THE RELIC

Starring Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt and James Whitmore Directed by Peter Hyams Rated R, with profanity and gore, including decapitations; running time 116 minutes With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 3

(Jan. 9, 1997) -- There's a horrific monster growing in the basement of Chicago's natural history museum, and he is going to erupt just in time to rip the heads off politicians, local celebrities and blue bloods at the grand opening of an elaborate new exhibition.

And that, folks, is The Relic in a nutshell.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers insist on cluttering the tale with all sorts of pseudoscience hooey about ancient South American mythology and new DNA research, turning this simple monster movie into murky, muddled, bargain-basement Michael Crichton.

All the high-tech nonsense is a smoke screen, designed to distract filmgoers from obvious questions. Like:

• Why does a museum have miles and miles of dank tunnels and gloomy sub-basements -- more than the New York City subway system?

• Why don't museum researchers complain about working in medieval lighting conditions? (Maybe there should be a capital campaign to buy the museum some fluorescent bulbs.)

Hyams is a pulp-movie veteran whose films range from prestigious projects such as Outland and 2010 to the Jean-Claude Van Damme actioner Sudden Death. Here he delivers typical horror-movie thrills, including the requisite cat that jumps out from the shadows barely eight minutes into the movie.

But he has little success bringing clarity to the origins of the horrifying creature. The monster apparently is a blend of lizard and beetle, mutating into a creature the size of a raptor; and his birth is somehow tied to a guy doing illicit DNA research in the Amazon. Beyond that, who knows? Oh yes, the creature needs hormones found only in the middle of the human brain to survive -- hence, all the head-ripping.

Opposing the monster is a resourceful museum researcher (Penelope Ann Miller) and a superstitious detective (Tom Sizemore). Also in the fray are the museum's determined director (played by a slumming former Oscar-winner, Linda Hunt) and an aging wheelchair-bound scientist. The latter is played by James Whitmore, marking a return to roots for the actor who appeared 40 years ago in the B-movie classic Them!

Filmgoers might have wished The Relic would have been as direct and exciting as that 1950s flick about mutating ants. As is, The Relic too obviously rips off Alien, Jurassic Park and other superior tales, and traverses very little new ground.

I suspect this film will quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy: After a few weeks at the multiplex, it'll be a relic.