10 Great Sci-Fi Movie Villains Who Only Appeared Once
5. The Creature - Leviathan
This one comes from an underrated sci-fi horror which
explored the depths of the ocean floor and its many creepy unseen inhabitants—if
the pitch sounds familiar, it may be because the recent Kirsten Stewart vehicle
Underwater followed a fairly similar plot. Or maybe it’s because, in the wake
of James Cameron’s The Abyss wowing audiences, 1989 played host to a myriad gorier
rip offs of the flick, amongst them the MST3K-skewered Lords of the Deep,
Deepstar Six, The Rift, and The Evil Below.
But none of these copycats managed what to match what set Leviathan apart from its competitors: a truly original and scary villain.
Beginning as a severed tentacle which transforms into a lamprey-esque monstrosity and begins offing members of a sparse crew of geologists aboard a submarine, this creature soon turns to a massive beast unveiled in all its glory at the film’s denouement, and for once its appearance isn’t a shoddy rip off of more accomplished monster movie designs like the many not-quite-Xenomorphs of the eighties.
No, this toothy, mini-Godzilla-style monstrosity is a gruesome villain all of its own, and it’s a crying shame that we never saw more of it after this single appearance in Rambo: First Blood Part II director George P. Cosmatos’ effective chiller.