The Relic (1997)

There are two eras of monster movies that I love. One is the classic 1950's period of giant monster movies that includes movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Them!, Tarantula, and a ton of others. The other is the era of awesome creature features in the 80's and 90's, where you had well-designed monsters created in latex and animatronics. For me, the 1997 monster flick The Relic is a great example of the latter category. Having only seen the cover of the VHS, which doesn't say much about the movie (just a dark red image of someone screaming), when I was a kid, it wasn't until I was 14 when I read about the film in a book called The Horror Movie Survival Guide that I learned it was a monster movie. The description of the monster sounded pretty cool and I would later catch bits of the movie on Cinemax. Eventually, I got the movie on DVD and ever since, it has remained one of my favorite creature features of the 1990's.

In Brazil, anthropologist John Whitney is studying the customs of an ancient tribe when he drinks some soup that one of the natives put an odd plant in. After drinking it, Whitney feels strange and he then witnesses an odd sort of ritual which tells him what's in store for him. Shortly afterward, he tries to get the cargo he put aboard a merchant ship taken off of it but the captain refuses. Whitney sneaks aboard but when he doesn't find what he's looking for, he cries out in despair. Six weeks later, the merchant ship is found floating in the Illinois River and the entire crew is discovered horribly slaughtered in the bilge hatch. A week after that, a security guard at Chicago's Museum of Natural History is also hideously murdered. Police lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta discovers a bizarre connection with this murder and the ones on the ship: the hypothalamus part of the brain was removed from all the victims. D'Agosta doesn't want the museum to remain open for fear that the killer may be hiding somewhere in the large building but with an important gala opening for a new exhibit looming, he's forced to. That turns out to be a big mistake because the killer, a hideous creature that's been hiding in the museum's enormous basement, attacks and traps D'Agosta, members of his unit, and many scientists and civilians inside the building.

The director is Peter Hyams, who's had some hits and misses but is a pretty capable director all in all. At this point, I haven't seen 2010: The Year We Make Contact but I've heard a pretty good sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He's also directed Timecop, the Jean-Claude Van Damme film, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger horror/action flick End of Days. In this film, as he does quite often, Hyams acts as his own cinematographer and he does a very good job of keeping the lighting realistic. This is, literally, a very dark movie. There are many instances where it's almost completely pitch black save for a flashlight. Usually, this would be annoying but here, it's so skillfully done that it really works in keeping it realistic as well as creating tension and shrouding the monster in mystery. The movie also has a type of look to it that I like. Basically, it looks like an extremely gory episode of Law & Order. That may be a problem for some but it reminds me of the way movies and TV looked when I was growing up in the 90's so I really like it.

Tom Sizemore stars as Lt. D'Agosta and he does a great job. He's able to be a hard-ass but not come across as a douchebag. D'Agosta is very stern but doesn't come across as a jerk. He's tough, brave, and determined but he's also fair and smart. Even when a suspected killer is shot dead in the museum basement, he's the only one smart enough to know that that couldn't have been the guy committing all the murders. Even when he's forced to let the gala go on, he decides to only open up the main exhibition hall and to maintain police presence throughout. When the asshole head of security at the museum says how much, D'Agosta says, "As much as I goddamn deem necessary." He's also the kind of guy who doesn't take crap from anyone, not even the mayor, whom he tells to shut up when he's telling him what to do when they're trapped inside the museum. Despite all this, D'Agosta does have a soft side as well as a sense of humor. He tells his partner Hollingsworth that he did well in getting most of the trapped people out of the museum at the end of the film. Some of his funny lines come during the scene where the suspected killer is gunned down. D'Agosta asks, "This guy gets off from ripping out people's hypothalamuses? What's he doing, starting a hypothalamus collection?" There's a funny running joke about him being more than a little superstitious. He insists his partner not step over dead bodies because it's bad luck and when he sees the museum has a superstition exhibit, he says to himself, "That's terrific." This belief in superstition apparently stems from an incident that occurred when he was a rookie cop and a crook almost shot him but the bullet didn't fire. He's kept the bullet ever since, calling it good luck. Another funny thing comes from his ex-wife getting custody of his dog. At one point, after telling Hollingsworth something important over the phone, he says, "Let me ask you a question. How the fuck does somebody get custody of a dog?" Hilarious. I could go on and on but what I'm getting at is that Sizemore makes D'Agosta a bad-tempered but likable character nonetheless. It's a shame Sizemore ruined his career with his drug habit because when he's not stoned out of his head, he's really good.

