Peter Benchley's Creature Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Peter Benchley's Creature Blu-ray Movie Review

Pizza delivery.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 21, 2015

One of the sillier recurring skits on the early years of Saturday Night Live featured Chevy Chase voicing the character of the “land shark,” a walking, talking (in a monotone, no less) “beast of the deep” who, in the wake (sorry) of Jaws, tried to lure unsuspecting urbanites out of their domiciles to their supposed demise. The land shark would appear at various ostensible victims' doors, pretending to be an insanely ridiculous parade of different occupations with some reason to be there. Though it no doubt is unintended, Peter Benchley’s Creature may in fact remind some of a certain age of this now iconic comedy creation, for this overly padded if occasionally creepy miniseries posits the nefarious activities of, yep, you guessed it, a “land shark” of sorts, albeit one which has been genetically modified and which in fact may have a bit of homo sapiens lurking beneath its surly teeth. Jaws informs more than mere comedic referents in Peter Benchley’s Creature, as evidenced by the somewhat unwieldy title of this enterprise itself. Mr. Benchley had become such a cause célèbre after the publication of Jaws and its subsequent adaptation into the iconic Steven Spielberg film that he got “above the title” billing in this reworking of his then fairly recent novel White Shark. A lot of Peter Benchley’s Creature does in fact play like a low rent version of Jaws, with terror lurking, if not beneath the coastal waters of a New England village, underneath a top secret military base where nefarious experiments from decades past have resulted in a killing spree that has turned humans into chum.

Peter Benchley’s Creature originally aired over two nights in May 1998 and there is absolutely no question that Rockne S. O’Bannon’s teleplay has a rather undue amount of padding stuffed into it to fill the requisite air time. That includes an almost comically long setup opening sequence, which in turn comes after a comically brief narration from shark scientist Simon Chase (Craig T. Nelson), who alerts viewers to the fact that something is killing in vast quantities, and that Chase knows what it is, and that in fact it has struck before, some decades previous to the current timeframe. That in turns sends the miniseries into an “origin” story of sorts where a misguided military experiment results in chaos when a shark-human hybrid gets loose. (I frankly have never read White Shark, but online sources suggest that the teleplay alters several salient elements about how the Creature came to be.)

If the dialectic in Jaws was between at least one guy who knew there was a marauding shark wreaking havoc out in the water and a bevy of others who either didn’t want to believe there’s a shark or at least didn’t want to admit there is one, Peter Benchley’s Creature slightly tweaks that formula, with this miniseries’ “death match” between those who think the killing is being done by a shark, and Dr. Chase, who is initially at least the only one who seems to “get” the fact that the deaths are not the handiwork of a great white or some other species. This particular angle seems to be supposedly ironic, given Jaws' main conflict, but it actually comes off as overly contrived.

While that particular plot machination is at least ostensibly “different” from Jaws, other parts of this miniseries outright ape the sharkbait elements of Spielberg’s film. One sequence has a bunch of clueless teens frolicking in the water with no idea that the Creature lurks just underneath. Guess what happens?

There are some really odd elements at play in the miniseries as well, including a kind of almost proto-Voodoo subplot that seems like it’s been ported in from some nearby Val Lewton show that must have been filming simultaneously. There’s some needless family dysfunction between Chase and his son Max (Matthew Carey), as well as a putative romance angle for Max and a local girl. Chase has his own romantic entanglements with Dr. Macy (Kim Cattrall), his former main squeeze who’s back in circulation (so to speak) and who (of course) becomes one of Chase’s first acolytes in trying to track down and dispose of the Creature.

If dramatically and even from a suspense angle Peter Benchley’s Creature is decidedly hit or miss (with a probable skewing toward the “miss” side), Stan Winston’s creature effects are really remarkable and help to up the anxiety level immensely. As should probably be expected, the miniseries tends to save the most shocking reveals of the creature until the cliffhanging finale of the first episode, and then the final showdown sequence of the second episode. But the creature itself is a really bizarre, slimy and frightening looking thing (albeit in the general Alien or Predator wheelhouse), and easily becomes the most memorable element in what is otherwise a pretty turgid trek through monster movie clichés, including (not so coincidentally) a lot of clichés fostered by Jaws itself.

Peter Benchley's Creature Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Peter Benchley's Creature is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 (as with a lot of things shot for television but released theatrically overseas, the miniseries was shot with "safety" aspect ratios so that either 1.33:1—or thereabouts—or 1.78:1—or thereabouts—would not present any framing issues). Some recurrent compression issues tend to create minimal problems with grain resolution, including a few moments where grain can become almost pixellated at times (peruse some of the darker screenshots accompanying this review for some examples). Other than that slightly distracting anomaly, this is a nicely sharp and well detailed looking transfer, at least in the many brightly lit outdoor scenes. In those moments, colors pop quite convincingly, and detail and fine detail can be very commendable. The many darker scenes, including the bulk of the second half of the second episode, are slightly more problematic, with minimal shadow detail and those aforementioned grain resolution issues. As evidenced by some mentions in the credits, there's a perhaps higher than average use of stock footage running throughout both nights, including things like establishing shots of islands and one suspects even of Dr. Macy's adorable little sea lion, and quite a bit of that footage is noticeably grainier and softer looking than the bulk of the feature. All in all, though, fans of this miniseries should be well pleased with this typically "hands off" offering from Olive, one which shows no signs of restorative efforts but which likewise shows no signs of intrusive digital alteration of the image harvest.

Peter Benchley's Creature Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Peter Benchley's Creature features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which capably supports the miniseries' dialogue, at times goofy sound effects and the effective score by John Von Tongeren. There's some great use of the surround channels with some of the evocative ambient environmental sounds, including in the underground lair where Chase and his cohorts keep running into the Creature. Dialogue is cleanly presented and there are no problems of any kind to cause concern.

Peter Benchley's Creature Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements on this Blu-ray disc. This does feature submenus for each of the original broadcast nights, with chapters accessible within each night's episode.

Peter Benchley's Creature Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Peter Benchley's Creature has some undeniable moments of angst, but it also has moments of unintended hilarity (my favorite is when Max first lays eyes on the beast in dimly lit tunnel underground), and, well—just lots and lots of moments. This is one miniseries that probably should have just been a good old movie of the week, with a 90 minute or so running time. Too much time is spent on too many tangential sidebars, and even germane incidents like the Creature's origin, are drawn out to epic proportions when they really could have been handled in a much more viscerally condensed fashion. Performances are okay if predictably hyperbolic, but Stan Winston's effects work is quite enjoyable. There are a few niggling issues with the video presentation on this release, but fans of the miniseries considering a purchase should be generally well pleased.