merklekranz Along the lines of "The Thing", with a touch of "Alien", "The Intruder Within" is no more than a mediocre creature feature. The boredom of an isolated oil drilling rig crew is translated to the screen as mostly boredom for the audience. Over 19,000 feet down, the drill encounters an unknown life form that is fascinating to the on board scientist. Where have you seen that before? Pick any similar monster film. Interestingly there are only good looking women working on the rig, one of whom is date raped by the undersea intruder. The beast itself goes through an all too familiar metamorphosis from hand puppet to man in rubber suit. Overall the movie lacks tension, and is loaded with way too much meaningless dialog. - MERK

Woodyanders I must admit that I really like this jarringly harsh and downbeat made-for-TV "ALIEN" copy. This time the rugged roughneck crew of a remote off-shore oil rig are terrorized by a large, scaly, fanged, lumbering centuries old humanoid beast dredged up from the ocean floor. Sure, the plot ain't much, but Peter Carter's crisply proficient direction (Carter previously gave us the superior and underrated Canadian "Deliverance" variant "Rituals"), the strikingly gloomy, fatalistic tone (the first victim is a panicky guy who had a nightmarish premonition of the impending disaster), a terrific, rousing score by the chronically unsung Gil ("A Cold Night's Death," "The Ultimate Warrior") Melle, several shockingly brutal violent episodes which really test the limits of what you can get away with in a TV movie (one luckless woman gets raped and dies giving birth to a brawny, fully grown man-sized monster!), the unusually well-drawn and engaging characters, and the cool creature design by James Cummins and H. R. Giger turn this unassuming little number into a modest, but surefire winner. Chad Everett as the hard-nosed crew chief has the right tough stuff to cut it as a fine hero, while Joseph Bottoms, Jennifer Warren, Matt Craven, Lynda Mason Green and especially the ever-personable Rockne ("Black Sampson") Tarkington are solid in sturdy supporting parts.

FieCrier Unfortunately rather boring. I watched it on the Trans World Entertainment big box videotape. Given that that company is still around, I wonder why they haven't rereleased their titles on DVD? Lost the rights? The cover of the box features a close-up side view of the monster's head; it's a better, clearer view than is ever had in the movie. It's a fairly cool H.R. Giger-esquire Alien-type thing.A bunch of people are on an oil rig that is having problems. The drill brings up some stones and a lamprey-like/Alien chestburster-type creature that latches onto a man and ends up killing him. One of the crew sneaks away some of the stones, which are perhaps actually eggs. He experiments keeping them under heat and under cold.Another crew member pricks his finger on one of the stone/eggs, and goes slowly insane. Some of the eggs hatch, and some more people die.Most of the time, the tedium of being on an oil rig is conveyed. People talk about their steak dinners, or about omelets. Part of the trouble with the pacing of the movie may be due to its having been a TV movie, complete with fade-to-black scenes.There are a few women on board the rig. One of them gets attacked by one of the men who are going insane. She gets to become a mother the wrong way.Last scene of the movie is sort of puzzling. A boat leaves the rig, and there are people still on the rig. Did they decide to stay? Were they quarantined?

andybob-3 Another in a long line of attempts to cash in on the success of the film Alien, this one held my interest maybe two-thirds of the way through, but unfortunately then gets too cheap and silly. I kind of liked the premise, workers on an isolated oil platform digging up an ancient lifeform from deep beneath the ocean floor, then of course they find themselves at its mercy like any respectable monster. But when all's said and done it just follows the same old tired formula, with sacrificial good guys and bad guys, and doesn't have the monster FX to back it up in the climax. Not as bad as most other clones (which is not saying much), but still not worth getting excited over. I gave it a 4.