In the near-ish future, two companies - one American, one (West) German - compete to gather resources across the solar system. So when a mission to Titan (one of Saturn's moons) discovers evidence of an advanced alien civilisation, there's immediately an urgent competition to seize what seems an astonishing resource. Though perhaps both companies should be paying more attention to the fact that none of the original discoverers survived to make it back to Earth.
Because of course not all of these ancient aliens are dead, and the survivor is more than dangerous enough to slaughter any humans foolish enough to disturb it. But I imagine you worked that out already, right?
With its 'spaceworkers stumble across a dangerous extra-terrestrial' premise, Creature (AKA Titan Find) obviously owes a considerable debt to the Alien franchise. But I suspect that John Carpenter's The Thing was also a significant source of inspiration: and not just because this film very consciously and explicitly references the 1951 film based on the same short story as Carpenter's horror masterpiece. Our alien nemesis here can infect and control humans, turning them into its agents, which allows it to use the same kind of infiltration and deception tactics as Carpenter's 'Thing'. Of course, it probably also didn't hurt that 'it operates through human agents' allows this film to get away with a pretty minimal amount of actual on-screen alien action.
So with all that said, is the film any good?
Well, it's no Alien or The Thing. The effects are bit rubbery and the plot isn't terribly novel, and there's some rather problematic, aggressive sexual content from Klaus Kinski's character.
On the other hand, it is not without its 1980s charms, and the cast all know what they are doing. Best of all, once we are past the rather disjointed opening sequences, the script doesn't ask the characters to behave in any too obviously foolish ways.
If you're in the mood for some space-based horror and you've not seen it before, you might enjoy spending 95 minutes with this Creature.
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