THE RELIC-United States/United Kingdom/Germany/Japan/New Zealand-1997

Penelope Ann Miller as Dr. Margo Green

Tom Sizemore as Lt. Vincent D’Agosta

Linda Hunt as Dr. Ann Cuthbert

James Whitmore as Dr. Albert Frock

Directed by Peter Hyams

Screenplay by Amy Jones, John Raffo, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Based on the novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

If there is one thing that I have learned in the 40-plus years that I’ve been watching movies it is this: if you have an idea people will steal it and turn it into something of their own. It doesn’t matter how great an idea it is and it doesn’t matter how old it is and it certainly doesn’t matter if it was successful in the first place. For example, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was written by Ambrose Bierce in 1890; yet I can think of two movies, Jacob’s Ladder (1990) and Sucker Punch (2011) that blatantly steal its premise.

Another idea that seems to be ‘borrowed’ from a lot is one that I like to call the “Jaws Syndrome”. Let’s use The Relic as an example to break it down. First, you have a place; in the case of The Relic that place is the Chicago Museum of Natural History. Then you have a gala, party or celebration in that place that must occur no matter what. In The Relic it is the occasion of the grand opening of the spectacular “Superstition” exhibit that’s going to make the museum all sorts of money. Now, Jaws had a shark; but we can’t really put a shark in the middle of a museum to wreak havoc, now can we? Enter the Kothoga, a Chimera of a creature that loves to rip the heads off of its victims and suck out the hypothalamus. It’s a big, nasty juggernaut of a beast.  Let’s move on to the characters now, shall we?

Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller, Carlito’s Way, The Artist); Margo is the Matt Hooper of The Relic. She’s a scientist who knows the inner workings of the Kothoga and what she doesn’t know she’ll gladly interpolate on her super cool interpolator.

If we have a Hooper, then surely we must have a Sheriff Brody. That would be Lt. Vincent D’Agosta (Tom Sizemore, Natural Born Killers, Saving Private Ryan). Lt. D’Agosta is the superstitious type who doesn’t pick up a penny if its head down on the floor, will not step over a dead body and he carries around a lucky bullet to remind him why he’s alive. He’s in way over his head with Kothoga, but by golly he’s going to save the swimmers, I mean museum attendees from that awful Great White shark, I mean that nasty head-chomping monster  whether the Mayor (Robert Lesser) likes it or not. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of the “Jaws Syndrome”. If you need further references, then I direct your attention to Piranha, Grizzly, and Dante’s Peak.

I liked The Relic, in case you were wondering. It’s one of those movies that remind me why I love horror movies in the first place; and that is because I love monsters. The Kothoga is big, mean, fast and it can climb on walls, so don’t even think about escaping through the skylight like that hapless S.W.A.T. team member tried to do.

The movie does have its flaws; the main one being that its way too dark in several key scenes and I found myself straining to figure out what was happening. I find this flaw surprising seeing as how director Peter Hyams is also the director of photography. Perhaps he assumed that ‘dark’ means ‘mysterious’ when in this case ‘dark’ means ‘dark’ and that is all. Fortunately the more illuminated scenes allow us to see Kothoga in all its glory as I’m sure SFX master Stan Winston intended us to.

If you want a dumb, mindless and fun movie then you can’t go wrong with The Relic. It’s the Jaws of museum monster movies.

TRIVIA

One of the sound effects is a floppy disk drive access sound from an Apple Macintosh computer (not the Silicon Graphics computers).

Harrison Ford was director Peter Hyams’s first choice for the lead role of Vincent D’Agosta (played by Tom Sizemore).

Audra Lindley’s last feature film.

The preparation of the fictional elixir given to John Whitney by the Amazon tribesmen, and the ceremony surrounding it, strongly parallels the real-life consumption of ayahuasca, a psychoactive tea used religiously by numerous Amazon tribes.

The improvised explosive Margo makes using two jars is very similar to the one made byJean-Claude Van Damme’s character in Sudden Death, director Peter Hyams’ previous film.

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