In the year 2012, the spaceship Vertigo is on an exploratory mission. On board are Captain Jamieson (Leslie Nielsen), Dr. Stark (Patrick Macnee), Officer Annie McHugh (Cindy Williams), Rodzinski (Gerrit Graham) and Intern John (Bruce Kimmel). The crew comes upon a previously unknown planet. They take a shuttle to the planet to explore. Intern John finds a tiny red blob. Dr. Stark believes it is an organism of some kind. A life form. They take the tiny blob back to the ship intending on taking it back to Earth for analysis.
After a few weeks aboard the Vertigo the small gelatinous substance has begun to grow. It is now a large, angry alien (Ron Kurowski). They keep the creature locked in the specimen room until one day it breaks out and roams around the ship. Eventually they stun it and lock it up in the observation room.
Wanting to communicate with the creature they hook it up to Max, the ship’s computer. The creature then bursts into a musical song and dance number called “I Wanna Eat Your Face”. Despite the lyrics to the song, Dr. Stark believes the creature is harmless and even friendly. To prove it he goes into the containment room with the alien. The creature eats him.
The rest of the crew quickly withdraws from the observation room to figure out what to do. In the meantime the creature breaks out again and is, once again, loose on the ship. One by one the creature begins to stalk and kill the crewmembers.
“The Creature Wasn’t Nice” AKA “Spaceship” AKA “Naked Space” was released in 1981 and re-released in 1983. It was released on VHS in 1983 under the title “Spaceship” to emphasize Nielsen's connection to “Airplane”, and released on DVD in 1999 as “Naked Space”, most likely to play up the connection to Nielsen's Naked Gun movies. The film was written and directed by Bruce Kimmel. He also plays John in the film. It is a science fiction/musical/comedy.
There are a couple differences between “The Creature Wasn’t Nice” released in 1981 and the re-release as the two alternate titles. Besides a few cuts, in the original film the voice of Max, the computer is voiced by Broderick Crawford. In the re-release his voice was replaced by someone who sounds like a cruise director.
Coming on the heels of “Airplane” 1980 “The Creature Wasn’t Nice” is kinda similar in that it is a parody of space travel movies. People point to “Alien” 1979 but it could also apply to dozens of other “alien creature on a space ship” movies from the fifties to current.
As far as the comedy in the film is concerned, even though it is compared to “Airplane” I fear that those that loved that movie will be a little disappointed in this one. Even though the humor leans toward puns, sight gags and slightly off center humor it is not as fast paced and the humor lacks in the delivery of the jokes. There are also sections that just aren’t funny.
The best part of the movie was the song “I Wanna Eat Your Face” that the alien sings but even that went a little long. The fact that this film was not received as well as “Airplane” and other parody films, despite the appearance of Leslie Nielsen, Patrick Macnee and Cindy Williams, and because it didn’t have a fancy budget, made it crash land into obscurity. I also think that re-releasing a film under different titles has a tendency lose whatever fan base a film may have had under the original title. It’s not a horrible film and there is some humor to it, but it’s not up to the standards or budgets of “Airplane” or the Naked Gun films.
As for the monster, it was adorable. And it could sing and dance.
"Naked Space" version
"I Want to Eat Your Face" song