The Relic (1997)
The Relic (1997), photographed and directed by Peter Hyams.
I love a good creature feature. "Good" is relative of course; this is not exactly a high art form, but entertainment comes in surprising packages.
We always struggle against well-worn cliches, looking for a hook, something to elevate the fun thrills. Here we have great use of the Chicago skyline and location shooting both inside and out of the Field Museum.
The likable, intelligent leads also give great support:
Tom Sizemore is the police detective managing a spate of mysterious beheadings (who's collecting hypothalamus glands?) both on a cargo ship and then at the museum. Working on hunches, plagued by minor superstitions. He has what I think of as a "1940s face" that served so well in Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Penelope Ann Miller is the evolutionary biologist whose grant-writing is interrupted by a giant chimeric menace. I never noticed before: she has a cheek scar. Last seen in Year of the Comet (1992).
Linda Hunt is a witty museum administrator desperate that no dismemberment or excessive splatter interfere with the gala fundraiser. 4'9" and doing memorable work in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and Silverado (1985).
James Whitmore is the kindly, imaginative mentor in a wheelchair. He was 76 and had 10 more years in the movies.
We get the setup early on but there is a slow middle where the characters have to discover the awful truth. And: it is a big facility. Those at the gala don't know what is happening in the tunnels. When the action starts there is a lot of it.
Another plus: even the minor characters are quirky, giving a steady comedy gloss to the horror.
Notes:
The opening is like a scene from Altered States (1980) where the natives decide to give visiting scientists the business by feeding them magic fungi.
The abandoned cargo ship (dead bodies in the hold) is like the Demeter in Dracula.
The close-up creature effects are by Stan Winston. Distant shots with motion are CG.
Many dark scenes. The director is his own cinematographer and says he likes it that way. Why give characters flashlights if the audience can see the scene without them?
The story was written for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which the director knew from childhood. They proved difficult to deal with so it was relocated to the Field Museum in Chicago.
Do we get a glimpse of the Tsavo Man-Eaters exhibit as featured in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)?
Constance Towers plays a philanthropist. Last seen in The Horse Soldiers (1959) and The Naked Kiss (1964).
I can take a lot of cliche elements (like waiting for the obnoxious characters to be dismembered) but the clean-scrubbed schoolboys hiding in the museum overnight: if only they didn't talk like screenwriters straining to imitate youth.
Available on Blu-ray. The many dark scenes cannot look top-notch on that media.
The director provides a relaxed commentary. He cites William Goldman: "We screenwriters have all read Shakespeare so we know we are all second-rate". Similarly, Hyams: "I've seen Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and I know I will never achieve a film like that".
