The lizard monster for the 1997 film Relic

The Relic is a 1997 American monster-horror film directed by Peter Hyams and based on the best-selling 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, and James Whitmore. In the film, a detective and a biologist try to defeat a South American lizard-like monster which is on a killing spree in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

The movie was shot in Chicago at the highly-regarded Field Museum of Natural History. Production was originally intended to be held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. However, a deal could not be reached and, after taking interest in the film's premise, the Field Museum offered to let the studio shoot there instead. The film was the second on-screen collaboration between Hunt, Miller, and supporting actor Chi Muoi Lo, all three of whom also worked on the film Kindergarten Cop.

The film was released in the United States on January 10, 1997, by Paramount Pictures. It grossed over $48 million worldwide. It was the last film appearance of actress Audra Lindley. 

MOVIE PLOT

John Whitney, an anthropologist for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, studies a tribe in South America and drinks a soup made by the tribesmen. Shortly after, Whitney accosts a merchant ship captain, asking him to remove the cargo he had intended to send to Chicago off the ship. Unwilling to delay the ship's departure, the captain refuses and Whitney sneaks aboard. Unable to find his cargo, he cries out. Six weeks later, the ship arrives on Lake Michigan with its crew missing. Chicago PD homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta and his partner, Sergeant Hollingsworth, investigate the ship and find dozens of bodies and severed heads in the bilge.

Another week later, Margo Green, an evolutionary biologist, arrives at work at the museum and discovers that co-worker Greg Lee is applying for the same research grant she is after he had gotten one for himself already. Margo and her mentor, Albert Frock, examine Whitney's crates after their arrival and find the crates empty, except for a bed of leaves and a stone statue of the "Kothoga", a mythical forest monster. Margo notices a fungus on the leaves and sends it to be analyzed; the rest of the leaves are incinerated. That night, security guard Frederick Ford is murdered like the ship's crew. D'Agosta suspects a connection. Believing the killer is still inside the museum, he orders it closed until the police have finished searching. Ann Cuthbert, the museum director, protests and mentions an important upcoming exhibition.

Margo discovers the fungus contains concentrated hormones found in several animal species. In the container of leaves, she finds a mutated beetle that possesses both insect and reptilian DNA. Ford's autopsy reveals that his hypothalamus was extracted from his brain, like the bodies from the ship. In the museum's basement, the police are startled by a mentally-ill, homeless ex-convict and kill him. Finding Ford's wallet on him, everyone except D'Agosta considers the case closed, though Mayor Robert Owen and the museum’s head of security Tom Parkinson force D'Agosta to let the exhibition proceed.

On the opening night, D'Agosta orders a lock-down of all museum areas except the main exhibition hall. Frock and Margo, trapped in the laboratory wing, continue working and discover Ford's killer is after the hormones on the leaves. D'Agosta and several officers search the basement tunnels once again. They are attacked by an unseen creature, killing K-9 Officer Bradley and a police dog. D'Agosta tells Hollingsworth to evacuate the museum, but he is too late. In the main hall, the headless body of a murdered policeman falls into the crowd, causing a panic. During the hysteria, the museum's alarms are tripped and their security system goes haywire, trapping a small group of people inside. Two security guards try to restore the power but are killed by an unseen creature.

D'Agosta meets Margo and Frock in the lab, where a Kothoga, an enormous chimeric beast, attacks them; they close a steel door to stop it. Margo theorizes the fungus mutated a smaller creature, and Frock says that without the leaves to eat, the Kothoga instinctively seeks the closest substitute, human hypothalami, until it runs out of targets and dies; he further postulates that the tribe knew of the fungus, and used it on a human or animal to deal with an external threat, then hid until the threat was destroyed and the Kothoga died of "starvation." D'Agosta finds a radio and tells Hollingsworth to lead the museum guests out via an old coal tunnel. Tom, Greg, and benefactors Mr. and Mrs. Blaisedale refuse to go, and CPD officer McNally stays behind to guard them; the Kothoga returns to the main hall and murders them and the S.W.A.T. officers who enter through the skylights.

