This is one of my all time favorite movies. My bestie and I caught it at the dollar
theater waaaaay back in the day. A
detective, Lt. D’Agosta is investigating the decapitation deaths of the crew of
a cargo ship and they lead him to Chicago’s Museum of Natural History, where he
meets an evolutionary biologist, Dr. Green.
More murders happen in the museum and Green and D'Agosta have to work together to
discover the culprit; which just so happens to be the Kothoga, a South American
chimeric lizard god. The beast is
quickly and constantly evolving due to rapid mutations in its DNA.
What I love most about The Relic is the Kothoga itself; its
design, how it kills and what its genesis is. The Kothoga feeds off hormones that are contained in a plant
fungus. When the plants are
inadvertently destroyed, the beast must get its nourishment elsewhere, and that
elsewhere happens to be the human brain. The Kothoga kills by ripping off a human head in order to suck out the
hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is full
of the hormones that the monster needs to survive. And it turns out that the Kothoga was once
human; a fellow scientist who worked at the museum and had a crush on Dr.
Green.
This movie is awesome.
