Of the small wave (apologies for the pun) of deep-sea thrillers that hit movie theater screens in 1989, Leviathan was neither the most nor the least successful of the bunch. The film scored mostly poor reviews and failed to recoup its budget at the box office, but at least did better than Deepstar Six or Lords of the Deep in both respects and later went on to have quite a long shelf-life on home video – which, truth be told, is probably where it was always destined to thrive anyway.

As it turned out, audiences of the day didn’t especially warm to any of the underwater pictures that year the way filmmakers expected them to. Even James Cameron’s big-budget The Abyss was considered the director’s first failure. Leviathan was nowhere near as ambitious a production as Cameron’s, either logistically or artistically, and may underwhelm even as a cheeseball B-movie, but the film still has its pleasures if you’re open to them.

Title:	Leviathan
Year of Release:	1989
Director:	George P. Cosmatos
Watched On:	4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Available On:	Blu-ray Max Various VOD purchase and rental platforms

In considerable contrast to The Abyss, Leviathan never presented itself as a prestige picture with any sort of important message about humanity. This is a schlocky creature feature, and makes no pretense otherwise. Specifically (as was called out in just about every review at the time), the movie is a low-rent knockoff of Ridley Scott’s Alien, with bits of John Carpenter’s The Thing and plenty of other recognizable pieces swirled together. As far as that goes, the film has a surprising amount of talent both in front of and behind the camera, and punches above its weight class.

On screen, Peter Weller from RoboCop gets top billing as the foreman (or “shack boss”) of a deep-sea mining station 16,000 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Backing him up is a really strong supporting cast of character actors and genre vets, including Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters), Richard Crenna (the Rambo franchise), Hector Elizondo (American Gigolo), Daniel Stern (Diner), and Amanda Pays (Max Headroom). Nearing the end of their grueling 90-day shift, the crew unexpectedly stumble onto an unrecorded Russian shipwreck, and after bringing some of its cargo back onto their own vessel, discover that its contents were tainted by a horrific biological experiment that starts to spread quickly. Trapped in an enclosed environment with no escape, the team of blue-collar miners find themselves picked off one-by-one by a grotesque monster, while the callous CEO of their corporation (Meg Foster from They Live) back on the surface makes excuses for why she can’t send help to evacuate them.

The formula for this story is entirely derivative and the final product not particularly well-written, even with a script attributed to David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner) and Jeb Stuart (Die Hard). Frankly, some of the dialogue and characterizations are downright embarrassing, especially anything pertaining to the cartoonish white trash horndog called Sixpack played by Daniel Stern. It’s pretty obvious that the screenplay went through a lot of rewrites and revisions, some likely by other uncredited parties, and wound up kind of a mishmash mess.

On the other hand, where the movie excels is in the scrappy ingenuity of its filmmaking and craftsmanship. Shot entirely “dry for wet” on soundstages in Rome, not a bit of it actually underwater, the effect may lack the verisimilitude that James Cameron strove for, but is convincing enough to suspend disbelief. The production had a number of notable names behind the scenes. Special effects and creature design were headed up by the legendary Stan Winston (Aliens), with assistance from Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. (both of whom would do Tremors next). The production design by Ron Cobb (The Last Starfighter, The Running Man) is just about an exemplar of 1980s futurism that, looking back today, hits a charming note of both high-tech and amusingly dated. Jerry Goldsmith also contributes a better score than a movie like this deserves.

The ringmaster of this circus was George P. Cosmatos, an erratic Greek filmmaker that, on occasion, had been known to act as a proxy for other people who could not contractually claim a directing credit themselves (a role he filled for Sylvester Stallone on Rambo: First Blood Part II and later for Kurt Russell on Tombstone). From what I can tell, Cosmatos actually did direct this one himself. If certainly not an auteur, he understood what kind of movie he was making and what his audience wanted. Unfortunately, he never shoots the monster from a good angle and his editors consistently cut away from it too quickly, preventing viewers from getting a decent look at it. Perhaps that was intentional, as is often the case in horror flicks when the creature effects aren’t passing muster, but I can’t imagine this team had issues like that.

Rewatching it today for the first time since VHS, Leviathan may not hold up to some of the fondness I had for it as a teenager. The movie’s pretty dumb and not remotely scary. It could be a lot more effective with a few tweaks in the scripting and directing areas. However, for what it set out to be, I still find the picture plenty enjoyable.

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Leviathan proved to be a cult hit on VHS for many years, despite losing half its photographic image to pan & scan. In more recent times, Shout! Factory released the film (under its Scream Factory banner) on Blu-ray in 2014, followed by Kino Lorber in February of 2024. Kino has separate SKUs for a dedicated Blu-ray edition or a 2-disc 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray package. Both of the Kino discs are derived from the same source, which is stated to come from a “4K scan of the 35mm Interpositive.” I don’t have the Shout! Factory disc to compare against, and I have no information on why Kino chose to (or had to) us an Interpositive rather than the original camera negative. What I can say is that, even if technically authored in the formats, the 4K disc has no sense of 4K detail or HDR whatsoever and is almost indistinguishable from the accompanying Blu-ray.

To be fair, some of these limitations may be the fault of the original photography by Alex Thomson, who also shot Ridley Scott’s Legend and frequently favored softer, hazier images. The style in this case may have been necessary to hide seams in the practical effects and sell the illusion of the “dry for wet” setting. Regardless, whatever the cause, the 2.39:1 image is consistently soft and has slightly flat contrast and colors, with nothing that ever visibly exceeds SDR range. Anyone on the fence with a purchasing decision might consider saving a couple bucks and sticking with the 1080p Blu-ray format.

From reviews of the older Shout! Factory Blu-ray, Kino’s transfer seems to come from cleaner source elements with less (practically no) dirt and speckles, and has slightly better color grading with less pinkish flesh tones. Whether that’s enough to merit an upgrade for fans who already have the Shout! disc, I can’t say.

Kino offers the movie’s soundtrack in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 or 5.1 formats. The disc defaults to the 2.0 track, and in my comparisons I indeed found that option to be slightly less dull and have slightly better clarity. With that said, both tracks are really flat and disappointing. I think this movie just always had a weak sound mix stemming back to 1989, and the attempt to tweak it into 5.1 only made it worse.

Both discs in the case have a new audio commentary by “film historians” (a glorified term for online reviewers and professional bonus feature content creators) Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson. It’s a quite listenable and engaging conversation. The remaining extras are found only on the standard Blu-ray disc. A 40-minute featurette about the creature effects and shorter interviews with actors Hector Elizondo and Ernie Hudson were all licensed from Shout! Factory and carried over from the older Blu-ray. Kino then rounds off the set with trailers for Leviathan and the similarly-themed Deepstar Six and Deep Rising.

Related

• George P. Cosmatos (director)
  • Tombstone (1993)
• Peter Weller
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
• Ernie Hudson
  • The Crow (1994)
  • Ghostbusters (1984)
  • Ghostbusters II (1989)
  • Quantum Leap (2022) series premiere
• Meg Foster
  • They Live (1988)
• Ron Cobb (production design)
  • Conan the Barbarian (1982)
  • The Last Starfighter (1984)
• Thematically-Similar Movies
  • Aliens (1986)
  • The Abyss (1989)
  • Tremors (1990)
• Other Awesome Movies of 1989
  • Batman
  • Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  • The Killer
  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
  • Road House
  • Tango & Cash
  • UHF
  • Uncle Buck
  • The Wizard

Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.