Margo suggests using liquid nitrogen to kill the Kothoga, as it is part-reptilian and likely cold-blooded. While collecting the remaining leaves in the lab, Margo and D'Agosta discover Frock has been killed. In the sewers, D'Agosta uses the leaves to lure the Kothoga away from the coal tunnel, allowing the guests to escape, though CPD officer Bailey and a guest are both killed. However, liquid nitrogen has no effect on the creature. Margo and D'Agosta flee. In the lab, her computer completes the analysis of the creature's human DNA, revealing John Whitney is the Kothoga, mutated after drinking the tribesmen's soup.

The Kothoga smashes into the lab through the ceiling, while D'Agosta is locked outside. The creature chases Margo, corners her, and suddenly hesitates, seemingly recognizing her. Margo starts an explosive fire that incinerates the Kothoga, surviving by hiding inside a maceration tank. As dawn comes, D'Agosta and a team of police break into the lab, see the charred remains of the Kothoga, and rescue Margo from the tank.

MOVIE CAST

- Penelope Ann Miller as Margo Green, museum evolutionary biologist
- Tom Sizemore as New York Police Department Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta, Chicago police detective
- Linda Hunt as Ann Cuthbert, museum curator
- James Whitmore as Albert Frock, museum scientist and Margo's mentor
- Clayton Rohner as Sergeant Hollingsworth, junior police detective and D'Agosta's subordinate
- Chi Muoi Lo as Greg Lee, an ambitious museum scientist trying to apply the same research grant away from Margo.
- Thomas Ryan as Tom Parkinson, the museum's head of security
- Robert Lesser as Mayor Robert Owen
- Diane Robin as Mrs. Owen, Mayor Owen's wife
- Lewis Van Bergen as John Whitney, museum anthropologist who went missing after his expedition in South America.
- Francis X. McCarthy as George Blaisedale, a wealthy museum benefactor
- Constance Towers as Carrie Blaisedale, Mr. Blaisedale's wife
- Audra Lindley as Dr. Zwiezic, medical examiner
- John Kapelos as McNally, Chicago Police officer
- Tico Wells as Bailey, Chicago Police officer
- Mike Bacarella as Bradley, Chicago Police K-9 officer
- Gene Davis as Martini, crime scene investigator
- John DiSanti as Wootton, museum security guard
- David Proval as Johnson, museum security guard
- Jophery Brown as Frederick Ford, museum security guard
- Lyn Alicia Henderson as Perri Masai, restoration technician
- Don Harvey as Spota

MOVIE DEVELOPMENT

The Relic was based on the horror novel by Douglas Preston, an ex-journalist and former public relations director for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and Lincoln Child (though it omits their major character, FBI agent Pendergast).

It was developed by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

The director, Peter Hyams, commented "I don't think you can scare people, unless you involve them." and "A movie like this has to be intelligent."

Because the novel portrayed the museum's administration in an unflattering light, they turned the film's producers down. Paramount Pictures offered the museum a seven-figure sum of money to film there, but the administration was worried that the monster movie would scare kids away from the museum. The producers were faced with a problem as only museums in Chicago and Washington, D.C., resembled the one in New York. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago loved the premise and allowed them to shoot there.

Penelope Ann Miller had not done a horror film prior to The Relic but was drawn to director Peter Hyams' desire to have a strong, smart female lead. Tom Sizemore was attracted to the film because he got to play the male lead: "I had the responsibility of pushing the narrative forward."

Makeup artist Stan Winston and his team made three creatures with two people moving the heads and people on the side working the electronics to move the arms, claws, mouth, and so on. Hyams reviewed Winston's early drawings and his only suggestion was to make the monster more hideous looking. The director also suggested certain invertebrates for inspiration and Winston came up with an arachnoid outline for the monster's face. In the scenes where the creature is running or jumping, a computer-generated version was used.

