Starring Cindy Williams, Bruce Kimmel, Leslie Nielsen, Gerrit Graham, and Patrick Macnee as Dr. Stark

Written and Directed by Bruce Kimmel

When the spaceship Vertigo stops to explore a previously unknown planet, the crew finds an unrecognized dollop of protoplasm and takes it aboard ship to return it to earth for analysis. On board, lifeform expands into an oozing person-eating monster which communicates primarily by means of a Vegas lounge act. The crew is gobbled up one after another until the two surviving crewmembers come up with a plan.

After thirty-eight years, the original director’s cut of The Creature Wasn't Nice finally comes to DVD. Horribly mangled by its producers, the released version, entitled Spaceship and then Naked Space, was not the film that its writer/director wanted. Now you can finally see the original version and judge for yourselves.

Spaceship had a very brief theatrical release and went to cable immediately thereafter, where it became a kind of small cult film due to its young 1980s viewers. But then it was released on home video in a horrible looking DVD, where it was retitled for the second time as Naked Space – not only was that transfer terrible, it was open matte and not in its proper screen ratio.

For decades, writer/director Bruce Kimmel has wanted to get the original cut onto DVD so people could at least see the film he meant The Creature Wasn’t Nice to be. Of course, there would be no guarantees that people would like it better, but at least they could judge for themselves. Thankfully, back in 1981 Kimmel had had the foresight to transfer the original answer print of his cut to three-quarter-inch video. While not of wonderful quality, it at least existed. With the aid of editor Marshall Harvey (The ‘Burbs, Matinee) a few changes were made that Kimmel had never had the opportunity to do, mostly involving a few minor trims and adding more sound effects and music, making a version that was fairly close to what the film would have been if the producers hadn’t taken it away before that work could be done. The producers simply tried to turn it into an Airplane clone (hence the title change to Spaceship), since that kind of comedy was suddenly all the rage. But the film was never designed to be that kind of gag-a-minute-throw-everything-in-including-the-kitchen-sink kind of film.

While the quality of the three-quarter-inch video was not great, thanks to some new technology that became available at the last-minute, the 4x3 letterbox image was able to be blown up to 16x9 without losing any further quality, which was very good news. So, while the image is still obviously a little blurry and what it is, it is, at least, in its proper ratio and everything that could technically be done to improve the image has been done. And, for the first time, music and songs in stereo. -KRITZERLAND

The DVD is loaded with extras, including:
BOTH VERSIONS OF THE FILM
THREE COMMENTARY TRACKS – one with writer/director Bruce Kimmel, one with Kimmel and star Cindy Williams, and one with Kimmel and editor Marshall Harvey.
TWO EPISODES OF OUTSIDE THE BOX, Bruce Kimmel’s critically acclaimed musical comedy web series.
THE HONEYMOON SKETCH – a sketch from the TV variety series Dinah and Her New Best Friends, featuring Cindy Williams and Bruce Kimmel and written by Kimmel.
RODZINSKI REMINISCES – New 2019 video with Gerrit Graham
CREATURE COMFORTS – New 2019 video with Ron Kurowski on playing The Creature
THEATRICAL TRAILER FOR SPACESHIP
COMPLETE SOUNDTRACK AND SONGS IN 24-BIT ALL REGION