By Richard Winters
My Rating: 2 out of 10
4-Word Review: Creatures unleashed from mine.
It’s decided that a Colorado mine, that has been closed for 100 years, should be reopened and Brian (John Crawford) and Dan (Med Flory) are the two men heading the company that has been paid to excavate it. Unbeknownst to them there are large, scaly creatures hidden inside the mine that have been dormant for a century, but with the recent activity, have been awakened and begin to terrorize the people renting out a house nearby.
The film starts out with some potential. I enjoyed the turn-of-the-century photos seen over the opening credits depicting miners and settlers from when Colorado was just becoming a state. The amusing dialogue features some quick-witted responses and interplay. Too many horror films, particularly from the 70’s and 80’s would have stilted conversations, so at least here it’s snappy. It’s also great that it was filmed on location where they get the sights and sounds of living in a cold climate just right particularly the noise that is made when someone walks over freshly packed snow. The nudity by Rebecca Balding, brought on by the suggesting of director James L. Conway, whom she later married, as a way to ‘spice things up’, isn’t bad either.
Unfortunately, on a horror scale it’s pretty limp. The biggest issue is how long it takes for the scares to get going. It’s not until the 52-minute mark where we get a glimpse of the creature and even then, it’s only a tentacle. It then takes another 15-minutes before we see its face and body. I’m okay for some horror films to take their time to build up the tension as long as the payoff is good, but here that’s just not the case. There are too many gimmicks like the people, and the viewer, thinking there’s something frightening lurking only for it to turn out to be the pet dog. It’s okay if this is done once, but here it goes to the well too often until it seems like the dog is the star and maybe he should’ve been.
Exactly what these creatures are, and how they got there, needs better explaining. Why do they only inhabit this one little mine and how can they last so long without food? I know bears can hibernate during the winter, but that’s only for a few months, but we’re expected to believe that these things can do it for over a century? If they are hungry for flesh as the movie’s tagline suggests, then why don’t they eat the people when they do catch them instead of just clawing them up a bit? Watching one scarf down an adult human or two could’ve been cool and might’ve made the long wait seem worth it.
It’s unimpressive that only one creature was made for the production and that’s all you end up seeing if only fleetingly. They resemble a gargoyle from a gothic mansion and in fact gargoyles would actually be scarier. We also never get a full perspective of its body as only its head and front side is shown.
What shocked me the most though was how they only attack this one home. I was fully anticipating that the whole town would be under siege. Part of what made Tremors, which has a similar storyline, so good is that it took a whole community to bring the creatures down. Having more variety of onscreen personalities as well as weaponry and traps would’ve given the plot the imagination that it needed and deserved. Would’ve worked better as a horror film/disaster flick with some scientific ‘expert’ on hand to explain the origins of the species and an elaborate way to defeat them.
My Rating: 2 out of 10
Released: September 25, 1981
Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
Rated R
Director: James L. Conway
Studio: Taft International Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