In addition to shooting on location in Chicago, a set was built in Los Angeles of a tunnel flooded with water. Sizemore spent most of the shoot either damp, cold or soaking wet and, as a result, caught the flu twice. The production was shut down briefly when Hyams became too sick to work.

Scary stuff!

KOTHOGA (MBWUN) MONSTER MAKING & DESIGN - STAN WILSON SCHOOL OF ARTS

Initially, the monster in the film adaptation of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Relic retained the original name — Mbwun, which means ‘He who walks on all fours’ — only to be successively renamed Kothoga, which in the novel is the name of the tribe that worships Mbwun. The reason for this change is currently unknown, but it is likely that ‘Kothoga’ was found to be more suggestive — or perhaps scary — as a name.

The novel Mbwun can be described shortly as a chimaera of a primate and a reptile. It was characterized by “extreme posterior-anterior dimorphism”, and its surface covering ranged from naked skin and fur on the upper body to scales and scutes on the lower body. Other key traits included the three-fingered hands with “tripiramidal claws”, and glowing red eyes that pierced the darkness of the museum alleys — encased in a “flattened”, primate-like head. Size-wise, it was described as around the mass and weight of a tiger.

The creature, due to its nocturnal nature, had poor eyesight and relied on its advanced sense of smell to hunt; it was also described as having a heavy breathing sound, which was compared to “a horse with cold”. This aspect was one of the few to be maintained in the film adaptation.

Stan Winston Studio was hired to bring the brute monster to life, even before director Peter Hyams was attached to the project. Due to that reason, the design process began simply from taking the basic concept from the novel — an amalgam of different animal species — without specifically adhering to the original description. The design evolved on its own with considerable artistic freedom, save for its size.

Stan Winston told Cinefex: “we knew that the creature would be a genetic mixup — part human, part mammal, part reptile. So there was a certain design freedom there. But there was no freedom in regards to the character’s size. It was important storywise that he be enormous – at least seven feet tall, with an equally large body mass. He had to be that big in order to rip people’s heads off and eat their brains – which I thought was a wonderful character element. A character that ripped heads off and ate brains was definitely something I want to be a part of developing.”

Ultimately, the Kothoga’s size was established at 15 feet of length, for six feet of height — far bigger than its novel counterpart, but not unfeasibly large.

The Kothoga was designed by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery. Initially, the artist wanted to infuse the creature with both feline and human aspects. He commented: “we knew Kothoga should be fierce and ruthless, but also a very intelligent creature. I used a lion as the foundation of Kothoga’s design because I believe lions to be more than just voracious eating machines. A lion is a bright, cunning animal, as opposed to, say, a great white shark.” Other details were taken from reference pictures of horses and alligators.

Many elements of the design were progressively discarded once Hyams was attached to the project. By the time he was on board, several different conceptual ideas were ready on paper. The initial designs were striving for a more elegant outline, but Hyams wanted to take another direction for the character — establishing that the Kothoga’s appearance should be altogether horrific and unpleasant. Hyams related: “every choice they presented was terrific and seductive — but some of them were almost too beautiful. If you’re stuck in a room with a tiger, you’re going to be scared because chances are you’re going to die, but you won’t be able to help but notice that the tiger is beautiful. He may be lethal, but he’s also gorgeous. I told Stan and Crash that Kothoga couldn’t be like that. I thought Kothoga should be so horrible to look at that if you were stuck in a room with him, at some point you would think, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, just kill me and get it over with.”

With this idea in mind, McCreery focused on redesigning the Kothoga’s head, endowing it with the subtle silhouette of a spider. This idea paved the way to the Kothoga’s large, gripping mandibles. McCreery told Cinefex: “to me, spiders are the most repulsive creatures in the world. So I took the basic shape of a spider and used that for the outline of Kothoga’s head. The big spider abdomen is the upper half of his head; the spider legs are the mandibles that come out of his jaws; and, like a spider, Kothoga’s eyes have no pupils. The spider shape of the head is subliminal — but when an image reminds you of something that really repels you, you can’t help but be affected by that image in some way, regardless of whether you’re aware of it or not.”

