The Creature Wasn't Nice (also known as Naked Space and Spaceship) is a 1983 American comedy film written and directed by Bruce Kimmel. A parody of Alien, it stars Leslie Nielsen in a role similar to those in the farcical comedies Airplane! and Naked Gun, alongside co-stars Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham and Patrick Macnee. It was released on VHS in 1983 under the title Spaceship, to emphasize Nielsen's connection to Airplane!, and on DVD in 1999 under the title Naked Space, to play up the connection to Nielsen's Naked Gun films.
The film is a low-budget comedy with simple sets and dialogue wrapped around several musical numbers. In one of the scenes, the red slimy one-eyed alien monster performs a lounge-style musical number called "I Want to Eat Your Face." Williams performs two musical numbers, one solo and one with Kimmel, who in 1976 had appeared with and directed her in The First Nudie Musical. The film was completely re-edited by the producers, creating the version released as Spaceship and Naked Space on home video. The original cut, The Creature Wasn't Nice, was only seen at two public previews. In 2019, it was announced that both versions of the film would come to home video under its original title.
Plot
Crew members of the spaceship Vertigo have a confrontation with a man-eating alien creature.
Cast
- Leslie Nielsen - Captain Jamieson
- Cindy Williams - Annie McHugh
- Bruce Kimmel - John
- Gerrit Graham - Rodzinski
- Patrick Macnee - Dr Stark
- Ron Kurowski - The Creature
- Paul Brinegar - Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry
- Broderick Crawford - voice of Max the Computer (uncredited) (Crawford's voice doesn't feature in Spaceship/Naked Space - it was replaced.)
Production
Bruce Kimmel came up with the idea for the film in 1979 and successfully pitched it to Cindy Williams, with whom he'd worked on The First Nudie Musical. Cavett Binion, writing for AllMovie, also reviewing the re-cut version, called the film "painfully dull [...] [Patrick Macnee's] hammy performance provides one of the film's few real laughs [...] the lovely soft-shoe number "I Want to Eat Your Face" [provides] the film's other real laugh." Variety reviewed the film under its original title at a public sneak preview in Westwood, calling it "a likeably silly send-up of outer-space horror pix like 'Alien'".