The Intruder Within (1981)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Don't Believe the Hype

Awesome Movie

Absolutely Fantastic

There is an oil rig in the middle of nowhere.Its staff is looking for oil but their mission is secret.A company geologist played by Joseph Bottoms is looking for alternative oil sources.One day he finds a bunch of small eggs.And creepy looking snake creature,who bites young worker prompting him to die.Whilst mysterious eggs are researched in the lab various oil rig workers begin to die...First of all I consider Peter Carter's "Rituals" to be one of the best and most fascinating survival horror movies of 70's. Peter Carter's "The Intruder Within" is clearly not as stunning.There are some effective moments of suspense,but the plot is silly as it rips-off "Alien".The creature effects are average at best.The atmosphere of isolation is well-captured,though.6 oil rigs out of 10.

CAUTION: Plot spoilers present.The crew of the Zortron 101, an oil rig stationed off the coast of Antarctica & working 'off the books' in order to find a secret stash of oil, discover some small rocks that come up when the drill hits a depth of 19,000 feet. The rocks are then revealed to be some sort of eggs, which have been underground for untold millennia. When a crew member touches one of the eggs, he goes crazy & commits suicide by jumping overboard. The eggs hatch, revealing eel-like creatures that attack a worker before being killed by the rest of the crew. The victim is then driven to rape a female crewmember who gives birth to a hideous humanoid creature that then proceeds to massacre the crew.The Intruder Within was a 1981 telepic that came hot on the heels of the classic ALIEN, indeed being one of the very first such knockoffs. The producers decided to set the film on an isolated oil rig off the Antarctic coast & make the monster a prehistoric creature.Being an early-1980s telepic, The Intruder Within clearly doesn't have the budget to seriously compete with Alien, but that doesn't stop the director, Peter Carter, & crew from trying. And they give it a game try. The oil rig setting is unusual but it manages to work better for the film's limited budget. The visual effects are clearly primitive – consisting of rubber puppets & the final creature being an actor in an unconvincing rubber suit (which is kept mostly in the dark to disguise its shortcomings).Where the film tends to work best is as an account of life on an oil rig. The depiction of the rig's day-to-day lifestyle is authentic & elevates the film to watchable status. But while the film's setting is sound enough, the biology of the vicious hominid is all over the map – it is never clear as to how the creature can exist from an egg to an eel-like creature with teeth that bites a male victim, the victim becoming obsessed & raping a woman who then gives birth to the hominid (it is also never clear how the eggs can survive for untold millennia without dying). This seems to be the result of sloppy writing from Ed Waters. The climax with the creature is also lacking in impact but within perameters for the budget.Present audiences might also notice that there is a distinct lack of gore or nudity on display here but that's because the film was made for television back in the early 1980s & was therefore subject to strict conditions. Which is the reason I won't mark the film down too low for not showing the goods.

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.

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.