Targoor - Reise ins Grauen

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

Due my reassessment process of my movies which I had watch in my teenager years it was already scheduled, a hard to find picture, so I've to call our friend Youtube and bingo, it was there on average print with dubbed version in Portuguese, best impossible quite sure and for nostalgic reason I went for to my night session.

At oil rig nearby Antartica the crew are drilling very deeply when came up an Alien specimen from ancient ages, the rest is too predictable, the casting is enough good for this little Sci-Fi-Horror flick as Chad Everett, Jennifer Warren, Rockne Tarkington, Joseph Bottoms and Matt Clark among others.

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First watch: 1986 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 5.5.

Ridley Scott's magnificent Sci-Fi/horror classic "Alien" spawned (pun intended) a massive amount of rip-offs, most of which are cheesy, sleazy and excessively gory B-movies like "Creature", "Xtro", "Forbidden World" and "Inseminoid". The 1981 "The Intruder Within" is also a blatant "Alien" rip- off, but considering this is a low-budgeted and made for TV production, you shouldn't expect to see any outrageous bloodshed or flamboyant special effects here. Instead, the film relies almost entirely on its fairly unique setting of a highly secluded oil rig somewhere in the middle of a not specifically mentioned ocean (and even if it was specifically mentioned, I must have missed it). The crew of an oil rig of the Zoltran Company is drilling at a very unusual place, and Chief Jake Nevins is beginning to suspect that something isn't kosher. Personally I think it's their own damn fault, because who would want to work for a company with such a sinister name as "Zoltran"? You just know that they're up to no good! Anyways, the geographical engineer on board recovers a few odd and nasty eggs from the sea and a couple of poor suckers die in mysterious circumstances. Turns out Zoltran is looking for a monstrous species that already exterminated humanity once before, millions and millions of years ago, and now they found it! "The Intruder Within" is an admirable effort to bring an atmosphere- driven monster flick, but most of the script is dull and predictable. There are a couple of noteworthy moments of tension, for example the moody opening credits, and the cast members do whatever they can. Deep sea monsters, whether alien or earthly, are a rather unusual topic for TV-movies and director Peter Carter also tries hard to make his film like a regular feature, but many aspects (like music and editing) quickly reveal the television trademarks. Naturally the creature itself doesn't appear on screen until very late in the film, supposedly because it isn't fully grown yet, but even when it briefly and vaguely appears it's all too obviously a crew-member is a cheap rubber suit. Okay entertainment for monster-movie fanatics, but passable for everyone else.

People used to put EFFORT into TV movies...back when they used to make them. This certainly can be boring at times, but the location has originality to it, and it puts the characters in an isolated spot in the world...the tone with this is set early and it helps give you that sense for the rest of the movie. The romantic subplot isn't too bad either, since Chad Everett is a pro's pro anyway. I like that meals they eat too....Chad Everett whips up those omelettes for himself and Jennifer Warren, and Rockne Tarkington makes that awesome plate of steak and other trimmings one night for the crew in that kitchen. Now that's good eatin!

Workers on the Zortron 101 oil rig bring up an unusual discovery from deep beneath the ocean floor. A deadly incident ensues, and a crewmember's gloomy prophecy seems to come true. Then, the real terror begins.

THE INTRUDER WITHIN is a well-realized, made-for-TV horror / monster movie. Around this time, many movies were coming out trying to capture the atmosphere of paranoia of John Carpenter's THE THING, and / or the visceral, killer creature horror of Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Both of these classics had that sense of being closed-in and isolated. This movie uses that to great effect. It combines these elements without being overly derivative. There are similarities, especially the ALIEN-like creature, but that doesn't ruin things. This movie is still far better than any of the other rip-offs.

The team of roughnecks are believable, led by Jake (Chad Everett).

Back to the monster itself. It's a superb man-in-a-rubber-suit creation, especially considering the confines of telefilms of its era.

Loads of creepy fun throughout its running time...