Nielsen Ratings: The Creature Wasn’t Nice (1981) Review
Hard to find these days, and not helped by it changing titles more often than “Edge Of Tomorrow”, “The Creature Wasn’t Nice” aka “Spaceship” aka (in light of the runaway success of “The Naked Gun”) “Naked Space” may have been a passion project for writer/ director/ star Bruce Kimmel but, to be brutally honest, you’d be hard pushed to find a cast of this calibre used so poorly and surrounded by such cheapness outside of a corporate training video from the early eighties.
When the spaceship Vertigo stops to explore a previously unknown planet, the crew encounters alien life in the form of a blob of protoplasm. Doctor Stark (Patrick MacNee) insists on bringing it aboard but once back on the ship, the alien grows into a ravenous monster who alternates between devouring the crew and staging lounge act musical numbers.
It’s quite astonishing that a production this cheap managed to snag the cast members it did, not just Nielsen but Patrick MacNee too plus Cindy Williams (of “Laverne & Shirley”) and character actor Gerrit Graham alongside Bruce Kimmel (who would go on to, among other things, co-write “The Faculty”). Nielsen is mostly in “Forbidden Planet” mode here, the straight man heroic captain, although not in the ironic “Airplane!”/ “Naked Gun” way that would come to define him later. Likewise, Patrick MacNee plays it straight too, although both Nielsen and McNee have that twinkle in their eye that says they’re well aware of how shoddy it all is (some of the sets were clearly inspired by 60s “Star Trek” but other scenes looks like they were filmed over a long weekend in some local insurance broker’s office) but they’re having fun, so who really cares?
It’s a loose-to-the-point-of-falling-apart spoof of “Alien”, of course, with plenty of side-steps (and missteps) into sketches and skits which are liberally applied to pad out and paper over the cracks in the ramshackle narrative and threadbare budget. There are moments which seem like primitive precursors to “Rick & Morty”’s Interdimensional Cable and, on the rare occasions everything comes together and hits the mark, “The Creature Wasn’t Nice” aka “Spaceship” aka “Naked Space” comes close being nearly half as fun as something like “The Ice Pirates”. Mostly, though, it feels like a rogue SNL sketch which escaped its handlers and mutated into this unwieldy monster.
Even with material this poor and a mismatched cast with no chemistry, Nielsen’s comic timing still manages to shine through at times. Perhaps he’s the only actor who could remain so deadpan faced with such sub-standard absurdity and poor creature design (although there is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from what looks to be a Metalunan mutant from “This Island Earth”).
“The Creature Wasn’t Nice” aka “Spaceship” aka “Naked Space” is a reminder that not all rare objects are precious stones and, thanks to “The Faculty” a reminder that one crappy comedy does not a writer define. Luckily this misbegotten rocketship misfire did nothing to knock Nielsen’s burgeoning comedy career off its trajectory.
Nielsen Rating 3/10