Penelope Ann Miller plays Dr. Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist at the museum who ends up being the one that ultimately unmasks and destroys the Kothoga monster. To be honest, though, she's one of the few problems I have with this film. Ms. Miller's acting in this film isn't the best. She's not so bad that she's unwatchable but it never comes across as convincing to me. There are scenes where she reads information on her computer out loud and it makes me cringe because it doesn't look at all natural. Also, whenever she's reading off all the technical information about biology, it doesn't sound like she knows what she's talking about. Again, she didn't annoy me to the point where I wanted her to die but she isn't the best part of the cast. This is just me but the fact that she's listed first in the credits annoys me because Tom Sizemore is the real star of this movie. There's also this subplot where she's competing with this douchebag fellow scientist for a grant but in the grand scheme of things, it's completely pointless. Again, don't hate her, just wish a better actor had played the role.

The movie benefits from a great supporting cast. Linda Hunt plays Dr. Cuthbert, one of the heads of the museum. She doesn't have much of a role but I like that she's supportive of Margo and even though she wants the gala to go on because of its importance, when things go bad, she knows well enough to get out. I love the part where her jerky head of security is trying to tell her not to follow everyone who's going to leave the museum through the basement tunnels but she sees right through him and says, "Bullshit, Tom. You're fired." It was especially nice to see James Whitmore, star of, among other things, the 50's monster classic Them!, as museum curator Dr. Frock. Like D'Agosta, he's very superstitious and believes very much in the legends of the devil god Kothaga and the literal incarnation of it that attacks the museum seems to excite rather than frighten him because it proves a theory he's been working on. I must say, though, that the way he gets killed is another problem I have with the movie. He tells D'Agosta and Margo to leave him downstairs in the basement, even after D'Agosta offers to carry him, saying, "You've got more important things to worry about." Of course, he's later killed by the Kothoga, which I thought was a waste because he was a likable character. Clayton Rohner is really likable as Hollingsworth, D'Agosta's partner. He's kind of jittery but when push comes to shove, he steps up the plate and manages to get most of the trapped people out of the museum. D'Agosta is kind of annoyed by him at times (like when he keeps asking him what's wrong and D'Agosta says, "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?") but, like I said, he does congratulate him on a job well done at the end.

Like most modern horror films, there have to be a couple of jerky characters. One is Greg Lee (Chi Muoi Lo), the sneaky, slimy weasel who goes behind Margo's back and applies for the grant she needs even after he's gotten his. Like I said, while this subplot didn't mean much to me, Greg is enough of a jerk that it left an impression. He's such a suck-up to the owners of the foundation that the grant will come from that it's nauseating. At one point, that couple stays behind because they can't go down the basement tunnels and even though they're scared out of their wits, Greg stays behind, still trying to butter them up for the grant. You can tell they wish he would shut up. He's also the reason Margo and Dr. Frock get trapped in the lab area because he tells the head of security that there's no one else in there in order to keep Margo from the party. What a slimeball. The other jackass is Tom Parkinson (Thomas Ryan), the smug head of security at the museum. He doesn't respect D'Agosta at all and acts like a complete dick to him, forcing him to accept that the gunned down man is the murderer. When D'Agosta gets off the phone with the mayor who tells him to let the gala go on, Parkinson has such a smug look on his face that you just want to punch him. Fortunately, both him and Greg Lee meet their end at the hands of Kothoga, like all horror movie dickweeds should. These two may be assholes but they're not hateful enough or in the movie enough that they make it unwatchable.

The Kothoga monster is a very impressive creation. You find out that it's part of an ancient legend of the tribes of the Amazon, who would feed a type of fungus loaded with animal hormones to an animal and it would mutate into a monstrous creature, which they would sic on their enemies. The hormones of the fungus are also found in the human hypothalamus, which leads the Kothoga to read off its victims' heads and eat the brains. One other flaw that I have with this movie is the reveal at the end of the film that John Whitney, the man we saw at the beginning with the tribe, is the monster. Once you find out what that fungus does and remember that Whitney drank some soup with that fungus boiled into it, you know immediately that Whitney is the creature. They act like it's some big, shocking reveal at the end but it's really not. However, it's not a major concern of the film so it doesn't detract from it too much.