The Kothoga’s mouth was fitted with 40 teeth of varying sizes, from the smallest ones to the skull-piercing fangs, and a long, forked tongue. A mane of dark fur ran down the creature’s neck and back, with further tufts of hair on the mandibles — the only reference to the prominent hair covering of the novel Mbwun. Its scales and scutes, as well as its overall colour scheme, were based on alligators and crocodiles — whereas the head displayed warmer mammalian tones.

To justify the creature’s ability to climb on walls, the Kothoga was also gifted with sickle-like claws on the last digits of its hind feet — dubbed the ‘inverted Raptor toes’. McCreery said: “the story demanded that Kothoga climb a wall in the museum. At first, everyone was thinking suction cups on the feet, but I didn’t think that would look very cool.” Ironically enough, in the final film the Kothoga would climb the wall by simply pressing its feet on it — suggesting gecko-like footpads. In the film — following the novel — Hemidactylus turcicus (the Mediterranean house gecko) is found among the DNA sources of the plant virus.

As usual for Winston Studio, making a believable and realistic creature was an imperative. Winston said: “it was part of our job to take all of these obscure elements and put them together so that they made sense. We had to take all the diverse details of hair, skin, claws and mandibles — details that each had a life and character of its own — and bring them together so that it all looked natural. A creature should always look as if the man upstairs had something to do with it, and Kothoga has that quality. He doesn’t look like a mutation.”

A short pre-production and production time prevented Winston Studio from building a fully mechanized animatronic or puppet rig. Ultimately, the special effects artists chose a more traditional suit approach. Winston said: “not only did Kothoga have to make a lot of extreme moves – he also had to act. Because of that and our rather short pre-production schedule — under five months, which is not much for a creature like this — we decided to go with a man-in-a-suit design. That way, the movement of the creature could be motivated by an actor, while only the articulation of the head and face would have to be created through robotics.”

Creating the monster for the 1997 film Relic, painting the teeth

BOX OFFICE & CRITICS

The Relic premiered on January 10, 1997. It opened #1 at the box office, grossing $9,064,143 its opening week and a total of $33,956,608 in the US, against an estimated cost $60 million. It was released on Blu-ray on April 6, 2010.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Relic holds an approval rating of 37%, based on 35 reviews, and an average rating of 4.7/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.

James Berardinelli of ReelViews said that "when all is said and done, this horror/science fiction amalgamation seems like nothing more ambitious than a bad reworking of elements from Aliens, Species, Jaws and Predator."

Positive reviews came from critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel; Siskel described the film as "surprisingly entertaining", and Ebert said that the film was clever in how it "combines the conventions of the horror and disaster genres" and "is actually a lot of fun, if you like special effects and gore."

Film historian Leonard Maltin gave the movie 2.5 out of a possible 4 stars, summing it up as "Alien in a museum".

Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film a mixed review, stating, "'The Relic' will quickly fade to video, where it might fare well as a bump-in-the-night benefiting from the fast-forward button."

Russell Smith of The Austin Chronicle gave the film a 2.5/5 stating, "Long story short: This film stands as a near-perfect specimen of two hardy cinema archetypes – the cheesy but diverting creature feature and the weekend bargain matinee."

In a more negative review, Richard Harrington of The Washington Post stated, "It's a familiar story in the horror film business: good novel, terrible adaptation (just ask Stephen King and Clive Barker). As written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, "The Relic" deserved to be taken off the shelf; as adapted by a quartet of screenwriters and directed by Peter Hyams, it should have been left on one."

Despite the negative reviews, the film gained a strong following. Lead actress, Penelope Ann Miller is fond of the film: "It had a lot of things in it that were definitely out there. But it was a good scary movie."

The film was nominated for multiple science-fiction and fantasy awards, including best horror film and best actress (for Penelope Ann Miller) at the 1997 Saturn Awards.