Ever notice how every year Hollywood greenlights multiple films about basically the same thing, especially disasters? If you thought it was strange when Dante's Peak and Volcano came out within months of one another in 1997, if you thought it was odd Armageddon and Deep Impact pulled the same stunt in 1998, then 1989 would have blown your mind with not two, not three, but six green-lit underwater-themed tales of nature gone awry.

January saw the release of DeepStar Six, a deep ocean thriller helmed by Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. August treated the world to James Cameron's special effects extravaganza The Abyss. Between these two, in March, Leviathan surfaced to near-universal condemnation. Critics, already primed with annoyance at the concept after DeepStar Six failed to ignite their interest (it holds a 0% rating at Rotten Tomatoes) savaged the film upon its release, claiming it shamelessly ripped off aspects of John Carpenter's The Thing and Alien to tell its story. When The Abyss blew audiences away with its computer-generated morphing effects courtesy of a larger budget, Leviathan was quickly forgotten, relegated to video rental shelves and late-night cable television.

Also Laserdisc, which is how I watched it for the first time this evening. The critics are right: Leviathan is a complete rip-off of Alien and The Thing. Just because a film is clearly inspired by other films doesn't mean it's a crappy picture though. I went into Leviathan knowing nothing except the back-of-the-sleeve summary and that Ernie (Ghostbusters) Hudson, Richard (First Blood) Crenna, and Peter (Robocop) Weller all had starring roles. If seeing those three guys together in a film isn't enough to get you excited, I feel sorry for your misbegotten childhood.

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Leviathan opens on day 87 of a 90-day tour of duty for a group of underwater miners employed by the Tri-Oceanic Corporation. While out planting charges to open up new veins of silver, one of the underwater workers, Sixpack, stumbles off an underwater shelf and loses contact with the rest of the team. His dive buddy Willie (played by Amanda Pays) drops down in search of him and sees the remains of a wrecked ship. Unable to locate Sixpack and wondering if he went to investigate the ship, Willie enters through a hole in the hull. The rest of the team watches as her video camera sends back images, including the ship's name ("Leviathan", translated from the Russian by Richard Crenna's "Doc"), its sick bay, and the skeletonized remains of a former patient. Willie finds Sixpack, who has discovered a waterproof safe, and the two return to The Shack, their base of operations.

Busting open the safe reveals a variety of personal effects from the crew, each bundled in folders stamped 'Deceased', and a video recording of the captain's log. While the team goes over the Russian crew's belongings, photographs, small amounts of cash, and a bottle of top-shelf vodka, Sixpack spies a metal hip flask, which he conceals in his pocket when no one is watching.

Beck has Bow (played by Lisa Eilbacher) run a records check on the Leviathan to see if there is any information about what brought her down. Confused, Bow reports that according to the files on hand, the Leviathan is on active duty with a Russian fleet in the Baltic Sea. Beck shrugs it off as a mistake, the result of computer records not being updated, but changes his mind after he and Doc view the recovered video. The Soviet captain reports most of his crew have taken ill with an unknown disease that has swept the ship. During the recording, banging can be heard on the heavy metal door behind him. The recording ends abruptly, without answering any of Beck's questions. Upon re-watching the footage from Willie's suit camera, Doc determines the tear in the Leviathan's hull was no accident, but rather appeared to be the result of a torpedo. The skeleton Willie saw in the Leviathan's sick bay also has problems: it appears human, but closer inspection reveals a variety of abnormalities, including longer fingers and an enlarged cranium. Doc concludes the Leviathan was intentionally scuttled by the Russian navy, although nothing they've found points to a specific reason for doing so. Unfortunately for Beck and the rest of his crew, they're about to discover why you shouldn't go poking around in other people's rusted junk. A tetanus shot isn't good enough to save them the impending terror.

Now with a genetically-mutated creature running loose on board, the escape bubbles jettisoned to prevent the monster from getting off The Shack, and evacuation requests to Tri-Oceanic met with 48-hour delay due to a hurricane moving in over their position, Beck and his shrinking group have to survive until help arrives, kill the monster, or figure out a way to reach the surface.

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Leviathan may rip off other more famous examples of the sci-fi/horror genre, but it at least has the decency to do so with respect. It's a competently acted picture, replete with great creature effects and some truly revolting bits of body horror. The "underwater" visual effects have to be seen to be believed: since actually filming underwater was deemed both too dangerous and too expensive, the cinematographers used a style called "dry-for-wet" and faked it.

Dry-for-wet involves a combination of blue-green lighting effects and under-cranking the camera while recording the actors (and their stunt doubles) in their hundred-pound dive suits as they stomp around on dry land. This gives everything a heavier, slower pace to simulate underwater movement. With the added help of some boots that puffed air out with each step, and a bunch of chopped up feathers coated in vegetable oil and blown around on stage with fans to simulate particulate debris near the bottom of the ocean, the results were realistic enough to satisfy the real-life underwater divers they brought in as advisers.

There's a lot to like about Leviathan. It plays its cards close to the chest, and even after the crew figures out what's going on, you're still left with questions about the origin of the illness and exactly how it affects and infects the crew. Even Doc's best answer is still only a hypothesis. We never learn where it actually came from: is it something that always existed and the Soviet crew dredged up from the deep, or is it the result of some scientific experiment gone awry? I like that.

I also love the film's score, which was composed by Jerry Goldsmith and performed by the Italian Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra. The opening track includes recorded whale song, and this works surprisingly well, giving the first few minutes a feeling that is both eerie and natural at the same time. I'm going to have to track down a copy of this for sure.

At under two hours, the film also moves quickly and never slows down for very long. It keeps up this break-neck pace straight to the end, where the only complaint I have is the completely unnecessary death of one particular character. There's absolutely no reason for this person to get killed off, other than for the sake of shock value, but something about this just feels wrong. This person should have survived is what I'm getting at.

Otherwise, Leviathan is a competent and enjoyable horror thriller. It had the misfortune to be released amidst a slew of similar "underwater disaster"-style films, but the special effects hold up today, the creature is suitably menacing, and while there's no denying its similarity to John Carpenter's and Ridley Scott's seminal classics, it's got enough originality and strong performances by the cast to mark it as a forgotten classic, perfect for Friday night viewing.

You don't need to restrict yourself to the laserdisc version (although if you want to, it's certainly an inexpensive buy; the 2-sided, letter-box, CLV-format disc runs about $5). Leviathan also received a bare-bones DVD release in 1998, and Shout! Factory put it out on Blu-Ray under their Scream Factory horror label in 2014. You can probably track down a pan-and-scan VHS copy if you want to mimic the experience of going to the video store too, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

Four out of five jellyfish.