The design of the Kothoga is quite inspired. It has a large crocodile-like body with some hair here and there, with two big tusks on either side of its mouth that it uses to rip its victims' heads off. You find out that it's still changing and that makes sense when you remember back to the death of the security guard. You only got a glimpse of the monster's arm but it still looked somewhat like a human arm, unlike the crocodile legs of the creature when you finally get a look at it late in the film. It makes you wonder what the creature looked like when it was in-between having once been John Whitney and becoming the ultimate monster that you see. It's brought to life with a great mixture of animatronic suit-work and CGI (which is sadly becoming extinct in favor of using CGI completely). The dark lighting helps its authenticity, especially when it's CGI. The CGI may be early but because it's kept mainly in the shadows, it looks much more convincing than the brightly-lit, completely CGI crap that you see nowadays. The animatronics especially look awesome but it's Stan Winston's studios so, of course, it looks great. Sound-wise, it makes a lot of roaring, snarling, and screaming but it also wheezes a lot, which I find to be very creepy. One of my favorite scenes involving the Kothoga is a scene where a SWAT team breaks into the museum and it makes mincemeat out of them. One hanging SWAT guy begs his friends to pull him out but the Kothoga climbs up the walls after him and when they finally do pull him out, he's been bitten in half below the waste. My other favorite moment is near the end when the Kothoga corners Margo in the lab and instead of killing her, it licks her with this long, slimy, forked tongue. It's a wonderfully nasty moment. The kills by the monster are wonderfully gory as well. Heads are ripped off left and right, mangled bodies are found with the heads lying across from them, a dog is ripped to pieces in one scene, it's great! And yet, for all its gruesomeness, it doesn't fell as tacky as the torture porn crap but it doesn't wallow in it. It just gets to the point.

The action scenes in this movie are very well filmed and edited. There are two scenes that always get my adrenaline rushing one. One is when Hollingsworth is trying to warn everybody to get out of the museum but the body of one of the Kothoga's victims falls an air conditioning vent onto a display case, causing a panic. All hell breaks loose, with the people running in a panic, trampling each other and crushing each other against the walls as they try to escape. The hysteria causes the alarms in the building to go off and the security system blows out, sealing quite a few people in the building. All this time, it keeps cutting back and forth between what's happening in other parts of the building, showing D'Agosta rushing through the basement to find his way back upstairs, two security guards trying to get control of the system, and Margo and Dr. Frock becoming trapped in a dark hallway when the lights go out. It's an awesome scene. Equally impressive is the climax where Margo becomes trapped in the lab with the Kothoga, which basically destroys the lab in its attempt to kill her. My favorite section of this scene is when Margo rushes through the lab, closing all the doors behind her and you then see the Kothoga come barreling through the doorways like a freight train, smashing everything in its path. Margo manages to lure the creature into the upper levels of the lab and just barely escapes before setting an explosive fire that ultimately kills it. All this time, D'Agosta is trying to shoot his way through the door and is blown back by the explosion when it happens. That's entertainment, right there!

John Debney's music score suits the visuals perfectly. The opening and closing credits have a slow, eerie theme that fits the mood of the movie very well. There are plenty of other slow, eerie parts of the score but when those action scenes kick in, the music becomes wonderfully frantic and exciting, capturing the panic of the situation. Part of what made those action scenes so well in getting the adrenaline pumping is the music. In fact, this is one of those movies that wouldn't work nearly as well without it. So, bravo, John Depney!

To me, The Relic is a great 90's creature feature that deserves a lot more respect than it gets. You've a great cast, a well-designed monster, a moody setting, enough blood and guts to satisfy the gorehounds, plenty of darkness that keeps the film realistic and creepy, and a great music score. I like that the two leads never become romantically involved and their interactions feel very natural, unlike most of these types of movies. It's too bad that this movie didn't do too well when it was released. It made $33 million total and it cost $60 million. They shouldn't have released it in January. If they had released it in spring of that year, it probably would have done very well since Anaconda was released at that time and it did well. It's a shame. Another reason I think a lot of people don't like it is because it's based on a popular book and fans of the book probably didn't like how it's very different from it (or so I'm told, since I've never read the book). At least the movie does have a bit of a cult audience now and it deserves it. If you love monster movies, I'd highly advise checking this out. It's a head-ripping good time!