By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1981 sci-fi horror The Intruder Within, starring Chad Everett, Jennifer Warren, Rockne Tarkington, James Hayden and Joseph Bottoms.
Though he got a little late-game love courtesy of hipsters David Lynch and Gus Van Sant in, respectively, 2001’s Mulholland Dr. and 1998’s Psycho, the late Chad Everett is pretty much a near-forgotten film and TV actor. Everett was best known for the popular 1970s TV series Medical Center, but he made a few feature film and telemovie appearances too. Dashingly handsome and resoundingly masculine, Everett was also a chauvinist of note (he infamously prompted Lily Tomlin to walk off the set of The Dick Cavett Show when he referred to his longtime wife as his “property”), a conservative Christian, a romantic poet, and a deeply troubled alcoholic.
If that wasn’t enough contradiction already in terms of his career and personal life, Chad Everett was also an occasional singer and stage performer. He even released two albums, with the second, All Strung Out, being an absolute belter. Toplined by Everett’s growling, authoritative voice, and played to perfection by a host of studio legends, the album drips with the same kind of florid excess and melodic brilliance that characterised Elvis Presley’s 1970s recordings. Though forgotten 1970s curios, Everett’s albums are truly intriguing works, part genius and part vanity trip.
In terms of TV mini-series and telemovies, Chad Everett featured in bigger and more high-profile projects (1978’s Centennial, 1977’s In The Glitter Palace, 1979’s The French Atlantic Affair, 1983’s Malibu), but one of his most interesting is 1981’s The Intruder Within. As discussed in our review of 1977’s The Death Squad, the telemovie form was nearly as bold as the Italians when it came to perpetrating in-broad-daylight thefts of the plots of popular big screen films. And like the Italians and their notorious rip-jobs of Escape From New York, Mad Max and The Exorcist, these small screen steals were often actually pretty good.
One of the most blatant rip-jobs you’ll ever see, The Intruder Within (first broadcast on February 20, 1981 on major US network ABC) lifts the plot, style and just about everything else from Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien…and it lifts them wholesale. But despite the constant, harshly reverberating echoes of Sir Ridley’s gruesome cult favourite, The Intruder Within remains wholly enjoyable, in no small part due to Everett’s affecting lead performance and the lengths to which TV vet screenwriter Ed Waters goes to inject the story with characterisation and nuance.
Directed with no-nonsense economy and well-placed moodiness by British/Canadian director and Unsung Auteur Peter Carter (The Rowdyman, High-Ballin’ and the excellent Deliverance rip-job Rituals), The Intruder Within is set on a remote oil rig under the command of experienced “tool pusher” Jake Nevins (Chad Everett), who is chafing under the presence and expanded role of oil company scientist Scott (Joseph Bottoms exudes casual arrogance with flair), who seems to be interested in something more than just the extraction of oil from the ocean floor.
And sure enough, the smug and sinister Scott really comes into play when the rig’s latest drill drags up a strange creature from the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean. The oceanic monster looks like, well, the junior-version creature from Alien, and it comes with a cluster of what look like eggs. Pretty soon, various members of the crew are infected with alien spores, which turns them into rampaging homicidal/suicidal psychos set upon propagating what is eventually revealed to be a race of aquatic apex predators.
Yep, it’s derivative, but The Intruder Within makes the most of its claustrophobic setting, and director Peter Carter and screenwriter Ed Waters are smart enough to make the film’s characters likeable, interesting and relatable. Chad Everett’s rig boss is a decent, caring man of action, and he has great chemistry with female lead and oil rig newcomer Colette Beaudroux (well-played by the underrated Jennifer Warren, who featured in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and Michael Ritchie’s Slap Shot), who entertainingly takes no shit, Ripley-style. Theirs is a truly equal relationship, and if that’s not enough, they’re backed up by the towering Rockney Tarkington, best known for the minor 1974 Blaxploitation flick Black Samson.
Strong support comes from lovely Canadian actress Lynda Mason Green, character actor Michael Hogan, Mary Ann McDonald, and the tragic James Hayden (Once Upon A Time In America), who was hailed as a potential great of the stage before he died of a heroin overdose at the age of just thirty in 1983. A revered icon and role model to actors Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts, Hayden’s screen resume is sadly slim indeed, which doses The Intruder Within with a strange sense of importance.
A prime example of how enjoyable a small screen rip-job can be, The Intruder Within is an effectively low-key horror flick that makes the most out of its blatant derivations, and provides a surprisingly impressive showcase for its fine cast, with the charismatic Chad Everett and Jennifer Warren nicely anchoring proceedings.
Availability: The Intruder Within is very easy to find online, and it’s in fairly watchable form too.
