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The Creature Wasn't Nice

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The Creature Wasn't Nice
Directed byBruce Kimmel
Written byBruce Kimmel
Produced byMark Haggard
Eilhys England
Michael S. Landes
Albert Schwartz
Alain Silver
Patrick Regan
StarringLeslie Nielsen
Bruce Kimmel
Cindy Williams
Gerrit Graham
Patrick Macnee
CinematographyDenny Lavil
Edited byDavid Blangsted
Music byDavid Spear
Distributed byAlmi Pictures (VHS)
Release date
  • July 1983 (1983-07)
Running time
88 min.
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2 million[1]

The Creature Wasn't Nice (also known as Naked Space and Spaceship) is a 1983 American comedy film written and directed by Bruce Kimmel. A parody of Alien, it stars Leslie Nielsen in a role similar to those in the farcical comedies Airplane! and Naked Gun, alongside co-stars Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham and Patrick Macnee. It was released on VHS in 1983 under the title Spaceship, to emphasize Nielsen's connection to Airplane!, and on DVD in 1999 under the title Naked Space, to play up the connection to Nielsen's Naked Gun films.

The film is a low-budget comedy with simple sets and dialogue wrapped around several musical numbers. In one of the scenes, the red slimy one-eyed alien monster performs a lounge-style musical number called "I Want to Eat Your Face." Williams performs two musical numbers, one solo and one with Kimmel, who in 1976 had appeared with and directed her in The First Nudie Musical. The film was completely re-edited by the producers, creating the version released as Spaceship and Naked Space on home video. The original cut, The Creature Wasn't Nice, was only seen at two public previews. In 2019, it was announced that both versions of the film would come to home video under its original title.

Plot

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Crew members of the spaceship Vertigo have a confrontation with a man-eating alien creature.

Cast

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Production

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Bruce Kimmel came up with the idea for the film in 1979 and successfully pitched it to Cindy Williams, with whom he'd worked on The First Nudie Musical.[1] Kimmel based the film on his love of 1950s B-movie sci-fi films such as Target Earth, Tobor the Great and The Angry Red Planet, as well as his distaste for the more extreme horror films that had risen in popularity, such as Friday the 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, calling them "evil" and "despicable" films.[1]

Al Schwartz of World Northal Corp (who'd released The First Nudie Musical) optioned the project as his first in-house production, previously having specialized in distributing European films such as Bread and Chocolate and Cousin Cousine.[1] The film's special effects were handled by Magic Lantern Organization, which had also worked on History of the World, Part I and Flicks.[1]

Reception

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TV Guide, reviewing the Spaceship version, gave the film one out of four stars, calling it a "misguided attempt at horror comedy".[2] Cavett Binion, writing for Allmovie, also reviewing the re-cut version, called the film "painfully dull [...] [Patrick Macnee's] hammy performance provides one of the film's few real laughs [...] the lovely soft-shoe number "I Want to Eat Your Face" [provides] the film's other real laugh."[3] Variety reviewed the film under its original title at a public sneak preview in Westwood, calling it "a likeably silly send-up of outer-space horror pix like 'Alien'".

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Counts, Kyle (December 1981). "The Creature Wasn't Nice". Cinefantastique. Fourth Castle Micromedia. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  2. ^ "Spaceship".
  3. ^ "The Creature Wasn't Nice (1981) - Bruce Kimmel | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
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