second featurette is a thirteen minute piece called Dissecting Cobb With Hector Elizondo and as you could guess, it's an interview with the actor about his work on the film. He talks about his character and his experiences on set during the shoot. This is complimented by a fifteen minute piece called Surviving Leviathan With Ernie Hudson and again, it's an interview with the actor that talks about his work on the film, what it was like working with the other cast members and a fair bit more.
Outside of that we get a trailer for the feature, animated menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
Shout! Factory has done a fine job bringing Leviathan to Blu-ray in very nice shape and with some solid extras too. As to the movie itself? Granted, it's not the most original creature feature to ever hit the silver screen but it is an entertaining and suspenseful picture that remains a whole lot of good, gooey, gory monster movie fun.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
