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YMMV / Leviathan (1989)

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  • Awesome Music:
  • Catharsis Factor: Seeing Beck lay Martin out after she spent the entire film being a Manipulative Bitch and basically causing nearly all of the deaths seen is arguably pretty satisfying.
  • Critical Backlash: The film's 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes has caused some viewers to feel such a low score is a little harsh. The score is widely thought to have been influenced by They Copied It, So It Sucks!.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Sixpack.
  • Fridge Logic: The Russians experimented with creating Fish Men through genetic alteration, do they test this in a secure landlocked facility in case everything goes horribly wrong? No, they do it on a ship then proceed to sink said ship, which somehow works at eliminating said aquatic creatures.
    • This is answered in the film, with how the creature devours the mining base's blood supply. The doctor character indirectly theorizes the process was imperfect and that the Leviathan mutations either needed 1) Human blood to survive, or 2) If just blood in and of itself, then more blood than the animals at the bottom of the ocean could provide. In essence, it got stuck in the ship when it sank, and while it could survive underwater at that depth, it ran out of food and starved to death.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Doc. Being specific, he's a Dr. Jerk that nearly gets someone killed in the opening scene and it's heavily implied that he's in the mission to begin with because the position, like a modern Frontier Doctor role, is only taken by people crazy or desperate enough to accept it, as well as he dooms the entire crew to die by ejecting the escape pods prematurely without even bothering to warn them, but at least the latter part is justified by the creature being that much of a threat and in other circumstances (like it being done by the hero) it would have been painted as a wholly unambiguous Heroic Sacrifice (which Doc actually believes it to be, according to the attached warning letter).
    • In essence, Doc's decision is an Expy of the decision Blair makes in "The Thing," to destroy the radio and helicopter to trap the creature, and the potentially infected outpost members, at the outpost.
  • Narm Charm: The infamous Pre-Mortem One-Liner and the way Peter Weller says it is jarring to say the least, but weird as the delivery comes across, it is a terrific 80's-movie one liner.
    "SAY 'AHH', MOTHERFUCKER!!"
  • Nausea Fuel: The initial transformations on Sixpack as he starts to succumb to the infection.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The film got trashed for borrowing ideas from The Thing (1982) and Alien, not to mention opening around the same time as The Abyss.
  • Vindicated by History: Downplayed. As noted above, the film wasn't well received for its similarities to the above mentioned films, but as the years have gone by, a small crop of fans have come to find it as at least a respectable B-movie.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome:
    • The film was not shot underwater, employing the "dry for wet" technique - where smoke, lighting tricks, and blue filters are used to simulate an underwater look. The effect is very convincing, pulled off by Oscar-winning visual effects artist Stan Winston.
    • The creature itself is a practically rendered thing of gooey glory.


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